School Days...

The Epitome of Middle Schoolers

When we upgraded our cell phones last week, we decided to activate my old phone for Alex with our shared plan. It has come in handy when we need to get a message to him. He is only supposed to use it for emergencies, which so far hasn't been an issue since he has no one to call except home. I swore I wouldn't be getting him a phone for a very long time, but sometimes convenience is worth it.

Alex is starting to get used to middle school. He had a great disappointment when he didn't make the middle school soccer team, but he had a series of unfortunate events at try-outs that led to his getting cut, such as, not eating anything for lunch the first day(locked his lunch in his locker and try-outs were right after school). The second day he injured his big toe pretty bad and could barely walk and the 3rd day his toe continued to bother him, but he didn't tell anyone either day. I feel like he could have made the team had he been able to really "show his stuff". But, oh well, he was sad, but has moved on now. He is going to do recreational soccer instead and try again in the spring.

He can now open his locker and make it to all his classes without a hitch. He got all A's on his first 3-week progress report yesterday. He is trying desperately to get into the advanced language arts and 8th grade math, but they wouldn't make a move until they got his school records. Now that they have his records, they won't do anything because his records don't contain his 6th grade WASL (which we won't receive until the end of September). He is doing well enough in his classes though that his teachers say they will move him up at the end of the 9-week trimester as long as his grades stay high. He's still frustrated that he'll miss that much of the class though.

Alex's school: Rossview Middle School

The Girls and School

The girls were the ones who had the school switching dilemma. They started the first day at Sango Elementary, but then they ended up going to Glen Ellen Elementary. Glen Ellen is a great school and they both lucked out with very good teachers. We went to the open house last week and talked to their teachers a little more. I was really impressed with all of them--they are a lot of fun and very organized. Here the schools do 3-week progress reports for all schools on the same date. Yesterday we received their progress reports, and they both had straight A's. I was very proud of them.


Jesikah has Mr. Dahl who teaches Math and Science and Mrs. Nix in the afternoon that teaches Social Studies, Reading, and Spelling. They are learning a lot about the cell. They made a cell out of jello(cytoplasm) and whoppers(nucleus) and other things. Jesikah loved that. She has made a new friend, Lexy, that she had a playdate with yesterday. She is a nice girl.

Jesikah hass been enthralled in reading Spiderwick chronicles lately. She has been very excited about reading since school started


Tessa's teacher is Mrs. Harned. Tessa called her Ms. Hornet the first week, but we worked with her to get it right. She is SO nice. Tessa says that she never ever yells, and I believe her. She calls Tessa "sugar". Tessa is making lots of friends, even some "girl" friends(she tends to like to play with boys), and she loves school. When I pick the kids up from school here, everyone has to have an official tag that goes on your rearview mirror. There are 3 lines of cars waiting. They call out the number and then an escort takes them to their car. If you want to take a friend home, you have to have the tag with the friend's number too in order to get them. It actually is very orderly and safe.
Tessa is excited about discovering a crab pincher in her cereal!!

The One Left Behind

Poor Jarem feels like he is the one left behind. He is extremley disappointed that he is not going to school. Every day he tells me, "We need to find me a preschool today." He wants to go SO bad. We have looked around for preschools, but we haven't found anything that I'm excited about. Besides, I'm not sure that I'm ready to let him go yet. He still takes a nap about 12:00 everyday, so I have to be home getting him lunch at 11:30. I think for now that we are going to make little excursions like going to the library story time and probably the YMCA and see if that can count for preschool this year. He has gotten really interested in letters and numbers lately. Today I couldn't understand something he was saying and he said, "It's H-C-Q-E-A" or something like that trying to spell it for me. I will spend a little extra time with him this year learning his letters.

This is Jarem #2 with what Alex calls, "his demolitionist smile". He does this smile whenever Alex tells him to do his "demolitionist smile". He scrunches his nose up while he smiles and Alex thinks it means he is up to no good.