Straight As!

Samantha returned to public school this year after three years of homeschooling. We've had an adjustment in a lot of areas, including an adjustment by me to not actually knowing what she's studying since I'm not the one teaching her.

She brought home her first quarter report card - All As. This includes two classes for high school credit (Latin and Algebra) and two additional honors classes! We are very proud. Samantha hadn't gotten any "letter" grades in elementary school before we started homeschooling, this is the first real time she's had a bunch of assignments with individual grades that add up to an overall grade.

Good Job, Samantha!

Happy Halloween

Emma had her Halloween party at her preschool today. I thought I'd share a couple of pictures. I'm not sure why they're grainy - I think maybe I had the wrong setting on the camera.

But her costume was easy - we just dug into the dress up box and look what we found. At one point, it was complete with long gloves, a magic wand, and a bejeweled ring!

All of her class looked cute - I thought I'd share that photo as well!

Next stop: Daisy, Chip and Dale, Goofy ...

One day a few weeks back I was dropping kids somewhere - I don't even remember the context - and I said something to the effect of the title above. The kids chuckled but didn't quite know what I meant. I told them that the tram drivers at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World when you were going out to the parking lots would say this to let you know what part of the parking lot you were approaching - all of them were named for Disney characters. For some reason, this memory has stuck in my mind from when we went to Disney World in high school.

Emma recently laughed and said she was remembering when I said this in the car.

But my kids are deprived - they have never had this experience. When we go to Disney with them, we stay on property and we don't rent a car. So, we don't park in the parking lots and we take the bus. So they have never had the experience of having the tram drivers announcing the names of the Disney character-named parking lots!

Smart Cat

I didn't really need any more evidence that we have a smart cat, but I got some today - daggone cat!

A few months ago we noticed that Cheney was losing weight. Through a bunch of checking and testing, they realized his thyroid was overactive - pretty common in a 16-year-old cat. So, they gave me some medication to slow down his thyroid. It was supposed to be 1/2 pill, twice a day. By the third day, Cheney would see me get up from the couch to go into the kitchen and he would go running - and the great chase had begun. I finally asked the vet if I could do a full pill once a day - not because I had trouble actually giving him the pill, but because the great chase was wearing me out! Smart Cat!

Well, for a couple of reasons, we have stopped the medication for a little while. But last week, we started giving him one package of moist cat food a day - in addition to his regular cat food. He's picky - he'll only eat Meow Mix dry cat food and it turns out he'll only eat Meow Mix moist cat food. I've been giving it to him usually around lunch time. We leave out his dry food all the time. After the first couple of days of shunning the dry in hopes of the moist cat food, he has finally settled in to eating both the dry and the moist.

I just came home from taking Michael to art class and I walked in the door to Cheney yelling at me - how DARE I leave this house around lunch time WITHOUT giving him the moist cat food first. You'd think I was starving him.

Smart Cat!

Summer, Fall, Winter, Fall, Huh?

The weather has been quite unusual recently. We went from really quite warm to outright cold last week - the high one day was in the 40s. And it was raining. A lot. It rained for 4 days straight! And the wind blew. It was miserable.

The high today is projected to be 72.

Can we please just pick a season and stick with it - my sinus pressure goes nuts when we change back and forth, because each one is a result of a changing weather front and each change wreaks havoc on my sinuses!

Travel Baseball - Fall 2009

Not long after the last summer tournament of 8U Eagles was over, Michael started right in with tryouts and then practices for the new 9U Eagles. New age group, a few new rules, a couple of new teams in our league, but a continued positive outlook.

We've had a pretty good season so far - we are 7-1 in the regular season and placed 3rd in the USSSA Fall State tournament in Petersburg, VA the first weekend in October.

Michael is doing a great job pitching - is pitching consistently more than 60% strikes, with a decent number of strikeouts each game and few long hits. The other thing we have noticed is that the Eagles defense seems to really work well together when Michael is pitching - it enables the coach to put each player where they play the best and we have the strongest outfield - so all in all, the team really plays their best with Michael pitching.

We have a tough opponent this weekend - the Manassas Generals who have been in our league since the first season. We look forward to strong competition this weekend (as long as the weather holds out).

I think the twin bed will come soon!

We have kept Emma in the toddler bed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that its closer to the ground - and she still manages to find a way to come close to falling out of the bed, despite two bed rails.

But tonight as I tucked her in, with her head near the top of her pillow at one end, her toes are starting to hang off the end of the mattress. Of course, the mattress on a toddler bed is just a crib mattress, but I think she's getting to the point that she's getting too long for the toddler bed and we'll finally have to pull out the twin bed and upgrade her.

Who told these kids they were allowed to grow up?!

8 interim reports, 8 As

Samantha has adjusted pretty well to going back to middle school. For my part, I wish to see that she had a little MORE work so she isn't looking at school as "easier than home" (although it sure appears to be right now - guess my standards are just a lot higher)

Anyway, mid-way through the first grading period, each of her teachers gave her an interim report. It breaks down, assignment by assignment, what their grades are and what the overall grade is.

She has 8 classes - and has 8 As!

We're pretty proud of her!

Chopped Liver!

So, I just asked Emma a question and she answered, "No, Thank You". She was so polite. I told her that she had great manners and I asked her where she got those great manners. Her answer? "Granny and Granddaddy".

What am I? Chopped Liver! :)

Back to School

Its almost time for "Back to School". For us, this year's back to school will be a bit different - as Samantha is LITERALLY going back to school. After homeschooling for 3 years, she will be going to Middle School this year. And the adventure is heightened because they redistricted the area middle schools and all the kids from our immediate area are going to a different middle school.

She received her school schedule last week - twice - because there was one class that I didn't think was right. She starts off every other day with Algebra 1 and Latin 1 - fun for her!! I'm thinking those will be big homework days!

I was going to start up with Michael this week, but decided instead to register him in a last minute baseball camp at a facility I really like a lot. We hadn't been there since lessons last fall, but within 5 minutes I was reminded why I liked it so much. The men that run the facility are so good at working with the kids - they help them understand the "what and how" of what they are teaching them, and this year they have incorporated lessons about leadership. Even on the table in the lobby are books about raising gentlemen out of your boys!

Emma's preschool starts up in about 2 weeks. We already have her "first day of school" outfit picked out and she has agonized for weeks about WHICH lunchbox she should use to take her lunch!

Dance, art, and piano will all be starting up soon too - I guess it really is almost fall! Where did the summer go!?

ECTB World Series

Michael's 8U Eagles travel team travelled to Allentown, PA for the ECTB World Series tournament July 24-26. The team qualified for this tournament by taking 2nd place in the fall end-of-season tournament.

The team finished the tournament with a 3-2 record, but there is so much more behind that record. The two losses were both to the same team - the Lehigh Valley Stealth. They are a professionally trained tournament team. They had an ace pitcher that was pitching faster than just about any kid we've seen this year. And they had one huge hitter that hit 2 home runs (in the park) in our first loss to them, and 2 triples a double and a single in the 2nd outing against them - we considered the fact we held him to a single at the end a great accomplishment for the game!

Michael had a good weekend and one fantastic game. After pool play, we were ranked 2nd going into the elimination round. We played the York Young Revolution, a team that had just beaten the Manassas Generals - our ODBL tournament champions. Michael took the mound as the starting pitcher in this game - and never got off the mound! He pitched a complete game! This is a pretty outstanding accomplishment for an 8-year-old. He pitched 6 innings and about 65 pitches, giving up no runs and only a handful of hits.

Michael also was a consistent hitter for the team - not always getting on base but consistently putting the bat on the ball and the ball into play.

This entire year with this team has been a great experience for Michael, with an exceptional coach, and we look forward to our fall season (provided he makes the team after tryouts this next week)

Memories

Its funny what you do and don't remember from your childhood.

I grew up around a lot of baseball. My brother played it and my dad was involved with the league as well as a coach.

I'm around baseball a lot now!

One thing I was recently reminded of was Little League pins. When players play in a Little League tournament, they get a pin. I can now distinctly remember my dad having a hat full of pins from various tournaments.

Recently, my husband was the tournament director for the local district Little League tournament. I kept score for a few of the games. As such, I was given an all-star hat for our league (since we hosted).

And I earned my first Little League pin! Hope there are more to come!

Eagles Baseball!

Michael is wrapping up his second season on the 8U Loudoun South Eagles travel baseball team. This has been a really positive experience for him and we're thrilled with his team, his coach, and the overall league. Michael is shaping up to be a pretty strong pitcher, especially for his age. His percentage of strikes to balls was close to, if not exceeding, 60% - which is really unbelievable for his age. Because he's a lefty, he also has a natural curve to his pitches, which make him even more valuable as a pitcher because kids his age just can't hit a curve ball yet.

Michael's team had a great regular season - 10-3. He pitched a lot in the last half of the season, including pitching 4 complete innings in the last regular season game, which the team won! He also pitched a "complete game" of 4 innings in the first round of the playoffs, as the Eagles won 12-0 with the "mercy rule".

But alas, the team didn't do so well in the playoffs - not even making it to the semi-finals. It was a disappointing way to end such a great season.

We have one last tournament in Pennsylvania next weekend - the "World Series" for the league our team is affiliated with - a tournament we qualified for when coming in 2nd in the playoffs in the fall. The boys have been practicing and I think they're ready to go. We hope they do well, but whether or not they win, this has been a great season and we look forward to moving forward onto the 9U Loudoun South Eagles in the fall!

Emma Talk

I could sit her all day with my computer open to write everything down, and still wouldn't be able to capture all the funny things that Emma says in the course of a day.

In the past five minutes, she has said two pretty cute and funny things I wanted to share, just to show you how funny she is:

- I wish I had lipstick, so you could see my kisses. When I'm a Mommy, I have to wear lipstick to church.

Then, she asked me what color daisies are, and I said they are white. She was sitting there for a minute, and I asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I'm trying to figure out how to draw the daisy, because my paper is white!"

She's too funny!

Maternity Ward!

It must be. That's what our rose bushes are. Because for the third time this season, long after what I thought bird baby season was, we have blue robin's eggs in the nest in the back. That nest has been there for three years now, and we don't want to touch it. Well, after no visitors for weeks and weeks, a robin starting visiting, and yesterday there was one blue egg - and today there are two.

We will never be able to prune our rose bushes - but we're looking forward to some new babies in a couple of weeks.

Red Belt!

Michael recently had his graduation test for his Tae Kwon Do Red Belt. The Red Belt is a pretty big milestone because its the last belt before Black. Once they earn their Red Belt, the requirements and testing needed to get to Black Belt are a bit different that previous belt progressions.

In addition to learning the new skills and form for the Red Belt level, in order to earn a Black Belt, Michael needs to "re-learn" all the skills and forms from all of his previous belt levels, demonstrate each of these in several belt tests, and ultimately write an essay answering questions about things he has learned in Tae Kwon Do.






















We're all pretty proud of his earning his Red Belt - this is a major accomplishment and we look forward to the next step - Black Belt

Dance Recital!

We've been busy since the piano recital. The irony is that we have been busy enough to have lots to share, but so busy that I didn't have a lot of time to sit down and share.















Samantha had her dance recital the weekend of June 19th and 20th. This was her first recital at her new dance studio - Encore Performers. I have really enjoyed her dance classes this year and was looking forward to the recital - and it didn't disappoint. I am actually looking forward to getting the DVD so I can see it again and share it with family.



Samantha was in 3 dances - tap, ballet, and jazz. Her tap and jazz used the same costume and just changed the skirt.




They hire a professional photographer to take photos during the recital that we can purchase - and I look forward to seeing them in a week or so - in the meantime, these were mine taken without a flash during the Saturday night recital.

Boy, things have changed!

It used to be - a computer cost $2000. Didn't matter which model you bought - laptop or desktop - it was $2000. Then, technology improved, it was time to get a new computer, and the new computer was, you guessed it - $2000.

Not any more.

Last fall, the monitor on my laptop stopped working. Mike took the hard drive out of my computer and put it in an old laptop shell from work. That has worked for a while, but the internet card was slow and the computer is just in need of replacing.

So, we finally went to Best Buy tonight (not my first choice but other electronics stores in the areas have closed down) and bought me a new laptop. Base cost - $399! That's right - $399. We paid an extra $60 to upgrade the memory, so the total was $459!

That unbelievable! Thus, the end of the $2000 computer!

Piano Recital

Samantha and Michael had their annual piano recital this past Friday. I thought I'd share videos of their performance (please pardon the dark and grainyness as it was especially dark in there and also pardon the foreground movement from another student who was unable to sit still)

Michael's hymn: Down in the Garden


Michael: Dangerous Journey


Samantha's hymn: Battle Hymn of the Republic (I missed the first couple of notes because I pushed the wrong button):


Samantha: Pachabel's Canon in D:


Duet: American Patrol