Pandemic Week 24: Parental Controls

Looking for bald eagles at Mason's Neck State Park
Anna is back......and ready to return to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  While she was away, mom learned some new tricks, including how to use the parental controls on the mobile phone.  On the plus side, Anna can now share iTunes accounts and other apple purchases with her mom.  On the negative side, she now has screen time limits (along with some download limits).  Theresa is quite proud of her technology abilities (it is amazing what you can find with the help of google). 

Anna is preparing to begin school on September 8.  She picked up her laptop this week and had virtual freshman orientation on Thursday.  Joe and Theresa had virtual parent orientation as well.  The school will be running a regular bell schedule, so Anna will need to log on and attend her classes at specified times just as if she were in person.  The hope is at some point they will be able to return to in-person instruction, thus will have the same schedule.  Since there is no marching band this year and virtual music is not quite the same, Anna opted to take an art class instead.  This week she will have a check-in day on Thursday with each of her teachers.  Mondays will be a teacher work day with classes held Tuesday - Friday.

Other items for the week:

  • Our next door neighbors welcomed a baby Labrador puppy.  Her name is Niki and she is adorable.  We will be playing with her a lot.
  • Sunday was a gorgeous day.  We went for a hike at Mason Neck State Park, which is known for is bald eagles.  We didn't see any eagles, but enjoyed the hike (Anna got a Slurpee afterwards, which is always a motivator for her).
  • We tried 4 new recipes from a Cook's Country magazine we received from Grandma (all were delicious....and we have more to try this week).

This week is Anna's 14th birthday.  We will see what creative thing we can come up with to celebrate. 

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