Puzzle Club

One quarantine constant for the family has been puzzles on the dining room table. We just finished the 4th one this week. Two observations on my side - 1) The person most addicted to puzzles in the family in the only one who shows up in all four pictures below and 2) Puzzles are a lot harder to do with a curious 2 year old dog in the house (the last two puzzles both had a couple missing pieces)....And we just bought a 5th puzzle for our upcoming Big Bear trip...

Litter mates....

This one is from the Blink indoor camera. Tokyo has been sleeping in the girls room for past couple weeks. Everyone in the family has a slightly different relationship with Tokyo, but there is no doubt who her litter mate is (great term from our front neighbor). They share the same bed most nights. In this pic, Tokyo is cuddled up in Natalie's bed. Other nights, I find Natalie on the ground next to actual dog bed on the floor...You need good litter mates in life...Natalie now has two, the one in the upper bunk, and a new one in the lower bunk with her....

The Quarantine Mile

One of the fun things for myself since the quarantine started has been running. I got a new pair shoes to test in Feb and without the daily commute to Santa Monica, I have had a lot of time to figure out when/where to run.  Early on, while the streets were empty, I tried to run with the girls (on their bikes) as much as their interest would hold. On the weekends, it has been fun w/ the local running community. The local high school marked a 1 mile course on the streets with blue tape and everyone has been using it. We have a Saturday morning group that has been running a hard mile almost every week. This past weekend we had a 61 year old who wanted to run sub 5:30 and myself (age 40) who wanted to break 5 min. We started 8 weeks ago and he was at 6:00 min and I was at 5:20. Yesterday we ran 5:29 and 4:55 respectively. There was a total of 5 people at the finish line (including the two of us) and we celebrated like we had just won the Olympics (elbow bumps and all)...Ironically, last year when I turned 40 I told my running buddy I wanted to break 5 min for a mile and I was nowhere close. This year with the quarantine (one year later and older), I did it by 5 seconds...Who knew all it took was a new pair of shoes and pandemic to get me in shape :-) 

Pic below was my first attempt 8 weeks ago...

End of Year Boxes

Both kids wrapped up school this past week. On the last day, both of their teachers sent them home with a big box of their stuff from throughout the year. Below were my two favorite things they came back with...

Natalie's Flat Stanley Project Photo. The project was to create your own Flat Stanley character (Flat Natalie) and send your character someplace far away on a trip. Natalie sent Flat Natalie to Anchorage Alaska to her friend Flora. Flora's family was the perfect choice for the project and captured the photo below...With school campus closed indefinitely, we weren't sure what would happen with all the Flat Stanley projects that were out there. Definitely my highlight in Natalie's end of year box was to discover Flat Natalie had made her way safely back to Redondo Beach....btw...Natalie's first comment when she got the picture back was "I should have made Flat Natalie pants and a jacket."

This one was in Maya's box. The Redondo schools do a great job with the WATCH DOGS program (DOGS = Dads of great students)...You spend the whole day on campus, starting with unloading kids out of cars, then you split time between your kid's classrooms, and all the recesses/lunches. The kids love it and it is great perspective for the dads to see their kids in their element. This year all the talk was about Kobe Bryant, but I do remember one girl asking about the Corona Virus... And the highlight is at the end of the day, you take a picture with your kids and it goes on the wall for the rest of the year... This year I volunteered on Feb 26, basically two weeks before campus closed for the year...Our picture never made the wall this year, but looking back at all the things we missed this year, I am extremely grateful I was able to get this one in before the quarantine started...And even more so, I hope the program continues next year as they scope out what the new norms will be when the kids return to school at some point...

School is out for Summer....

Last week of school over here. Here is Natalie on her final Google Classroom Hangout of the year....I wanted to point on a couple things with this one...

• Natalie went full cat Halloween costume for her last day...Not 100% sure why, but it definitely matches her style. Being home with her these past couple months definitely makes me appreciate her creative side. Not 100% sure where she gets it from, but I hope she doesn't lose it. 
• And lastly, check out her chair. Somehow she ended up with an executive office chair (compliments of Ring). The girl who started the quarantine with a make shift classroom in the grandparent room, ended up with an office chair, new desk and Dad's headphones. Still not sure how much studying is happening (vs You Tube or Tik Tok), but after 3 months in quarantine, she is certainly more tech savvy and organized than before (both of which I think are good skills to learn)...

Coolest thing we did this month...

...Another full month in the quarantine books. This month I wanted to highlight the coolest thing we did in May (at least in my mind)....The Space X/NASA launch...It has been fun to watch what grabs the kid's attention during the quarantine, initially it was bike riding, then learning Zoom, Maya with reading and the latest was Aerospace. Both kids watched the initial launch that got postponed, the actual launch (which they were both really nervous for, picture below) and then the connection to International Space Station the following morning...And we look forward to watching Doug and Bob (the kids are on a first name basis now) return home in the Dragon space capsule....Also, really cool to see a local company (Space X is in Hawthorne) do some amazing stuff. Once the Ring headquarters officially moves to Hawthorne, we will be right next to Space X....Rockets and Doorbells make for good neighbors...

Summer Concert Series

Quarantine Memorial day was relatively mellow over here. We didn't go down to the beach with the masses. Kristy and I both unplugged from our computers for all three days and we tried to do two things every day...1) Reading, Maya now picks her favorite books and assigns them to Kristy and I to read (I was assigned El Deafo and a Dogs Life this weekend) and 2) Streaming concerts. We have been watching a number of quarantine from home concert shows recently, but we had also heard that a number of artists have been releasing old shows online. So here was the concert series at the Cortez house this weekend....Not the same as being at a concert, but still fun none the less (cheaper drinks and shorter lines at the bathroom)...

• Sat - Ed Sheeran in Dublin (Pic below)
• Sun - Foo Fighters at Wembley 
• Monday - Norah Jones from her house (she does a mini set from her house every week)

Frisbee and our park....

So we have this great park across the street from the house - Fulton Playfield. It used be a part of an elementary school (Fulton Elementary) that closed in the late 80's and is now a private school. The new school took over the building, but the play field became a city park, now known as Fulton Playfield. The kids always complained because there wasn't a play structure at the play field, just an open grass area. I have always thought of it as a great open space, but tended to agree with kids, it never got a lot of use because there wasn't a play structure there. That all changed with pandemic...The open grass area was one of the few parks in the area that never shut down (because it didn't have a play structure). One of my highlights every day (multiple times a day) is to see what is going at the park at any given time. Over the last 8 weeks, I have seen sun rise golf/chipping practice, family soccer games, one cricket game, daily lacrosse practice (where the Dad looks way more into than his daughter) and this morning I saw what look like two college athletes practicing discus throws...As for us, our park athletic contribution started a couple weeks ago. We are working on perfecting our Frisbee toss.  We try to practice a couple nights a week after dinner when the park starts to clear out. We aren't great, but are slowly getting better (we actually watched a You Tube video to help with our form)....Find your open park space, find your activity and enjoy... 

 

Creativity

So we have constantly been cleaning and re-arranging the house the past 2 months. We finally decided to get rid of the kid's art table that they have had for probably 5+ years now. We put out on the sidewalk last Friday and surprisingly nobody took it.  It is the first thing we have put on the sidewalk that somebody didn't take in a couple hours. Kristy's theory is it looked to much like a kids quarantine lemonade stand. After a day, I brought it back into our drive way and Maya asked if she could paint the old art table and make it look nice. Below is a pic of what she came up with. Really fun to see the creativity of a 10 year old. And now we have been using the table in the drive way as we have our daily happy hour with our front neighbors every afternoon....Side note - This creative 10 year old didn't invite her younger sister to help with the painting project which led to quite a bit of chaos in the house, but it was still fun to see her creativity before the shouting and tears started between sisters....Hopefully, there were a couple lessons learned from this restoration project :-)

My Quarantine Lists...

The calendar says May today and all the days have blended together a bit...With that in mind (and full calendar month under quarantine now), I decided to put together a list of everything I have done since the quarantine started with some observations...

Hygiene (in order of occurrence)

• Grew a goatee (almost all gray)
• Let the kids color my hair (rainbow)
• Let the kids buzz cut my head
• Grew a mustache
• Let Kristy cut my hair 

Exercise

• Riding bikes in the street w/ kids (we do it almost daily)
• Ran an all out mile on the open road (5:19 as a part of the Brea alumni virtual mile challenge, want to start doing 1x/month)
• 60 pushups in 60 seconds challenge (1x successful, 25+x unsuccessful)

Reading/Listening

• Finished a book that had been on my night stand for months (Bill Gates, Business at speed of thought). 
• Just started a new one (Dan Brown - Origin)
• Subscribed to the Washington Post (it came pre loaded on my new Amazon Fire Tablet. I still prefer the LA times)
• Podcasts - I know I am super late to the game on this one, but just started listening to Podcasts (current play list is a mix of Outside Magazine, LMU Magazine, and a bunch of tech industry stuff)
• Live streamed a couple concerts - A couple different events with the Lumineers (my favorite band)

Fun Family Stuff

• Camped in the backyard with Natalie (pic below)
• Fostered and adopted a dog  (Tokyo, probably the most surprising thing we did so far)
• Learned one new skill on the Alexa - The announcement feature ("Alexa make an announcement"), great for announcing meal times. 
• Downloaded 3 new apps for the kids (Tiktok, Facebook messenger, and Prodigy)

Maya's afternoon classroom...

Captured this on the Ring camera this afternoon. Maya on her lap top outside while Tokyo sun bathes below her...As long as real school work is being done, Dad is totally ok with this afternoon classroom set up...Study on girl...

Natalie's Desk Part II

Just a quick one today....Week 5 of home schooling and we have all adjusted our home offices/classrooms a bit (except for mama because she already had the giant home office before the pandemic:-)...Here is Natalie's new and improved set up - real desk now, borrowing Dad's head phones and using her lego box as a foot rest...

Tokyo 2020

The Tokyo Olympics have been officially canceled, but Tokyo 2020 took a new meaning for us this past week. Meet Tokyo Cortez...2 year old Yorkie, who looks a lot like Toto (one of our neighbors calls him that on the morning walk)...It has been interesting to have a 5th member of the family in our quarantine house. Mom is currently doing her best to crate train, and Tokyo is doing his best break out the crate (one successful break out so far). All things considered, it is going well and we have new protector of the drive way....More updates to come in the following weeks...

Grandpa vs. Natalie...Zooming

One of the more fascinating concepts the past several weeks has been video conferencing. We support all formats over here at the Cortez house (Zoom, Facetime, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc.), basically whatever format we get invited to from friends, teachers and family. The most consistent one seems to Zoom. I think at the end of this past weekend every device in the house now has the app and we are all fairly proficient. Highlight for me was definitely watching the Sunday morning practice session between Grandpa (almost age 70) and Natalie (almost age 8). Grandpa was slow and steady wanting to know exactly how the app worked (gallery view vs. who is talking view, etc) and Natalie had more of a pinball wizard approach (how do I text on this thing? How does my voice sound in my headphones? where is the screen where I see myself?)...They both learned the app and all in all,  it is really amazing how this technology can connect a 62 year age gap between Grandpa and Natalie...Reminds me a bit of my first year in college and the early days of email...

This weekend we used video conferencing to talk to the entire extended family, friends from Malibu, Seattle and New York. And we even tried to recreate a wedding that we were supposed to be in Mexico for this weekend. For the next month or two, Zoom us any time, we will be home :-)

It is all about the bike...

Almost to the end of week 2 of "safer at home" in LA County. One pleasant surprise of home schooling has been our daily PE class. The streets are generally wide open and I have been letting the girls ride their bikes on the street (with me running either in front or behind them at all times of course). We live on a fairly busy corner (and a big hill) so it not something they ever done before. In fact, the only non drive way bike riding they have done has been on vacation - Black Butte, Oregon and Denver Colorado. It definitely reminds me a lot of growing up in Brea and riding bikes through the greenbelt and streets with my childhood friends. Being comfortable biking the neighborhood is definitely a skill I didn't think the girls would learn living on our busy corner. We have biked 6 out of the last 7 days (almost 15 miles in total) and the girls (and Dad) have enjoyed every minute of it...Bike on everyone and enjoy the open streets...Mike, the PE Teacher

Home Offices and Classrooms...

After our first full week of home schooling on Speyer Lane, we had to make some executive decisions. First dad bought a desk on Amazon for his home office (he is now in his corner office in the master bedroom)....

https://www.amazon.com/SD-Drafting-Adjustable-Assembled-Dimensions/dp/B00EYGR978/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=drafting+table&qid=1585027221&sr=8-6

Second, we had to re-arrange the Grandpa/ma room into Natalie's 2nd grade class room. We moved the bed to the corner and set up Natalie with our home computer (she doesn't get her school chrome book until 3rd grade). We also added two virus protection plans (McAfee and eero) since this girl could watch YouTube from sunrise to sundown. Lastly, we set her up with an old desk (two sizes too small) and told her to make the classroom her own. I came in this morning to a very focused yet relaxed student...I believe she is diligently working in the photo, but 50/50 she is watching YouTube..

We will see how the rest of week two goes, but generally we are off to good start. Highlight of the day was a tip we got on a bike ride yesterday from some other parents...Lunch time doodle w/ Mo Willems (Pigeon Book Series)...If you haven't seen this one yet, definitely worth a watch, it kept both Cortez girls entertained today for a full 30 min...

https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/mo-willems/

Dad Channel and thankful for termites....

Hi everyone...Haven't posted here in a while. This blog was originally from the perspective of Maya right after she was born....Well, now Maya is 10 and Natalie is soon to be 8, so the new perspective is from Dad. And we are all home together doing our best social distancing to help fight the spread of COVID 19. What better to do with all of my time at home then resurrect this blog...My plan is to share a little bit of "a day in the life", but more importantly, what we are observing and learning together while we are all home as a family...Please enjoy, and as my kids would say "please subscribe"...JK, nothing to subscribe to here, just enjoy the periodic observations of 40 year old dad...And to my wife and mother, please do not correct my grammar as I post...

Here is the last family pic from pre social distancing. We tented the house for termites in late Feb and stayed a couple nights at the Redondo Beach pier. As always, the kids loved the Hotel (and pool) and Kristy and I enjoyed eating out for every meal at the pier...What a difference a couple weeks make....Looking back, I am thankful for termites as they gave us one last stay-cation at a hotel before we all realized how serious COVID 19 was.