It's September and school is now in full swing. Caitlyn is struggling a bit in two of her classes. The worst one for her is math. She has had 3 years of accelerated math with really horrible teachers. She doesn't do badly in the classes but she has to put in a lot of extra work trying to learn things on her own or having Christian teach it to her. I've been trying to convince her to get out of the accelerated math classes as it is only exacerbating the problem. She likes her teacher finally this year but she has too many holes in her knowledge and her knowledge of certain other things aren't that strong and it is showing. I guess we will let her keep trying to get the hang of things and see what happens by the end of the semester.Emily is actually doing fairly well in her classes, but some of them are also difficult for her, especially her IB Chinese class as her Chinese teachers have not been very good or very stable. She's hung in there, hoping that the changes will be for the better in regards to her teacher, but for one reason or another, it hasn't helped enough to fix the holes in her knowledge of the language. I think she will stick with it only until the end of the first semester and drop the class. I guess we will see.
And of course, since the kids are back in school, sicknesses swept through our house at the beginning of the month as well. Emily came home with it one weekend and Caitlyn and I got sick shortly after. Christian held out the longest but as we were recovering, he started getting sick as well. In the end, I actually wonder if he got something entirely different from his own students, since I either had a bad relapse or got sick with whatever he brought home afterwards. It didn't feel like the same sickness, so I kind of think that it was the latter.
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While Christian was sick, Marian dropped by to visit. She was going to take the girls out for a movie, but the movie she was going to take them to, dropped out of the theaters that very day. It was still showing the night before! So, she came anyway and took them out for lunch and to do some shopping. I tagged along for the lunch portion since Christian went in to take a long nap before she arrived. She took them out to eat Poke.
Marian took a bunch of annoying and embarrassing pictures of us getting food and eating with her phone. Uh, thanks Marian? Anyway, it was different. We had no idea of even how to order it but it was pretty tasty.
They each got a cute new outfit for school after they dropped me back off at home. I went and picked up some food for Christian since he woke up shortly after I got back and was really hungry.
The girls came back shortly after that since Caitlyn had a ton of work to do. Her AP US History is going to be the death of her, I think. Her teacher demands SO much work from the kids. Emily hated that class. In fact, that's the one of the classes she ended up having to repeat the next year. But she just took regular US History. She said that it was so much easier. Lots of smarter kids ended up dropping the class or taking the online course when they found out how crazy the AP US History teacher was and how much she demanded from the kids. It's killing Caitlyn, but she is keeping up and doing well so far.
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Emily has started soccer practice again. And of course her coach had them do fundraising for extra gear and stuff. He always chooses to use SnapRaise. What they do is make all the girls send 20 e-mails out to all their friends and family and basically ask for donations. I mean, what the heck? We used to actually have to go out and do stuff to raise money. This coach just likes to make them ask for it.
Emily usually just goes through the motions of sending the emails out. Usually only we send in something and maybe one or two others might send in a small amount. This year a whole bunch of family and friends sent in money...and in some cases, quite a bit of it!
The team raised a record amount this year. Emily is skeptical of whether they will see too much of it being used for her team though.
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Christian and I spend a bunch of time this month working in the yard. Doing some things that had needed to be done for a while now and making a few small changes here and there. We even had the kids come out and help us on one of the days when we were trimming the tree in the backyard. It took all of us quite a long time to clean all of it up and several weeks to dump all the extra greenery that wouldn't fit in the trash initially.
In fact, on the weekend of my birthday, we started celebrations a little early and made the kids come out and spend some time with us shopping for some things for the garden. With all of their work, we don't get to spend very much time together anymore just hanging out and doing little things together. It's kind of frustrating, especially since next year, Emily may be off to college.
We got a few plants and Christian got me some fancy pots for my birthday. He took us out to dinner afterwards. The girls wanted daddy to try the Poke that he missed when Marian came but we went to a different place near where we were shopping. It was more expensive for less and the quality was not as good. So, the other place near our house was definitely better by far.
Christian and I spent the afternoon together running errands and looking at cars and stuff while we left the kids to do their work and fend for themselves. We have been trying to consider what we want to do for next year when we let Emily take Christian's Ranger to college and when my Trooper finally gives out. Neither us have been car shopping for the last seventeen years, so we certainly got sticker shock when we found out the cost of the vehicles we were considering. We were not planning on getting anything this year but we wanted to know what we can expect and what to prepare for.
We were initially pretty discouraged as they don't really make what we want any more. What comes close costs quite a bit. In the end, we both settled on two possible vehicles that we were not even considering initially.
We came back to think it over and have some dinner. Christian grilled us some ribeye steaks on the bbq and Emily made us my favorite cream puffs. After dinner, we decided to go out one more time to check out some options on Christian's truck and see what we'll be able to get away with. Emily tagged along. We were seriously tossing around the idea of getting Christian's vehicle early so that he has a reliable vehicle to drive to work everyday while we took our time taking apart Emily's truck to fix it up for her, which will allow us to fix it in more pleasant weather instead of in the heat of the summer. We will also not have to worry about only having a weekend to fix each part so that Christian can resume driving it come Monday morning for work and/or spend a lot of time during the summer fixing it up for Emily instead of going out to do things with the kids.
We found out the original configuration of the truck Christian wanted really would not be possible without paying nearly full price for a custom made vehicle. We wanted to try to get a deal on what was left of this past year's models. The first dealer we went to couldn't or wouldn't help us with what we wanted. The second one made us a deal that was hard to ignore. It wasn't going to be exactly what we initially wanted, but we already came to the realization that that was not likely going to happen.
They did not pressure us as some of the other dealers did, just left us something to think about and seriously consider. Christian spent the rest of the weekend doing some research on the vehicle and considering his offer.
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Monday, when Christian and the kids got home from school, Christian and I went in to get his truck. It took something like near 6 hours to decide on an exact vehicle, make the deal, and sign all the papers. It was excruciating. The kids were home hungry and wondering what was taking us so long.
We had to pick up food on the way home for a late dinner, then we took the kids for a ride in daddy's new truck! They love it so much! One of the big deciding factors of getting it was that they sat in one for 14 hours up to Oregon and then back again and they had said that it was so roomy and comfortable, even with five people in it.
We were initially pretty discouraged as they don't really make what we want any more. What comes close costs quite a bit. In the end, we both settled on two possible vehicles that we were not even considering initially.
We came back to think it over and have some dinner. Christian grilled us some ribeye steaks on the bbq and Emily made us my favorite cream puffs. After dinner, we decided to go out one more time to check out some options on Christian's truck and see what we'll be able to get away with. Emily tagged along. We were seriously tossing around the idea of getting Christian's vehicle early so that he has a reliable vehicle to drive to work everyday while we took our time taking apart Emily's truck to fix it up for her, which will allow us to fix it in more pleasant weather instead of in the heat of the summer. We will also not have to worry about only having a weekend to fix each part so that Christian can resume driving it come Monday morning for work and/or spend a lot of time during the summer fixing it up for Emily instead of going out to do things with the kids.
We found out the original configuration of the truck Christian wanted really would not be possible without paying nearly full price for a custom made vehicle. We wanted to try to get a deal on what was left of this past year's models. The first dealer we went to couldn't or wouldn't help us with what we wanted. The second one made us a deal that was hard to ignore. It wasn't going to be exactly what we initially wanted, but we already came to the realization that that was not likely going to happen.
They did not pressure us as some of the other dealers did, just left us something to think about and seriously consider. Christian spent the rest of the weekend doing some research on the vehicle and considering his offer.
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We had to pick up food on the way home for a late dinner, then we took the kids for a ride in daddy's new truck! They love it so much! One of the big deciding factors of getting it was that they sat in one for 14 hours up to Oregon and then back again and they had said that it was so roomy and comfortable, even with five people in it.
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