First Week of School Catch-up

Day 1: Grade 5, Grade 4

When you get an email from Grammy requesting an update because blog posts have been few and far between, you know you'd better write back. You also know that the other two people who read this blog might want to know what's the what, too. So here's what I wrote Grammy:

Dane's in Fall Ball, which means practice from 3:30-6 on Thursday nights and two weekend tournaments this fall. He's also doing a pitching clinic that's from 4:30-5:15 2x a week for 4 weeks, and has started a basic skills clinic that's 1x a week for the next 5 weeks. This might sound like a lot, but it's really kind of like having 2-3 practices a week with an occasional game.

Aubrey started gymnastics again and has it 2x a week for an hour and 45 minutes each time. She loves it. She comes back all sweaty and happy. She also has 2 birthday slumber parties coming up and keeps getting invited to her girlfriends' houses after school, so she's nice and busy.

Each kid has homework and they usually do that after dinner and dishes, and then they basically get ready for bed and read there for half an hour.

I've been busy with PTO meetings, a meeting with the principal (for site council), a meeting with the librarian to get started with Battle of the Books, and an order at our local book store, Bookwagon, for 4 copies of each BOB book (at a 30% discount and PTO is paying -- isn't that exciting?) to go straight to Walker's library in about a week. Somewhere in there I've been cleaning/sorting all the stuff I took out of the kids' bedroom, which is piled in the spare room. It looked like a hoarder's room for a while. Well, actually it still does. RCC starts in a week and a half, so I'm also putting together my syllabus. Oh, and I started working out at the Y 3x a week in addition to running Sharkles every other day.

Mick's working away full-time and still gets home around 6:45 every night. Last night he went to the MARA ski club fundraising meeting, and found out he'll be expected to do that every Wednesday night until November! It's the Auction committee, and it meets right by his office, so it works out ok. It's our biggest fundraiser. We also recently got news from MARA that the club's been running at a deficit and they have to raise prices to actual cost. Kids will now have to pay $600 each. Yikes! Hopefully we'll find a creative way (raffles, more auction $, etc.) to actually offset it a little. Mick's currently reading a book called The Long Emergency. I haven't read it, but it looks like it analyzes economical and environmental situations and impacts in America and the world.

Oh, and last night Dane and Aubrey and I went to a rain barrel workshop. We can't wait to analyze our property and set up a couple rain barrels to harvest water! I'm going to see if the kids will document how they help me -- as a Science Fair project -- building it with me, taking notes on how they did it, notes on how it fills throughout the year, etc. It would take extra work, but I could see it being really great.

The dream barrel set-up.

Ok, hopefully that gets you up to speed for now. What have you been up to?

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Last Month's Poll

A big hearty thank-you goes out to the eight voters who weighed in on my poll. Yes, all eight of you -- you know who you are...

Essentially, the big issue was whether to have each kid play two sports this spring.

What we came up with:

Both kids are playing pony league baseball - coach pitch, everybody bats, no one keeps score, everybody wins - ON THE SAME TEAM. Easy-peasy so far. Practice two nights a week, a game on Saturdays. In the next week, one of those practices will become a game and eventually the second practice will get dropped. This goes on until June 4.

The clencher: the coach knows the kids will miss games in parts or as wholes - and is a-ok fine with it. After all, Ashland Little League prides itself on being flexible, in the interest of kids simply getting out and playing sports.

Cool.

Aubrey will still do a gymnastics class once a week at the Y. Soccer conflicted completely with practices, and that turns out to be okay. She loves gymnastics, and baseball and soccer might've been too busy for her.

Dane plays on the Y's soccer team - same team as last fall. They've changed their name from the Dangerous Jedis, though, to the Oregon Outlaws, in case you're following them. He's delirious with joy. Seriously, the boys are giddy out there on the field, and their skills are leaps and bounds improved over last fall. It's totally exciting.

Soccer practice is two nights a week - one practice overlaps with baseball, no sweat for either coach if he misses - and a soccer game on Saturday. This goes on into late-May.

Cool.

What last Saturday looked like: Dane soccer game 10am - 11am; both kids played baseball 1pm - 3pm. Full day, but manageable. And if it ever feels unmanageable, we just choose one to miss. No biggie.

Cool.


Next Up: Watercolor project

When Mick was gone for a long weekend at a dental convention, I found this neat looking watercolor project I wanted to have the kids do. They did it.

Aubrey made a couple sheets of the flowers and added some text:



Dane tried the flowers, but was unhappy with the result, so he broke away and went for a Halloween scene:

He's way into mummies lately (notice the little guy under the tree) and has been researching them in his Mummy Club that he set up at school with some classmates. (Aubrey joined, too.) I walked into the classroom one day to drop something off and found him and four pals reading a Magic School Bus Pyramids book out loud to each other - they didn't even notice me standing behind them because they were absolutely riveted.

Here's the link to Dane and Aubrey's current favorite mummy information site, if you have an interested kid at home: Discovery Kids - MummyMaker.


Last Up: Cooking

The kids concocted this dish (I'll avoid putting an adjective before it, letting you be the judge once you read the recipe!). They kept meticulous notes as they put it together, so you, too, can enjoy this, um, cake, if you ever need a new baking idea:

3 t. salt
Just a little under half c. sugar cane [sugar]
3 dabs of haf n haf milk
3 t butter
1 Lime sqwees jusie out
8 spoons of flour

Bake at 350 for an indeterminate number of minutes.


We all tried a bite. 'Nuff said.

Take my new poll there on the right --->