First day of school... kind of..

So, Auckland has been allowed to move down to Level 3 lockdown as of 11:59 pm tonight.

Our cases are continuing to drop and more importantly, our public health leaders do not believe that we have widespread COVID in our community.

We were supposed to move into our gorgeous rental house later this week, but the moving company is backed up and had to reschedule the move out of the homeowner's furniture and belongings so we will have to stay at this temporary rental for one more week. We are grateful that it wasn't already booked and we have the option to stay.

While the rest of New Zealand has been back to in person school at alert level 2, we will be sitting in level 3 restrictions for at least 2 wks.

The kids have been doing workbooks and reading every day but they are anxious to see other faces other than each other again, so we took the school up on their offer of having them start in the online learning alongside their fellow classmates. Today was the first day of that and the kids loved it. Just getting to see new faces and hear new voices again was great. They each report that their teachers are very nice. Micah is getting a male teacher for the first time in his life. They got to participate and answer questions.

Our children, who have done online learning for an entire school year, will now be online again for just (hopefully) a little bit longer. While I am desperate for them to be able to be around their peers, making connections and making new friends, I have always supported the concept of closing schools until community COVID cases are under control, which is why I advocated for closing schools in AZ last year.

Micah is scheduled to be vaccinated on his 12th birthday in November and I cannot wait for the vaccines to be approved for the younger kids as well. Until then, we will be patient and be safe. A year or two delay for a lifetime of health for our children is a no brainer.