January in Review

January was a pretty slow month. The kids spent the rest of their break occupied with their Christmas gifts. Caitlyn took the rest of her fun money, gift cards and the money she is supposed to earn at the end of the first semester for her good grades to buy a little robot since she was enjoying her electronics kit so much. She has to put it together and program it to do what she wants.

It's a pretty expensive and complicated project.

Emily played with her electronics kit too. They are learning how to work with resistors, diodes, LEDs, circuits, etc. But with less discretionary money to work with, she spent some time just looking for simpler projects to do and then playing with the calligraphy pen that her sister gave her for Christmas. Emily seems to show a knack for programming. We are trying to get her more involved so that she can decide if it is something that she might want to do when she graduates or something as she still has no idea what direction she wants to take past high school. It seems difficult to get her into anything for very long. She takes an interest in a lot of things but never sticks with anything that long. She'll work very hard for a day or two on a project then doesn't pick it up again for quite a while. 

Caitlyn had been sick for 3 weeks or so before the holidays and Emily started getting sick just after Christmas. They supposedly had soccer practice all that first week but we didn't let her go. She did end up going during the last week of vacation though. In fact, they had an actual game over the break, which we thought was pretty ridiculous.

North vs Rialto

They asked her to play on the freshman team this time since they did not have enough people on that team show up. She has subbed for the team before when they needed help.

Because the JV team got a couple of extra people that played her position right before the season started, they either had her sit out nearly half the game, rotating her in occasionally or trying her out as a forward.

Now they are putting her and her friend down in the freshman team since their defense is pretty weak. At first Emily wasn't that happy about it, but I noticed that she was having a lot more fun while playing. I think in the JV team, she was frustrated being benched part of the time and then having to fight her own teammates who wouldn't stay in their own positions. So not only did she have to fight with the opposing team, but her own teammates as well. There is too much of a division on the JV team and not everyone got along.

Plus, on the freshman team, she got to be one of the superstars. She not only got to play the entire game again, but she got to play with her friends as well. 

North vs Poly and Arlington

Christian spent most of his waking hours studying for his science CSET exam. After his test, he also went down to San Diego a couple of times and spent several days each time helping Christian's dad redoing a portion of his roof.

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The kids finished their first semester of school. Caitlyn has a strong 4.0. Emily's grades left much to be desired, to say the least. Christian also finished another session of his classes and did really great.

Caitlyn also participated in the district History Day contest. She is actually the only student in her school to enter as they decided not to do it this year. She won last year as well but couldn't make it to the district contest even though it was held at her own school that year because we had family obligations to celebrate Chinese New Year. This year it was held at Amelia Earhart, so we had to drive back and forth for that but she didn't place to move on. We think she didn't do that well on her interview as she is not very good with verbal communications...hopefully this will give her some practice anyhow.