January 3-9, 2021

First week back at schools and work for us. 5 very long days. But we made it.

Rough start on Sunday. The reality of back to school was pretty anxiety producing. So Ally and I settled in and watched some movies together. 

The gymnastics classic Stick It and then another “end of the world” movie, Deep Impact.  Ally enjoyed them both. After movies she took a relaxing bath watched a couple episodes of her favorite Vampire Diaries and got a good night sleep.

Monday during a break from school. And below a memory from when Ally was 8 years old.



Becky finally trashed the gingerbread mansion. 

On Wednesday Ally wore her new sneakers to the orthodontist.

She has to be the only kid who truly loves going to the orthodontist. She wants her teeth straight and has been enjoying watching them move over the past 16 months. The work is progressing well and she’s due to have them off in August, right before she starts high school.

Wednesday brought the horrific news about the insurgence at the Capitol and the protests in Congress to certify the presidential election results. 

It was pretty awful. The only bright spot of the day was that the the Democratic Party won Georgia. So now our party of choice has control of Congress and the presidency. 

But the entire course of events in DC brought about some major anxiety and on Thursday Ally wasn’t feeling well at all. Out of an abundance of caution we brought her to get a COVID test.

Can you see Ally brought some emotional support with her in the car. It was a drive thru testing site so she didn’t need to leave the car. 


Daisy! Becky said the EMT who came up to the car for  the testing took one look and said this was a first...he had not seen a cat in a car before!  But Ally self administered the nasal swab and her results came back on Friday. Negative! 

Thursday night Ally blew dry her hair all by herself. 

Friday waiting to leave for practice. 

Which was not actually a practice but an in-house meet. Ally is still not competing but she helped out with the meet for 5 hours! The team coordinator said Ally was awesome and a huge help.

While Ally was at gymnastics I took a selfie with Cloey.

Then on Saturday Ally got a leftover Christmas gift. 





A new phone. We had bought it, thinking we would return it. Then her old iPad broke so instead of the new phone we gave her an iPad for Christmas.

But it turns out the phone is not returnable. So we went ahead and surprised Ally with it.

Astonished her is more appropriate. We all worked on her private school application on Saturday and plan to submit it on Monday. It’s a lot of work for parents and students.  We are all hoping she gets in and can go to high school there.