There is something wonderful about being able to go to your child's school and watch them do something they are passionate about. Danny's first home games were great to be at. All of us except Michelle have gotten to see him play in both JV and Varsity games and so far their teams are undefeated!
Michelle decided to bake homemade sugar, gingerbread, and peanut butter blossom cookies for her friends and she did a magnificent job planning ahead and taking all day on a Saturday to make dozens of cookies. She even made enough for our entire family to have as well! I was so amazed that she spent 7 hours in the kitchen. That's true love right there. All I did was deliver hot chocolate in cute holiday boxes with Christmas cards. This took way more effort! Then the next day she spent all day working on her English final project (pictured below + an essay), helping us plan for our upcoming trip, and delivering said cookies. Oh, and one of the videos Natalie found in our trip prep recommend waterproof hiking shoes and you'll never guess what happened when we went to Nordstrom Rack to find some: we came home with 5 pairs of CloudRoam Waterproof: Ice shoes and one pair of CouldTrax Waterproof: Glacier. It was pretty funny. I bought giant ribbons to put on all of them for when I steal them back to put under the tree on Christmas Eve.
With the way our middle school works, our students take science class every day one semester and then social studies every day the next semester. Sadly, this means I won't be in 6th grade science with Natalie anymore and I won't be in 8th grade science and 7th grade social studies anymore. Below if our 8th grade science project, where we learned about things humans could do to help protect sea turtles. How neat are those 3D turtles the tech teacher printed out for us? Next semester I will be going to 7th grade science and 8th social studies but I will not get to join Natalie in 6th grade social studies. I must write down that I will miss seeing the back of her head and I am so proud of how professionally she acted about her mom showing up on A days. She had a job to be a science student and I had one to help my sped students. I'm telling you, Natalie is way better 11 year old than I was! And she was able to get a 4.0 again this quarter! Plus, they are moving her from regular language arts to advanced language arts and wanted to move her from normal math to advanced math but there was a scheduling issue. (Advanced math is still on the table for next school year.) Once again, I am so impressed with her work ethic and positive attitude. Even with her dyslexia, she was taking on advanced level LA work so feels like it won't be any different except that know it will show up on her transcript as an honor level class. Wowzers.
Meanwhile, it was a nail biter at the high school this last week for many reasons. With this being Michelle's first finals week and the fact she has had all A's all semester long, she put a lot of pressure on herself to have those As finalized. She poured so much time and effort into her last projects and tests of the semester! As of right now (some grades haven't been bolded in the app yet), Michelle will have a GPA over 4.0 due to taking Honors Geometry and Honors Biology. I am so impressed. I told her that I am very proud of her started off high school strong but I do not expect her to get straight As every semester. Her GPA is a way of making sure she has plenty of options for when she wants to pick out a college or university and I emphasized that as long as she has more As than Bs (and with all her extracurriculars) that should be the case. I know she is looking forward to a long break before next semester begins! She has earned it!
Kate is a pro at finals week now and looks like she will be getting grades that will raise her GPA and give her more choices as to what she wants to do after high school. I have reserved campus tours for around here during spring break. I am very curious to see what it is like to take your children to college visits! She is celebrating the end of finals by hanging out with all her best friends individually all day long and even had a sleep over. Danny met his goal of being academically eligible to play basketball and boy, has that kid been playing basketball! My parents, Hubby, and I all got to watch his last JV game of the semester together and what a game it was! These two teams were very well matched, played hard, and took turns being in the lead. At the very end Danny's team was able to pull ahead and stay ahead but as my mother said of the last minute of the game, "That was the longest minute of my life." She was also a bit concerned about her grandson fouling out but my dad was so proud of how he puts everything he has into the game. I was more concerned about how he shushed a dad on the opposing side who was yelling a lot and the way he seemed to take on the entire other half of the bleachers but luckily the athletic director noticed and talked to him about interacting with the fans for me. I may or may not have gotten my parents settled, made sure the girls had dinner, and then went to bed early to nurse my stress headache when that JV game was over. Hubby stayed for the varsity game and sent me text updates and Danny fell on the floor telling me about that game when he got home. Although the JV was able to overcome and win, the varsity team is now 6 & 1 instead of undefeated. What a way to end the semester!
And what did most of my family do on #WORLDBASKETBALLDAY? We went and played tennis to take advantage of the 50 degree weather in December, of course!
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