The week in review

Last summer, we didn't have any kind of schedule for the girls. We figured, it was summer, the kids can have fun. But the girls drove each other (and us) crazy. As thick as thieves one minute and fighting like cats and dogs the next.

This year, we decided to keep a somewhat stricter schedule with the kids. They have to make their beds when they get up in the morning. They have to do some piano practice. They have to do some reading and some kind of writing (or drawing). And they only really have to clean up if they didn't put things away as they went or we need to vacuum. It may seem like a lot but really, it would only take them about an hour and a half of their day if they really worked at it. We usually spread it out a bit so that they can play and run around in between things.

The first days after school was out, we let them run wild to get it out of their system. Last week was the first week of their new schedule and it went really well. I was super impressed. This week has not gone quite as well. Especially since they let their play room go a bit and had to clean up. They did all the rest of their chores fine but the measly 30 minute cleanup stretched out to 3 days!

We have also have been taking advantage of the free lunch that the city has been providing to all kids age 2 to 18 throughout the city. So everyday, we get them to start their chores, then we'll take a break and go to the park for lunch. Then they can run around and play and get some sun and exercise before we come back for more of their required activities. It's pretty awesome. I haven't had to cook them meals and I get to grab a book and read at the park under some shade.

We've been sticking to the park nearest their school just because it is close, it is not so crowded, it has shade, and we occasionally run into one of their little friends from school or church so they get to have a familiar playmate to boot.

Once we get firmly set in our schedule, I'll probably try a few different parks around the city just so that they don't get too bored.

Plus, we went to the public library this week to sign up for the summer reading program. The girls are super excited to go to the library again and to earn another chance to go to Castle Park.

All I want for Christmas...

Emily lost her other front tooth last week. It has been loose for some time. I think it was already loose when the other front tooth came out. But because Emily didn't want to be without a front tooth, she was hesitant to pull the other one out. But it got kind of crooked and gross dangling there so we gave her a deadline to work it out or we would do it for her (actually, we threatened to let our neighbor who offered to help her do it). Under threat, she finally got it out. It was a little weird for her at first but I think she is happier that it is out.

She decorated an envelope to put her teeth into for the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy has been a regular visitor lately. This was number five for Emily. She has gotten them all out by herself!

Santa Ana River

One of our neighbors was having a big yard sale this weekend and let all the other neighbors in our cul-de-sac know in case we wanted to join in. Several other neighbors did exactly that. We had brought a lot of our stuff to a friend's house for a big garage sale that she was planning so we didn't have that much stuff left. In fact, because she didn't have the garage sale for a long time, we ended up going back and retrieving a lot of the stuff to give to people that we thought might need the stuff more. 

But we thought it might be a good opportunity to clean house and thin out some of the girls' stuff so, we said that the girls can get money for whatever they brought out to sell. It was late in the morning (9:am is late in garage sale time) when we decided to start. Unfortunately, most of the buyers had come through already. We only ended up selling two items which netted them $9. 

We called it a day a little earlier than the other neighbors because we didn't want to waste the whole day sitting around. There were not too many people coming by anymore anyway. The girls had fun but they were a little disappointed. I told them that we would go do something with the money they made. The rest of the stuff got packed up for DI. 

After lunch, we went up to the Santa Ana River bed at the bottom of the San Bernardino Mtns for some fun. Emily was so excited. She loves going to the mountains and she loves the water.

The girls explored a little, collected rocks, and wild flowers. We grabbed some dinner at our usual...A&W. The girls got to get an expensive trinket from those machines they love so much with part of their earnings. Then we went to the temple to walk around. We also got a chance to finally get a picture of the girls. We have been taking a picture every year of them at the temple since we were sealed but the last time we came up, the for our anniversary, the temple was closed for maintenance. 

Coincidentally, our friend finally had her garage sale on the same weekend as our neighbors. Luckily, we did a little better at her garage sale than our own. Some of the neighbors were out again on Sunday but we didn't bother, as it was Sunday. We thought it would be nice instead to surprise some of our friends and neighbors with some fresh baked cinnamon rolls. So I spent the greater part of the morning before church making a gigantic batch of cinnamon rolls. The kids had fun running around to hand them out!

Last day of school

Today was Emily's last day of school. It was only half a day...probably because the teachers have already packed up their class at the beginning of the week already. The library has been closed for weeks. So today was a total free for all. They did a couple of fun science experiment (i.e. they made ice cream).

The teacher cleaned her classroom even more by giving all the kids a bunch of old surplus books so all the kids got to take home a handful of books. Emily was pretty excited. Then they had another small party before saying goodbye.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of kids already missing from her class because they were attending the sixth grade promotions for older sibling or because they were sick. Apparently, strep throat has been going around her class and possibly the school. I hope we don't start the summer vacation off by getting yet another sickness. Emily was disappointed though because she didn't get to say goodbye to her best friend.

We did find out that Emily passed the GATE test finally. Apparently, they "sent out" letters to the parents some time after memorial day. We have yet to receive anything. But according to her teacher (and her report card), she passed. Unfortunately, we are in doubt of whether that will make any difference to Emily next year. Apparently, they will put all the GATE kids in the same class, but just to "balance things out," they usually throw some other kids in the mix.

This is where my rant begins (oh, come on...you knew it was coming). So, everyone is always complaining that they don't have enough resources. The biggest problem with Emily's class this year is that while she is reading at a 3rd or 4th grade level (according to the ATOS book level of the books that she is reading now), there are other kids in the class that are barely able to read. So Emily spends a lot of time sitting around or reading on her own or getting into trouble for talking. So, my kid gets neglected because she is more advanced than a lot of the other students in her class.

We figured if she got into GATE, she would be grouped with other kids on her own level or higher. She'll be challenged and will be forced to actually pay attention instead of being bored. I thought maybe they would just include other high functioning kids in the class that did not pass the GATE test for one reason or another. But I was informed that this was not the case. In the end, the teacher's resources will still be taxed because there will still be a big disparity between the abilities of the different students in the class.

The outcome will either be a greater number of kids in a class that are bored, not learning and getting into trouble or, a bunch of kids who feel stupid and who will hate school because they can't keep up. What is the point of any of this? Why bother testing for GATE at all? Okay, maybe there will be a 1/100 chance that one of those kids will be inspired to work harder to keep up but what about the 99 who will fall further behind and eventually drop out? They call this progress?

I guess all we can do is wait and see how thing unfold in the fall, but like I said, I'm not hopeful. The only other alternative is to transfer her to a school that does have dedicated GATE classes, but I'm not there yet.

New Blog

As I had mentioned before, my friend Raena got me to start this blog about a year and a half ago. I was very reluctant to join the online blogging craze, but it has been very gratifying on many levels.

Recently, she started a new blog which chronicles her day to day life in pictures. A picture a day for a year to be exact. (I guess she will reevaluate what to do after the year is up). But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

It's probably not something I should do though because, you really don't want to see some of the things I would end up taking pictures of in my day to day life! My kids probably would be the most displeased at the prospect. But I showed Christian and talked to him about it and he liked the idea as well.

He's been looking to do something with his pictures and it would be a great supplement to his hand written journals. Recently, he's been working on digitizing his thousands of negatives since he has gotten rid of all his old camera and darkroom equipment. In the process we've gotten a chance to remember a lot of fond memories. And we think that this is just the ticket for him and so he is giving it a try.

It's my new favorite blog!

End of preschool

Today was Caitlyn's last day of school. They had a little end of the year celebration. They handed out little gifts for the kids and a certificate showing that they completed a year of preschool. It was really cute. (If they called it a graduation, I might have gone ballistic.) 

Plus their teacher collected samples of their work and pictures of them that she had taken since the beginning and put together little memory books for all her kids.  It is really nice and so very thoughtful. I can't say enough about the preschool program and especially her teacher, Mrs. Robinson. I'm so glad that Caitlyn got a chance to go (thank you Cindy for encouraging us to apply and recommending Mrs. Robinson).

The kids sang a little song at the celebration and they surprised the parents by handing out certificates of appreciation to all the parents that made significant contributions in volunteering at preschool or during any of the field trips.

I was kind of sad at the end of it all. I hope that Caitlyn will have as good of an experience in kindergarten but with the experiences I've had with Emily going through it, I'm not that hopeful.

Caitlyn isn't as social as Emily and it took her a long time to make any real friends at school. But in the end, she made two friends that she was close to. She made them little friendship bracelets from a kit she got for her birthday that she was supposed to present to them on the last day of school. Unfortunately, they were both late in arriving to school. In her nervous state waiting for the program to start (and waiting for her friends to arrive), she accidentally broke one of the bracelets.

The other unfortunate thing is that one of the girls does not live near here and will not be continuing to kindergarten at Highland.

Misc.

Christian has been working on cooking beans for a while now. He has been trying different beans and experimenting with cooking times and soaking times. I picked up a bean pot from the mexican market the other day for him. We are also getting the girls used to eating beans more. Previously, they have only eaten it in burrito form or as a dip with chips! We figure that since it is in our food storage, we better know how to cook it and the kids better get used to eating it. Besides, they are really good for you!

Right now, I'm addicted to cooking outdoors still. Last weekend's bbq just made us want more. This weekend, we threw a chicken on the grill. So we had a El Pollo Loco style dinner with the beans, chicken and tortillas! So good...no wonder I can't seem to lose any weight.

Unfortunately, it's getting pretty hot out already so I don't know how much longer we will find cooking over a flaming fire pit enjoyable.

Over the weekend, we went to a birthday party for our best friend out of town. There was a lot of stop and go traffic. So, of course, Emily (our official up-chuck queen) lost it just as we got down the off-ramp and were five minutes from our destination. I need to invest in one of those accu-pressure bracelets for her. I actually went to look for them before our drive but was only able to find adult sizes.

She had a shrimp fest for her party...probably not what you want to eat after being car sick but kids are resilient and it's not like shrimp is her favorite food anyway. We were happy that she tried some of the different foods.

I also finally ran out of my store bought laundry detergent. I have been wanting to experiment with making my own laundry detergent for a while now but was unable to find all the ingredients. I finally found them but since I already had a huge Costco sized box of detergent open, I just put my supplies aside and used what I already had. But since that is finally used up, I got to work with mixing my own up. I found a lot of variations on the ratio of ingredients on the internet and decided to go with what seemed to be the most common.

The result of my first load of laundry is very encouraging. I don't know if it is our imagination or wishful thinking, but we think that our laundry is actually a little cleaner! Plus it is cheap to make and better for our septic system! I need to do a few more loads to be sure, but so far so good.