First day of School 2021

 The kids were planning to go back to school on the normal day, and wouldn't have to wear masks this year.  They were all set to go, and pretty excited.  Nate was starting to get up earlier and earlier each day so that when school started he was on the normal school schedule.  Then covid hit.  Joe had gotten covid from a man that was working at the ranch.  He had been vaccinated, but it still put him in bed for a week.  We were very careful to make Joe stay in his room, and keep everyone away from him, except for me, who by the time we figured out Joe had covid, I had already been exposed.  Unfortunately, Ellie and Nate still came down with covid.  Adam, Michael and I did not.  Ellie and Nate had not been vaccinated but the rest of us had.  Ellie had symptoms of a cold for a few days, but we thought it was allergies, then Nate got a headache and started running a fever.  We went and got an over the counter covid test and tested everyone.  That's how we figured out Ellie and Nate were positive.  It was a few days before school started, so we called the school nurses and they had different responses as to what the kids had to do.   They encouraged Michael to stay home since he was living with them, but he opted not to.  Nate had to get an official test to show that he really was covid positive.  Ellie did not.  They then both had to stay home from school for 10 days from when their symptoms started.  That meant that Ellie and Nate did not get to go to school on the first week of school.  Ellie got to go back after 3 days, Nate had to wait a full 5.  The problem was, when they didn't show up to school the first day, they dropped them from school.  They also were dropped from the ability to see any of their classes.  We had emailed many of the teachers, but they couldn't even see their classes to see what homework they had.  Since they had the symptoms of a cold, but not much worse, they were both frustrated and bored with being home.  They were also worried that when they went back that they were going to get different classes and not the classes that they really wanted and needed.  Fortunately, that was not the case, and they kept their same schedules.  The nice thing about them getting dropped out of school like that is that they didn't accrue any absences when they weren't enrolled in school.  They both still had runny noses when they went back to school.  At the time there were a ton of students from both of their schools that had covid and we were getting multiple notifications from their schools about students having covid every day.  

Here is Nate when he was finally allowed to go back to school.  He is doing percussion and taking spanish this year as his electives.

This is Ellie on her first day.  She is in cheer for 2 class periods and track for 2 class periods and then her core classes.  Since cheer is the first class of the day, she always wears her cheer clothes to school.

Michael was lucky enough to be able to just go to school as normal.  They did change the policy shortly thereafter to where if someone in your house was quarantining then you would have to quarantine or get a negative covid test.