June

The kids are finally out of school, but there isn't that much of a change since Emily had to start summer school the following Monday. Not much time off. She has 6 hours of World Lit every day for   the next four weeks to make up her grade in that class. She is not loving it. But she is doing better, so that's good. I just don't see how they can genuinely get the same education in two weeks, even going to class for 6 hours a day as in a semester of high school. They don't even have any homework!
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While Marian was over visiting for Caitlyn's promotion, we asked what the girls wanted to do for their dad for Father's Day. Christian had class that evening so we had a bit of time to run some errands if they wanted to. They decided to do a bunch of chores around the house for him. Marian made out a big list for them. They started that evening and every time their dad left to go study or class, they would work their little hoofies off doing chores around the house. They dusted, ironed a couple of his shirts, cleaned the windows, washed his car, swept the driveway, did some gardening, etc. And since it was a weekend, they did all of it on top of their normal chores of cleaning their bathroom and the floors. It was something to behold.

Of course, even though Christian left early and came back late, he couldn't help but notice some of the things around the house. Emily even made him dinner after church on Sunday.

It helped that Marian also gave them the incentive of taking them back out for sushi again if they actually accomplished everything on the list. I don't think that she actually thought that they would complete it. To be honest, knowing my kids, I didn't think they would either! We were pleasantly shocked.
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Caitlyn met up with her best friend Aubrey to swim shortly after school ended. Emily joined them at the pool.

It was really nice at the pool. It was not as crowded as usual. Unfortunately, Aubrey couldn't stay for the whole thing as her parents had other plans for them.

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Caitlyn and Aubrey then planned to go to Castle Park the next week. They tried to get their friends to join them but it didn't work out. They got in free with the good grades award program. Castle Park tried to say that they didn't have the incentive any longer but Aubrey is a really outgoing and outspoken kid and wouldn't take any of that. She had them call the manager over and showed them the program on their own website before they would let them in. So sad that they would try to cheat a couple of kids out of their hard earned award.

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The week after that, Caitlyn spent the week in a coding camp at UCR. We had high hopes for this program. We were really disappointed when we had to give up Emily's spot in the camp because of her summer school.

When we dropped her off for her first day, we were a little worried as they seemed a bit disorganized and unprepared. Then we found out that they did not teach the kids any actual coding using computer language but just used this MIT App Inventor that uses built in blocks of code to program. This is what I would have expected at some elementary school as an intro to programming. This is not what I expected from UCR. It was sad.

She still had a lot of fun I suppose. They were there for 8 hours a day for a whole week. They provided them with lunch at the dorms and at the Panda Express on campus so Caitlyn thought that was pretty neat. Plus they got to eat pretty well. They took some time to give the kids a tour of campus and they played a scavenger hunt around campus on different days. Being near the University means that Caitlyn has already had a half a dozen tours of campus already.

They did their "coding" on a desktop computer in one of the computer labs but they ran them on an android device...which means that they all got little Kindle Fires for camp which they got to take home. She's pretty happy about that. Plus she got to meet a new friend there.

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In addition, Caitlyn managed to pass off another level of Piano. She was going through Alfred's Basic Piano Prep Course Level C. She will start level D now. Caitlyn was ahead of Emily for a while, but a couple of months ago, Christian bribed Emily to put some effort into continuing her Piano. She has to play everyday for 3 months and she will get a cell phone out of the deal. She had been really dedicated to putting in her practice and is now ahead of Caitlyn again, if only by a little. But it's nice because she will do all her practice without us having to tell her or remind her (for the most part). She doesn't whine or complain about it at all (that was part of the deal as well).

The reason for the big piano push since they haven't put in very much effort to learn is because someone at church has offered to teach them to play the organ. Many of the people that actually know how to play the organ are getting older and will not be around forever. She wants to make sure that the future generations don't lose the ability and end up having to use pre-programmed organ music during service. Both girls are actually pretty excited to learn it.

Caitlyn's 8th Grade Promotion

The school year has finally come to an end. Caitlyn has finished middle school. She managed to maintain a 4.0 throughout. We are very proud of her.

As usual, her school had the promotion ceremony at the local high school. They just piggy back off of the high school's setup which had their graduation ceremony the evening before. The middle school uses the same setup the next morning. They were supposedly cracking down and making sure that parents followed more strict guidelines. There was even a police presence there. We got a note in the mail detailing the rules and several phone calls with the same message.

Still, when arriving at the school, lots of people were trying to bring in balloons, which were banned. They did make most of them bring them back to their cars or leave them outside of the stadium. However, there were still lots of people with umbrellas, which were also banned. No one bothered making them put them away. Someone still had a noise maker, although, much less than usual, I didn't see any of the police men working their way over tho their direction to do anything about it.

People still brought snacks and drinks, which were also supposedly banned and they never bothered to do any of the bag checks they claimed were going to happen.

The only saving grace was that it wasn't too hot and it was a relatively short ceremony. You can only stand them blaring music at you at unreasonable volumes so long. It was so loud, you had to shout in the ear of the person next to you to be heard like some rock concert.

Marian made ribbon leis for Caitlyn and all her friends so we had to round them up to give them their leis and take pictures. We managed to find everyone except her best friend who apparently took off early with her parents shortly after the ceremony finished.

It is always crazy at the end and difficult to find everyone so she ended up with only one group picture and individual pictures with the rest of her friends, except for the one that obviously left!

Marian took most of the day off to come. She still had to work a bit remotely from our house. She also took everyone out to lunch for sushi. Well, the kids got normal lunch specials and were able to try some sushi with their normal California rolls and teriyaki chicken. Surprisingly, they both liked it.

She brought a bunch of gifts as well for Caitlyn.

Caitlyn's history teacher that she assists bought her yearbook for her and gave her an Amazon gift card to boot. A lot of the teachers and some of the administrators are going to really miss Caitlyn and her friends.