Our Side of the Tracks: May 2020: the second half

Carma had a birthday! Met up with all the available half cousins for some outdoor, semi-distanced fun:

I'm sure the sandpit area is super sanitary ;).

Jack continued listening to Harry:

Epic bday cake:

Highlight of Carma's birthday - Mr. J stopped by!! This guy thought. PE teacher extraordinaire - during quarantine, he's made house visits for every kid's birthday. Carma has a classmate around the corner whose birthday was the day before - instead of combining them and doing one early or one late, Mr. J. came to our neighborhood two days in a row. Carma was soooo happy:

I'm pretty lucky, it was Carma's special day but I was the recipient of a makeover!!

Her concentration tho.

Time for cake yo:

Instagram caption: Cray-cray turned six a couple weeks ago and she was in heaven! Allll the love and attention, a special visit and balloon from her beloved PE teacher, a sparkly birthday shirt, fun presents, and LUME deodorant! Carma has been obsessed with Lume since they sponsored a JK Studios! YouTube show. Like she talks about Lume constantly. Sings their jingles. Rattles off their all natural and bacteria-paralyzing benefits. Hilarious stuff, so obviously Chuck and I had to order her some and her reaction was legit worth it. Carma June is a bundle of hilarity and dance and joy and singing and love and we’re glad her jasmine rose-smelling self is around! 🎁🎈👧🏻🌸🌺💋 {emojis by Carma}

Who is this girl? hahahahaha

Cute little bday shoutout from everyone's favorite Ella.

Instagram caption: Chuck is my self-appointed, volunteer crayon coloring expert as I embark on a mad dash effort to get June and July birthday cards ready to email this week before students turn in their laptops for the summer. He’s been coloring all the bday cards since quarantine started and it’s the cutest thing ever (minus that I am motivated by “keep going! You’re doing great! These are amazing! You got this!” and Chuck tends to motivate with “you’re really behind! You’ll never finish! I did the math, you need to do 60 a day!” 😬🤪😂). Pretty happy to have him as my partner in goofy handmade birthday cards and life in general 😍

Finishing off the bday cake the next day ;).

Ya know how some people did like sourdough or TikTok during quarantine? In case you hadn't put together the pattern, Chuck did bikes. Realizing that Carma had outgrown her old bike and was ready for a mountain bike? The happiest day of Chuck's craigslist loving heart. Here's Carma with her brand new ride:

Sooo cute. Sooo fun. Can't decide who was happier, Chuck or Carma.

Instagram caption: Behold: all four Izatt children engaged in online distance learning. Clyde and Will in office hours with their respective math teachers, Jack in a class meeting, and Carma on her daily ten minutes of prodigy. Pretty sure this is the most attentive the older boys have been all of quarantine... coming in clutch the last week of school 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ PS anyone else having to slightly relax ‘no devices/technology in bedrooms’ rules right now? Our house is not big enough for us all to spread out otherwise 😬. PPS I love how cute and blurry Clyde is! He was eagerly waving hi with both hands when I sneaked in to get a picture! So sweet! He was also loudly hissing something about ‘go away’ but that was probably about something else 🤔🤷🏻‍♀️🤗

The gloves tho haha. Carma created an extensive pretend situation where we were co-workers as she busily colored (Chuck must have had the day off?) and a big part of it was clocking in? She's the best.

Speaking of coworkers:

Also speaking of co-workers, this zoom meeting made me laugh so hard - Rigsby's background combined with the mute button randomly looking like a tie... makes it look like it's signing day and he chose the Bobcats.

Bike adventures - Chuck and the kids headed out around the Owyhees for some fun:

These pictures kill me - apparently the trail was more than the younger three bargained for?

They all survived ;).

Kids and their bikes:

Cute little lawn mower.

Back to Eagle Bike Park:

Magnetic earrings!

Sunday brunch is the best.

These pictures make me laugh so hard and also make me so glad I wasn't dumb enough to get on this contraption:

Pretty crazy to live in a time where playgrounds were caution taped off for a few weeks as part of the stay at home order.

Some sort of odd game where they tried to stay inside the circle and also randomly switched bikes?

EDIT: The game is called Circle of Death. So glad we cleared that up ;).

Why does Will look like the lady at the beginning of Wizard of Oz??

Back on his own bike, aka the one he upgraded and stole from Chuck:

Kindergarten graduation! Looked juuuust a little different this year:

Super grateful for Ms. Crain and the work she put into giving her students the best possible experience this year.

The legendary Mr. J.

I got to be at the school for a few days as we did device check-in. LOVED seeing some students in person.

Suuuuper classy fire pit.

More nights sleeping on the trampoline.

I'm hilarious:

Jack (on Will's phone) checking in from out on the trampoline where he was listening to more Harry Potter:

End of school selfies.

Columbia gearing up for summer football workouts.

Last day of school pictures!

Tracking corona in Idaho:

Life sucks.

... this went over great on instagram, a little less well on Facebook - shockingly ;).

And now, a round up of incredibly sweet emails and messages from students in response to getting digital copies of their birthday cards via email. I have the best job ever with the best students ever: