Today, is the first day of spring. Two more weeks till the supposed end of Stage 4 lockdown in Victoria. Not long to go now! I can see the light at the end of this tunnel. Finally, the number of new cases in our state are dropping into double digits. I am hopeful that at the end of the 6 weeks lockdown, the state government will start to ease off some restrictions and allow us to get a semblance of the new COVID norm. Hopefully, the kids will get back to face to face learning both at school and their extracurricular activities. They are sorely missing their friends and teachers.

Over the weekend, we managed to hold a virtual karate grading from our family room for the kids. During these uncertain times, I’ve found that it’s important for us to give the kids some form of routine and structure. They thrive when there is some structure in their lives. Monday to Friday between 8:30am to 3:30pm, the kids are logged in via their school iPads for their online learning. After online learning, they log onto Zoom for their karate lessons a couple of days per week. Would you believe it, until the first lockdown, I had never heard of Zoom. Now it’s, our lifeline to our friends, classmates and extracurricular activities.

Once upon a time, when we first moved into our house, we doubted that we would ever fill our house up. It seemed so big! Two kids later, we are constantly stressing about the amount of stuff cluttering our home. Last weekend, to facilitate the virtual grading, we moved the furniture out from our family room. Without the furniture in the room, our voices echoed. A throwback to when we first moved in. The kids had fun with it. Funnily enough, we like how the family room looks without the furniture so we’ve decided to turn it into a workout room instead. Hopefully, it will mean that we take advantage of the space and do more stretches and exercise more during the day. Fingers crossed!

In pre-COVID times, karate gradings were held at the karate dojo over a whole weekend. The last karate was held back in December. Family including grandparents were encouraged to attend. Not sure moving forward, how karate gradings will be held. Maybe virtual gradings will be our new norm?!