November Update

The kids got their grades for the first quarter of the school year. Emily started off super strong at the beginning of the year, but her grades waned quite a bit in her two weakest subjects by the end of the grading period. History and English takes too much reading and writing for her to keep her grades up without putting a substantial amount of effort into doing what she does not like to do. It's a bit frustrating for her to do A-level work in most of her assignments and tests, only to get a much lower grade in the end because she just flat out refuses to do several assignments or turn them in late. I was really hoping she would crack down and take her grades more seriously now that she is in High School, but so far, it does not seem to be the case. She is still doing really well in her other classes, so at least there's that.

Caitlyn did pretty good in her first quarter of Jr. High but struggled a bit in her accelerated math class. She seemed to understand everything for the most part, but did poorly in tests. In the end, she cracked down and did everything she could to raise her grades and by the end of the grading period, she had straight A's in every class. Plus, every A was pretty strong in all her classes. I was a little worried she was falling into some of Emily's bad habits using her Chromebook. And she does waste some time occasionally doing things that she shouldn't be doing until she finishes her work, but for the most part, she appears to be doing her work, and it certainly reflects that in her grades.

Her teachers did warn us that Caitlyn would have quite a bit more homework than Emily had in structuring their new "Honors" track at school. That certainly seems to be true since Caitlyn seems to finish her homework later than even Emily in High School...but that may be just because Emily refuses to do certain assignments.
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Christian had a birthday. We gave part of his present early as it was something he really needed and we bought it a bit early because of a sale and wanted to make sure that it worked.

For the rest of it, we waited as long as we could but realized that we would be too busy to properly celebrate on his actual birthday. His birthday this year landed on a Wednesday, so after work, he would get to come home for dinner and then have to leave again for his new calling in Scouts.

So we ended up celebrating his birthday the day before. I made him a Brazilian meal with crepe cake made from Doce de Leite (a caramelized condensed milk product) he got from a visiting scientist from Brazil that had worked in his lab. I got to use my new crepe pan that I got from my birthday! It worked out pretty good, but I didn't quite have enough time to chill and set it before we served it, so it was a little hard to cut and serve the pieces.

We opened the rest of his presents after dinner. It's so much better not to have him have to rush off after everything to go to Scouts.

On his actual birthday, we had enough leftover dinner and dessert from the day before. The crepe cake and finally set and was a lot easier to handle. We saved a few little token presents for Christian to open on his actual birthday. The kids made him a really neat exploding box. Unfortunately, I didn't take any more pictures. 

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We had our 19th wedding anniversary. We had a special dinner at home. Christian got us a lamb shoulder, so I braised that and made a Boston Cream Crepe Cake for dessert. Can you tell that I'm still on a crepe kick? 

This year also marked our 27th year together. Happy Anniversary Christian!

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Christian has been spending most available moments working on or researching problems on my Trooper. We've replaced the radiator and got new CV boots (inner and outer). Next will be the timing belt and rear springs. As my car gets older, it seems that everything seems to need replacement all at the same time!