Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: school (Page 3 of 4)

The first of many BYU related posts

August 27, 2012 / / 5 Comments

BYU fall semester starts today.

We helped Cole move into his new dorm home on Wednesday so he could be there for freshman orientation. After me asking and nagging to get his room organized and packed.

He packed his bike and belongings into his sweet ride. And by “sweet”, I mean the ’88 Camry that used to be Ryan’s parents. We wonder if the drivers side door or the clutch will go out first. But it’s a perfect car for a kid who we don’t want driving too far or too fast, right?

While the parking situation there at May Hall was not good (too many parents all bringing their kids at the same time), we managed to finally find a place to park and haul Cole’s belongings into the dorm. First he had to check in.

I’m sure they will get this place personalized in no time at all.

After we went to the Wilkinson center to get his student ID card and took him to lunch at the Cougareat, we hugged him and said goodbye.

It’s a bittersweet time for a mother. I have so many hopes and dreams for that kid.
-I hope he meets friends. Good friends. The kind of friends that he will laugh with, cry with, share with, and still be friends with in 10-20 years.
-I hope this job actually happens. He got this ‘great’ job that was supposed to start in June, then has gotten pushed back and pushed back. I hope it really happens, and that it is a job he really enjoys.
-I hope he does well in his classes, and is not overwhelmed. Because of his AP classes, he’s leap-frogging over a couple of things, and starting out with Linear Algebra (math 313 or something like that) and some 200 level programming class. He’s also got American Heritage, Book of Mormon and Psychology.
-I hope he gains confidence in himself. He is a wonderful kid, and he’s going to be a strong and secure man someday.
-I hope he dates and has fun. I’m all about the fun, and those years at BYU I had the most fun of my life. Yes, it was hard, and often times stressful, but there’s really no other time in a young adult’s life when they can explore, learn, meet people and have new experiences than in college.
-I hope he remembers all we have taught him. Remember who you are and what you stand for!

And so many other things. In my heart, I know he will be fine and be safe, but my head still worries about him. Does he have enough money? Did we teach him well enough? Will he be lonely? Will he be organized enough to not get behind in his classes?

Thankfully we all have cell phones and I can text or call him, and he’s really only a half hour drive away.

He came home last night for dinner and to pick up a few things that he had forgotten. He told us a bit about his freshman orientation, the meetings and socials, and church in his new BYU ward. He wanted applesauce and pears so he could eat in his room and not always in the Cannon Center for every meal. He also brought home a couple of shirts that had ended up in his stuff but weren’t his. He seemed excited about today and all that would happen.

I will continue to worry and pray and call and do whatever I need to do to help him succeed, just as I do for my other kids, I’ll just worry a bit more since I don’t have him living here in our home.

Good luck, Cole, and enjoy your FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Yep, we’re different, all right

August 24, 2012 / / 2 Comments

It’s been almost a week with our new ‘daughter’, Larissa. She seems to be adjusting well and fitting in nicely. Soon the newness will wear off for all of us and we’ll hopefully just consider her one of us. Right now, I’m still trying to ‘make a good impression’. That basically means I’m not yelling at my kids, I’m folding laundry, I’m making dinner every night, and trying to keep up on the war against clutter. In a way, it’s kind of like you would feel if you were being filmed for a reality tv show, only we have an audience of one. I want her to think we are organized, nice people. (I don’t know why I try, she’ll soon learn that while we ARE nice, we are NOT organized.)

It was nice to read her blog and NOT see anything about how insane her host family is. No lamenting about how she got the lamest family ever, so that was reassuring to me. She did list a lot of differences, however, between America and Germany. As I read over her list, I can agree, that yes, all of her observations are true.

She said,

Well, this is a short list of all things which are different here (okey, actually there are too many things to write them on this blog, but these are the things I regognized immediately):

Evereything is bigger (cars, houses, meals, shopping centers, school, streets)
You do everything by car (including the 5 minute walk to your freinds house)
People eat differently (the meals are just different, I can’t explain it :D)
You do what your teacher tells you to do
You don’t always have to raise your hand if yo want to say something in class
If you need to go to the restroom or need to make a call in class you need to use a hallway pass. If you don’t use the hallway pass, you get extra credit (=better grades)
You (at least at my school) can look up your grades, teacher’s comments, schedule etc on the internet
People here are just friendly. The neighbor that you don’t even know says “hi” when you see him, everybody helps you when you need help – with a smile 😀
Everything’s easy going (except school, but now I also saw that it isn’t hard to get a good grade if the teacher just see’s that participate a little little bit)
If you buy something you usually look at the price. Let’s say, something costs 1.50$. You will always pay more than the prays say’s because of taxes!
Here are many fast food restaurants (but I guess that’s not new)
All meals taste very good, milkshakes are sweeter than in Germany, salads taste better etc. (Today there was a girl, my host sister’s friend and she bought a pizza in the school’s cafeteria, but she didn’t like. I wanted to try it. I liked it and told her: “Hey what’s up with this pizza? It tastes normal, just like German pizza.” She said, she would never buy a pizza in Germany. What I want to say: American pizza must taste really good, because I even liked the American “bad” pizza :D)

While I wouldn’t know about school in Germany, I would agree with her assessment. Yes, we are friendlier here, and yes, things are bigger. When she saw our Suburban in the garage, she just about fell over. Yes, welcome to Utah, home of large families and large cars.

I smell fresh backpacks

August 21, 2012 / / 2 Comments

We had kind of a bumpy start to the school year.

With a new exchange student, there are a whole new set of things to do. We picked Larissa up on Saturday afternoon.

She is a very nice girl from Germany, and her English is GREAT. I need to practice my German, but I don’t really have a need to speak German, because her English is SO much better than my rusty German. We’ll work on that, though. By Sunday afternoon, we were putting her to work making pies with the girls.

Monday morning, we were off to try to register her. There was some confusion, as the doctor who had done her TB test hadn’t given us the proper form, and we left her passport at home, but after a little bit of shuffling and a rescue from Cole, we got her done at the district office. Then we went to the high school. We were sandwiched in with all the other parents and student who were trying desperately to change their schedule to get into that one class, so there was a lot of waiting. When we got in to the first counselor, she gave us some grief about the TB test, too. Ugh. But she put her in the system and sent us over to wait for another counselor to help build her schedule. Since she is in 10th grade, he put her in to the typical sophomore schedule (SOPHOMORE–Anyone from Brighton remember Mr. McCallister’s whole speech about the “wise fool”?), which includes health, English, History, PE. She is also taking Chemistry, French 3, and dance. There was one 1/2 year class we couldn’t work out, so she ended up with Child Development 1, which didn’t thrill her, but maybe by second semester we can work that one out.

By then it was noon, and I was already worn out. But after making lunch for the family (what? The oven decided it’s done and won’t light anymore? Typical appliance behavior when Ryan is out of town —toaster’s giving us trouble, too, by the way), we headed to the bank to get her more money, since registration had taken all of her cash. That didn’t work out so well, and we aren’t sure how to actually get money with her ATM card, but we will work that out soon. She did have enough to buy the few things she needed at Walmart.

Soon after that, it was time for back to school night, time to find classes and meet teachers. Thankfully, I talked Cole into taking Megan and Larissa to the school to walk around and find all the classes. I don’t really know how to navigate that school anyway, and I was glad that he took them.

Our night before school starts dinner? At McDonald’s. We wanted to see where Cole’s been working, and he needed to pick up his check. I used the oven not working as an excuse to take the kids out.

This morning, I got everyone up early enough to get a couple of kids showered. I put Natalie’s hair up in hot rollers, but it was straight after 10 minutes. Don’t know why I bothered.

John picked his own clothes, and wanted his newly cut hair styled in a “duck butt”. Ahem. I think the proper term would be “duck tail”, but whatever, he’s cute no matter what you call it.

Jenna, who has been sick with a cold or something all weekend, was crying and upset. She said her stomach hurt and she felt like throwing up. I hope it was just anxiousness and I sent her to school. I feel so bad, but I really don’t know what’s wrong, and I don’t want to set a bad habit of staying home everytime she’s nervous or upset about something. If she really is sick, she’ll call me and I’ll go get her, but I didn’t want her to miss the first day of school! I didn’t even get a picture of her in the morning. (I checked on her during school and her teacher said she seemed fine. She also seemed happy and healthy when she came home, so I hope it was just nerves.)

Megan, who is such a procrastinator, wore sloppy clothes because, as she put it, “I don’t have a SINGLE shirt!”. In my defense, I asked her what she needed for school, and she said jeans. I did buy her jeans, new underwear, shoes, and a shirt or two. She just can’t ever find anything. This one also didn’t have a lunch made, didn’t have the parking sticker on the car, and made me late so i missed the whole breakfast at the bus stop, waving to the kids and taking pictures. But she did drive the truck to school, so hopefully she and Larissa made it to class on time.

But they are all gone, for now, at least. I expect a call from Jenna anytime now. Cole is upstairs asleep. He can move into Helaman halls at BYU tomorrow.
Cole’s BYU job, of course, is postponed again. Worried about that one. But there’s really nothing I can do about it, so I’m trying to be calm. His job today is to clean up his room. His stuff is mixed with John’s stuff, and it’s pretty much all a mess. We have got to get all his stuff together so we can move him into his dorm tomorrow. Ack! I can’t even think about that right now!

So, Happy Back to school 2012!

The more the merrier

August 15, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Things are busy around here. Beds moving, closets getting cleaned out, school supplies being purchased. It’s not your average back to school time. You see, we’ve got Cole leaving for college next week, and that involves a lot of organizing, purchasing, and getting ready. Since he will be living at BYU for most of the year, he won’t be using his room quite so much, so we are moving John into that room. Poor Cole now needs to clean out his closet full of STUFF that he’s been collecting for the past 10 years. Sadly, he doesn’t have any of those nice purging genes (messy parents, both of us), and sorting and organizing are NOT high on his list of talents.

On the other end of the house, we need to vacate John from Jenna’s room. When a girl reaches a certain age, you see, it’s no longer cool to room with your brother. I’m amazed at the amount of legos, star wars figures, stuffed animals, etc, that I have pulled out of that closet.

My trash can is uberfull, and we just took a truckload of bags full of stuff to DI.

Why the rush, you may ask. Well, we are expecting a new addition in the Erickson household. Calm down, calm down. It’s not a baby. We are hosting an exchange student for the school year. Her name is Larissa and she is from Germany. She arrives on Saturday.

You might say we’ve been working up to this decision for a long time, with our short term exchange students from all over. We had a host family coordinator contact us about a year ago, to ask if we would like to host a student. While it wasn’t possible then, when she called again last winter, we thought that we might have the basement finished, and with Cole leaving, that might be a possibility. We chose our top three choices from the profiles we were given, and then didn’t hear much. In April, we found out that our school district only accepts a certain number of students, and they really have to be in the top of their class to come, and none of our picks made the cut. No problem, I thought. WE don’t really NEED that extra stress in our lives. But our coordinator was persistent, and eventually got slots transferred from other schools who were not using them. We picked from a short list again, and eventually we found out that our pick had been accepted, and we would actually be host families for a German girl.

Yes, I did have a little say in her nationality. If I’m going to have someone in my home for that long, I want someone I can actually communicate with, even if it means dusting off my rusty German. We’ve spoken on the phone, and she seems like a really sweet girl. Her English is also very good, so that’s a plus.

She comes in on Saturday. School starts on Tuesday, but we’ll have to try and register her on Monday and hope we can get some classes for her that she likes.

Besides all the cleaning and organizing, which we aren’t loving, we are excited to have her here. Since she’s here for school, not just a ‘vacation’, we won’t feel like we need to entertain her all the time. Hopefully she will be making friend and meeting people, and it will all be a great experience for all of us.

In the meantime, wish me luck. I still have the rest of the closet to clean out, beds to move, carpets to clean, and bathrooms to organize. In addition to that, I kind of promised one little boy I would take him to Seven Peaks SOME time before school starts.

Graduation!

May 30, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Yesterday was Lone Peak’s class of 2012 graduation.

How is it that we could go from this little boy to that high school graduate?

I don’t even want to go there. I mean, really, it seems like it was only a few years ago that we were celebrating MY high school graduation.

Cole’s graduation was at UVU, the first one of the day, 9:00 am, so our goal was to get there by 8 am to get a seat. Cole was supposed to be there at 8 am to practice and line up, too. We let him drive his own car so we wouldn’t slow him down.

I got this banner for him, and it even came in time. Hooray! Not sure what we’re going to do with it NOW, but we’ll let Cole decide, I guess.

Since Lone Peak lets all the graduates sit with their friends, it was pretty hard to find Cole in the SEA of graduates,

(Think you can pick him out?)
but I snuck a peak and a photo when they took their caps off for the National Anthem.

The talks were good, (and short) and I’m sure they hurried to get through all 600 plus graduates. I didn’t get great pictures, just a blur of him walking across the stage, but I might get better shots from my dad. And by 10:30, it was over. They moved their tassels from one side to the other, and they were done!

Then we had to meet up in the sea of graduates and family outside.

Thanks to cell phones, we eventually did find him so that we could congratulate him and take some pictures!

Since Ryan and I feel like WE earned this graduation, we decided to put on the hat, too. Plus, Ryan said he had NO pictures from when he graduated. I doubt that, but now we have this one.

We are SO proud of all of our kids. It’s a joy to see how different they all are, and we rejoice in their accomplishments. We are proud to say that Cole will be going to BYU in the fall, and we hope it’s a wonderful experience for him.

Chime in

May 18, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Last week I attended the Utah PTA convention held at BYU. It’s been years since I have attended, and I actually had a nice time and got a lot of valuable information for the one day that I was there. One of my classes was “Arts in the Schools”. It wasn’t really my area, since I am in charge of fundraising again this year, but I was interested, and found the class amazing. There were 2 presenters who spoke of how arts programs can change lives, giving their own stories as illustration.

While I was in that class, I experienced a very strong prompting that I needed to help in this area. I have been given many opportunities and blessings and it is time for me to share that with others. I was moved almost to tears as the Spirit spoke to my soul and I realized that, like the lyrics of one of my favorite hymns, “Because I have been given much, I too must give.” I left that class SO excited to start some kind of a handbell program.

The next day, I wrote a quick email to the principal of the elementary school where I am heavily involved. I told him my idea and asked if he thought it was a possibility, if I could somehow raise the money to buy the instruments. He responded positively, and I met with him on Monday with a Grant proposal for him to sign. He was very supportive, and while he can’t offer me money to get started, said that we could find space and time in our before or after school music programs. I took the form down to the district office to get it signed. I am applying for a set of loaner handchimes, which the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers will loan to a school just beginning the chime program. I also asked three of my friends from Bells on Temple square how they began their choirs at school, and got some ideas. I need Grants.

So, this week I am searching for Grants. I have applied for one so far, and am looking for another that I qualify for. I never knew this, but there are TONS of grants out there, but very few of them apply specifically to what I’m trying to do. If I get that loaner set of handchimes, then I can start right away. If not, I will have to scrounge up the money. I figure I need about $4,000 just to get started. Anyone have an extra $4,000 that they would like to give me? I didn’t think so.

So, I don’t know if things will fall into place for me to start this in the fall, but I do know that I can make it work eventually. I am so excited about this idea, even though I have no experience teaching chimes or even leading a choir. But if I am meant to make this happen, then I will be lead to the people who can help me, and I will muddle through just like everyone else does when they start a new endeavor.

Wish me luck.

We’ve had better days, how about you?

April 2, 2012 / / 3 Comments

A rough day was had by all. In the words of my almost 16 year old, when I asked her how her day was, she said, “It sucked.” Allow me to elaborate a bit.

Today my assignment was in first grade and John and Jenna’s school. I hadn’t yet subbed for this particular teacher, but she never seemed really friendly when I would see her at school, so I didn’t know what to expect. Imagine my surprise when the class was well behaved and quiet. Until the pm group arrived at 9:15. You see, our school is an extended day school, where half of the kids come at 8:00 and do reading and writing with a smaller group. They are called the early birds. The ‘later gators’ come at 9:15. When the early birds go home at 2:15, the late kids stay and do their small group reading and writing. Guess how many kids want to do reading and writing after half of their class goes home? None. I’m just sayin.

Anyway, things were still going reasonably well, but one girl straggled in late, wearing pajama pants and slippers. She dragged around, telling me how she did not feel good, but that her mom said she couldn’t miss work one more day or she would get fired. Too much information, little girl. While the kids were in the library, I stopped in at the office, and mentioned that I had a little girl who was dragging around acting like she was sick, but her mom was at work. Office lady knew EXACTLY who I was talking about, and told me that this child was always acting sick, and her mom had laid down the law and wasn’t going to let her play wolf again. Hmmm. With that information, I stopped feeling bad for this poor little girl, and saw her as the manipulator that she probably is.

At math time, this little girl just sat with her head on the desk NOT doing any work. But at least she was quiet. Another boy in the room wouldn’t do any of his work AND his main goal in life seemed to be to misbehave and disrupt the rest of the class. How had I not noticed him before? Oh, he was at off with an aid or special rescourse teacher. We made it to lunch, but the principal announced that it would be a shortened recess day, because of the cold temp and the STRONG wind. So, that’s 10 minutes less time for lunch for me. After lunch, this little girl followed me around complaining of how sick she was, and that no one would play with her. When it was reading time, she curled up on a couple of bean bags and ‘fell asleep’. I wasn’t sure if she was really sleeping, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let her sleep through my science lesson.

At about the time when the early birds left to go home, that is when the day started to fall apart. Little sick girl decides it’s time to up her sick quotient, and throws up on the floor. Oh, great. Either she wasn’t faking, or she can make herself throw up. The kids who ventured over to look at it closely said it looked like she had been eating crayons. Whatever, I’m staying right over here. Why don’t you go into the bathroom? I asked her. No, I’m ok, she said. What? Go in the bathroom and wash you face and hands, I instructed, and then you can go to the office and call home. Let the office deal with her, right? All the kids are EXTREMELY fascinated by this turn of events, and when the janitor comes, there was not ONE little one reading, I can tell you that.

Meanwhile, I looked at my phone and saw a text from Cole that said “John is bleeding and he banged up his lip. What should we do?” It is times like this when I feel like I am certainly in the wrong place. I should be home, helping my OWN CHILD who got hurt right as he was leaving school, not stuck at school dealing with another child’s throw up. I covertly texted him back (since teachers aren’t supposed to be using cell phones at school, either) and told him to use some ice in a bag on the injury, and I would be home in an hour. He texted back a few minutes later and assured me that John was fine, he had calmed down and was watching tv. I am SO thankful that Cole didn’t have to stay late after school today. Usually he’s not home until 4 or so, but today he must have gotten home at about the same time as John and Jenna got home.

To keep this post from getting TOO long, the barf got cleaned up. Sick girl went home. Obnoxious boy did ZERO work, except for one sentence that I forced him to write while the other kids wrote 8 sentences in their journals. I came home to see my boy looking like this.

It got him out of piano lessons today, and he seems like he will recover. With a little neosporin and some Band-aids he’ll be just fine.

My red chicken coop, looks like this.

(please excuse the quality of this picture, it’s taken from the house, through a window.)
Some strong winds hit these parts. Ugh. I’m trying to get the chicks and chickens all taken care of so that we can leave them for spring break, and now this happens?

At times like this I think of one of my favorite children’s books, Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse,


and when her favorite teacher, Mr. Slinger, says,
“Today was a difficult day.
Tomorrow will be better.’
-Mr. Slinger”
Kevin Henkes, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse

Or, as Howard Jones sings, Things can only get better.
Now, if you excuse me, I have to go make dinner, and see if I can find out why the teenager’s day sucked. Wish me luck.

A day of abuse and volleyball? Sounds like fun. Sign me up!

March 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

The other day I showed up for a half day subbing job at my kids’ school. While I hadn’t subbed for that class yet, I had done a bit of subbing in that grade, and some of the kids know me from PTA and other stuff. I walked in the back of the class right before they went to lunch. The kids, who were already pretty hyper because they had just been to an assembly, saw me and said, “Hooray!” and “I know YOU”, and “It’s Mrs. Erickson” all at once. Two of the kids I knew from primary (one is John’s friend), and some of them I recognized. Wow! I felt kind of like a celebrity. The teacher, who is actually brand new at that school, and who was probably really looking forward to her afternoon training meeting away from the kids, said, “I’m glad you have a sub you like, now make sure you behave!” After the kids came back from lunch, I explained my expectations, my rewards, and all that stuff, and we went on to have a nice afternoon together. Really. No problems at all. I would sub for them again, no problem. Besides, it’s not often that kids cheer when you show up, right? Little boost to my self-esteem.

Contrast that with the next day, when I was subbing at the jr high in Health/PE. Now, the ONLY reason I took that job was because it mentioned in the notes that she had a student teacher who would be doing most of the teaching, and I would be there to help and support her. Because teaching 8th grade health? Ick. So, when I got there, I looked around for a student teacher, and not seeing one, started to panic JUST a little bit, until I saw that her computer and coat were already there at the desk. I waited until she came in, introduced myself, and asked her if she wanted me to do anything to help her. “I’m good,” she said, and so I set up camp at the table in the corner of the room. She started on her lesson about communication in relationships, did a little activity with relation-SHIPS they had drawn the last class, and then started in on the topic of the day…unhealthy relationships. I was SO THANKFUL that wasn’t MY lesson that I would have to be giving! I’d almost rather have a root canal (which I did, last week, actually) than teach THAT lesson three times in a row with no preparation.

Relief.

She did a GREAT job. She had a power point presentation, a powerful but short video clip about a girl who was in an abusive relationship and how it nearly destroyed her before her parents helped her break up with him and turn him in to the police, and real information about the different kinds of abuse, the warning signs, and how NO ONE deserves to be in an abusive relationship. She did SUCH a great job with this heavy material, and I told her so. But when the first class was over, I asked her if there was ANYTHING I could do to help her out, because I wasn’t real thrilled about sitting through this two more times. It was too distracting to really ready my book, but I was stuck there. So, she gave me a stack of papers that I could grade. Gladly! I ended up grading four classes worth of these papers, which gave me something to do, at least. She was VERY appreciative that I had done that, because, really, it was a couple of hours worth of work that now she doesn’t have to do over the weekend, and it gave me something to do. I did still get a few chapters read in my book, but honestly, who can read with a discussion of abusive relationships going on?

This young teacher did a great job. Except for ONE tiny annoying thing. After every two or three sentences, she would throw in a “K?” Like, “I’m going to tell you a true story that illustrates this point, k?” “These are the six types of abuse I want you to remember, k?” Ugh! After a while, it really started to get on my nerves. I wonder if her mentor teacher has mentioned this to her? I hope so. I wanted to say something, but that’s not really my place, and I didn’t want to sound rude or condescending, so I didn’t mention it to her.

After three classes of health, I had lunch and then went to the gym for PE. It was actually a relief to be teaching PE. Something where I could get up and move around, not just sit in the back of the classroom being bored and listening to the same presentation over and over. Once I called role and made note of who was dressed and participating and who was not, I assigned them their courts and let them play volleyball for an hour. Much more fun than talking about abuse.

It’s all academic!

March 17, 2012 / / 2 Comments

WARNING….BRAG ALERT. I am about to do some serious bragging about one of my kids here, so if that turns your stomach or gets you all irritated, just click away. You have been warned….

My son Cole is on the Academic Decathlon team at his school. I really don’t know much about it except that since it’s called a decathlon, maybe there are 10 events, and I know it’s for smart people. Seriously. Call me an uninformed parent, but I didn’t really know what was going on. Sure, he stayed after school a couple of times a week and then he went to a few competitions on Saturdays, and that was that. Right? Well, shortly before our friends were coming to visit, I told the kids that Robin and her kids would be coming on a certain day, and Cole said, “That’s when the State Acadec competition is.” Oh, I asked it if was on the calendar, or if he had told me about this before. “Umm..” I guess not. Where is this competition, I asked. “In St. George.” What? So, we quickly found out the info, how much it would cost, when he would be gone, etc.

While he was gone, we kept in touch through short text messaging. He told me he rocked his speech, or had felt really good about a test. On Friday, he told me that they were first in the standings after 5 events. Saturday I got a message that they had won 1st place! Wow! I found out later that they had won first in large school, and also first overall, knocking our Park City, who I hear has won this competition for many years. Our little team of 9 kids were the best in the state! They now get to compete at the Nationals, which will be held in New Mexico at the end of April.


These are Cole’s medals. You may not be able to tell that they are different, but he won 6 gold and one bronze medal in his events.

I am so amazed and so proud of my son! I mean, I’ve always known how smart he is, and he’s always been a good test taker, but this really is amazing! It was so fun to hear him tell about the weekend and his excitement at having done so well.
I said, “Cole, they will put this up on the marquee in front of the school that you are state champions!” He cynically replied that they only put up stuff about basketball, and probably wouldn’t even mention them. But, much to my surprise, they had a school assembly that week honoring excellence from their school this quarter, and they honored both the basketball team (1st in State, by the way) AND this little Academic Decathlon team. While probably most of the kids in the school have no idea who those math geeks on stage were, THEY knew, and THEY know how awesome they are.

I went to a parent meeting this week to find out a bit more info. These kids are going to be so deep in studying for the next four weeks, they don’t even have time to do fundraisers. The coach suggested a “Decathalon-athon” where people can pledge 5 or 10 cents for every page Cole studies during the next month, or look for corporate sponsors. Hmmm. I don’t really have great connections with any big companies who I could ask to donate all or part of the $6,000 needed to take the team, but I do have friends. Maybe if we can get 50-60 people who would donate $10 each, that would about cover Cole’s costs. Or if I had 25-30 people who would donate $20 each. You see where I’m going with this?

If you feel inclined to help Cole and his team out, we would HAPPILY accept your donations. Yes, Ryan and I will probably be paying for most of it, but it would be nice to not have to foot the whole bill, and we hope the community will also kick in with some corporate donations. This is ACADEMIC, after all.

Hello, Monday!

February 6, 2012 / / 2 Comments

\

It’s Monday morning and my kitchen counter looks like this.
Sigh.
We have two different school projects going on there, if you can’t tell.
Megan is building an art piece from junk, hence the broken Roomba with things dangling.

Natalie had to make a scale model of some kind of food, so she made a miniature cake mix.

Not shown on this counter, but also messing up my kitchen would be two valentine’s boxes that are being worked on (one is a cow, and one an owl).

Add to that the dishes from Sunday, and the general mess from making lunches, etc, and the Sunday paper that is now on the counter.

So, my counter looks like a bomb went off, and it will take me hours to recover from the weekend, while NOT DISTURBING their works in progress of course.

That’s what Mondays are for.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

© 2024 Superpaige's Pad

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑