Remember when I said that we had great plans for this weekend? Well, we kind of/sort of ended up doing them.

There were actually 2 different things we had planned. On Saturday evening, we were thinking of taking the kids out to Hagg Lake for a picnic and fishing (Pat and the kids would fish, I’d read a book!). Pat ended up working on some things around the house on Saturday and then it turned out to be a windy evening, so we decided to table that for another time–although we did still get KFC for dinner.

Then, on Sunday, our plan was to go to the coast and do my favorite hike in Oregon. And we really tried to do that. We got a little later start than I had hoped (because we all slept in later than I would have liked) and we were worried on the drive over that the weather would be crap–because the weather was crap going over the coastal range. But it was a lovely day–and there were many, many people there to enjoy it.

The hike is Cape Falcon and it is at Oswald West State Park. Let me stop here to say that Oswald West State Park is named after someone named Oswald West and there is no Oswald East. Embarrassingly, I only learned this last year! Anyway, the hike started out fine, but the trail conditions were such that we had to cut the hike short. The mud was unbelievable and parts of the trail were essentially washed out. This trail is notoriously muddy most of the year, but it is usually at least passable by now–not this year. I’m trying to convince Pat that we should go back next month, but he’s suggesting August 2021 instead!

Anyway, we still had a little beach time after that and the day was more enjoyable, despite the incomplete hike. We are going to be doing more hiking and we’re trying to find a less popular hike for next weekend. We learned on Sunday that hiking while wearing a mask is not fun!

Speaking of masks, the Governor has mandated that masks now need to be worn outdoors when social distancing is not possible, as well as limiting indoor gatherings to 10 people. California has taken more drastic measures and I fear that we’ll be following suit. While not ideal, I do think that these are wise moves.

Finally, we received the first draft of the plans for the school year. While things may still change and we won’t know for sure until mid-August, the current proposal is three options. The first is a hybrid option where kids would go to school 2 days a week and have comprehensive distance learning the other 3 days. It is possible that Chris would still go to school 5 days a week with this plan has it hasn’t been determined if K-2 or K-4 would go back full time. The second option is “comprehensive distance learning” where the kids would still be enrolled in their school and assigned to a class, but they would be doing online learning (taught by the teacher!) until it was safe to go back to school. The third option would be Hillsboro Online Academy, which is just an online school and would require transferring the kids to the online academy and they would now go back to their school at all. We talked to the kids to get their feelings–Lillie wants option 2 and Chris wants option 1. I suspected that there would be a split, but I thought it would go the other way! However, Pat and I are the ones making the decision and we haven’t yet made that decision. I do think we are leaning towards option 2 right now, but it really depends on what the state of the affairs is when we get closer to fall. It’s not ideal, but we made it through Spring and we’ll make it through Fall.

I’m leaving you with the “before” picture of the hike. You wouldn’t recognize the kids after…they were caked in mud!