Graduation!

Lex graduated this weekend!! He’s such an amazing young man. It has been amazing watching him grow from a tiny baby to a stubborn toddler to an anxious tween to a thriving teen. He wore the robe and the silly hat, he wore the FRC tassle I got for him. He wore the “hood” that he earned for rocking his Honors Program. He earned a few scholarships and a diploma. If the weather had been better, graduation would have been outside and we would have gotten to see him in one final band performance as well, but with the weather so iffy and so much rain all around, they moved graduation indoors and cancelled the bad. Sad. It was a great ceremony anyway!

We had had a little tiny party at our house after graduation. Alan’s new wife made cake (she’s a professional baker) and cookies, and I got pizza for the crew. We had a champagne toast with a goofy speech by me. LOL. It was a really great night all around!

My family rented a lake house nearby to combine graduation with our annual lake week. The weather didn’t fully cooperate, but it was a great house and location, and I was happy to be able to wrap up work, graduation, and all the other stuff while also spending some time at the lake with the family.

On Saturday we invited the D&D group that all three kids are a part of over to the lake house for swimming and gaming. It was only 60° but that didn’t stop the teens from getting in the lake!

It was a big, eventful weekend with lots of planning and prep. I’d like to say that now we rest, but truthfully now we are hard at work prepping for our Norway trip, Eve’s Rotary trip, and Lex’s college adventure. We have a big summer ahead of us, kicked off by an awesome graduation weekend.

Göteborg!

I think I’ve fallen behind on blog posts about Eve. Oops! She’s got big things going on too!

We found out that she’s going to Göteborg (aka Gothenburg) in August. She’ll stay with a family who lives in an apartment right in the city. They have three kids: a son who is grown and out of the house, a daughter in her last year of schools, and a daughter who’ll be doing Rotary Exchange in Chile. They have a cat and a dog and a “weekend house” by the water. Eve is pretty psyched about all of this. Rotary in Sweden did a great job reading her application and finding her a good fit. She’ll be attending a trade school (that’s how it works there) with a focus on animal care. She’s thrilled about that. And today we learned that she’ll attend a week-long orientation camp with other exchange students after she arrives. She’ll have a week with the host family, then a week at camp, then school will start. They want her there by August 1st!

Last week she had a video call with her Rotary Exchange coordinator, the person who will be her Rotary contact over there. Today she did a video call with her host parents. She has been texting with the daughter of MY host sister, and with a young woman who helps with the Rotary Exchange program in Sweden. I’m amazed at how different her experience will be, thanks to advances in technology. I’m sure there will be pros and cons to it, but right now we’re experiencing a whole lot of pros!

She spent last weekend at an Outbound Rotary Exchange event where she got to hang out with other outbound students and some inbound students in the area. It was a big house on a lake in NH and she had a great time with the other kids.

Eve is an entirely different person this year. For the past few years she has *hated* school and spent her time with some mentally toxic people. This year she has a much better, much more positive friend group, she’s taking classes that she enjoys, she’s made some connections with teachers, and overall is a much happier human being. When we first started talking about Rotary Exchange it was, in part, because she was so miserable at school. I’m hoping that she’ll be able to enjoy this upcoming year in Sweden, then return home to the same group of friends and positive school relationships. I’m sure they’ll be some bumps in the road, but I’m so happy with how much better she is doing this year! I can’t wait to experience this foreign exchange adventure with her, from the comfort of my couch. :)

Senior Awards Night

Tonight was Senior Awards Night where they gave out 75 different awards, often to multiple people. It was long and my hands hurt from clapping, but we had fun. Lex got a handful of recognitions:

  • Honors Program (certificate and sash thing to wear at graduation)
  • The Frank Kinison Scholarship (certificate and $)
  • Frank & Olivia Gilman Scholarship (certificate and $?)
  • English Department Award for Excellence in Film Study (certificate and bookmark)
  • Blue Honor Roll Scholar (certificate for being on the honor roll all through high school)
  • Vermont Principals’ Association Award (certificate)
  • Community Service Award (certificate)
  • President’s Award for Educational Excellence (certificate)

Not too shabby for little Lex. I was impressed with the variety of awards given. They didn’t all go to athletes or college bound scholars. A lot of them did, of course, but there were also lots of awards for everyone else as well.

Lex’s last concert

This week was Lex’s last concert at Hartford! He has come such a long way from his first concert so long ago. At this concert he programmed the lights and taught Eve to run them. He played with the concert band and the jazz band, he accompanied the Concert Choir and Chamber Choirs with some of their songs, and he won two awards! He got kudos and recognition and had a blast.

After the concert they had an ice cream social and all the kids stayed to socialize. It was another really nice night that left me smiling from ear to ear.

Side story: I got a new phone this week and have been setting up all the apps and stuff again. Google has been giving me a whole new series of “recommended photos” and “memories” and whatnot. I clicked through one today with a bunch of pictures of me with other people. In every picture I think I looked really good, but I remember hating the pictures back in the day. I reminded myself of that when I look at the two pictures of me above. I hate everything about how I look in those pictures, but 60yr old me might disagree. We’ll see. In the meantime, it was an awesome night I’ll stay focused on my amazing son and how proud I am to know him. 💗

School project

This is really a school post, but I’m proud of it so I’m putting it here too. I did a project with the kids at schools that was creative and fun and took forever and was a little nerve wracking, but ultimately awesome!

I read a cool book called Someone Builds the Dream, one of this year’s state book award nominees. As a related project, I taught the 3rd and 4th graders how to use Tinkercad, a 3D modeling program. They each go to design their own project and have it printed. I wanted the little kids to do a project too, so I had them draw something cool, then I had the 3rd and 4th graders model their drawings in Tinkercad and print them.

At school we have lodges, small groups of mixed grade kids with a single teacher or two. Lodges meet several times a month and do a variety of activities. We stick with the same lodges year after year so the kids can build relationships with each other, and so that all students have a relationship with a teacher (or two) that is consistent year after year. For my 3D printing project I had the 3rd and 4th graders model the designs of their younger lodge buddies.

It took many weeks for the big kids to do the modeling and for me to print everything. Kids asked about it frequently and I kept telling them soon, soon. This past week the day finally came. I gave each lodge teacher a ziploc bag with the 3D prints for all of the kids in their lodges, and the related drawings done by the younger kids. I also printed an #Otters4ever tag for the 5th graders so they weren’t left out (they don’t have library class this year 😞). I was nervous that kids wouldn’t be happy with their prints, that they weren’t a close enough match to their drawings, or the wrong color, or whatever. The projects were not perfect and I am a perfectionist.

The kids in my lodge loved their projects! I stood in the hall at the end of lodge time as all the kids returned to their classes and saw so many kids proudly showing off their work to classmate and friends. So many came up to me and said thank you. Teachers sent me raving emails throughout the day, and one lodge even took the time to write thank you notes. Many teachers said they skipped the usual lodge plans and just let the kids talk about their projects.

“I want to give a HUGE shout out to Tessa for this project. It was AWESOME. The kids receiving the items were so excited and happy. One of my favorite moments came with a first grader yelling, “IT’S GOLD!!!!!!!! How did you know?!” But even more rewarding was watching the third and fourth graders pride in their work. I have a particular member of my lodge who almost always contributes with random comments that take us off track. When my second grader asked who made her design he answered, “I did. I made it purple because that was the color of your drawing.” I can’t tell you how much of a win that was! Thank you Tessa for all of your hard work on this project. My bucket was filled.”

– DBS Teacher

I was happy and very relieved that it all went well! It was one of those projects that I’m so happy I did and so happy it’s done. 😄

High School Variety Show

We saw the very best ever high school variety show this evening. It had jokes and songs, some good and some terrible, and jazz band performances, and technical issues (so many!), and audience participation — it was fantastic! 

They were having a lot of issues with the music accompaniment for several of the acts, but the high schoolers were awesome at getting through it. The best was when our favorite amazing performer (not in our family) who is kind and funny and we’ve known since kindergarten. She’s short and sang a song called Short which totally dissed on short people. She played it up amazingly, especially half way through when her music stopped. She made a joke about her song being cut short, then proceeded to finish it without the music. She was funny and fantastic.

The flip side was another girl who was wearing lingerie, including garters, and sang a loud angsty song while practically making out with the mic and repeatedly flipping her hair in an awkward trying-to-be-sexy way. It was painful to watch.

The MC (master of ceremonies, and which apparently none of my teens knew what MC stood for) was also very funny.

The best part of the show, of course, was the jazz band, specifically the song that Lex arranged! He loves the video game Portal and the music in it. He took one of the songs and arranged it for his jazz band. At the Jazz Festival last month they learned that other local schools have singers accompanying the jazz band for many of the songs, so Lex thought it would be fun to do that in his song too. It was fantastic and the applause at the end made my heart full.

Enjoy!

Footloose

Another AMAZING high school musical is on the books! Lex ran the lights, while Eve and her bestie, Simon, ran the spot lights. Our old neighbors, Macy and Asher, stole the show! Well lit, of course, by my children. :)

They both had a great time and the show was fantastic.

Back to School

The first day of school has come again. Every year I find it so stressful to plan and prep and get ready for back to school. There is always so much to do and pressure (from myself) to make everything perfect. Yesterday, our one and only paid day to set up our classrooms, I got to the point where I was just like, “the kids are coming, whether we’re ready or not.” And this morning they did come. They were happy and smiling (most of them) and generally glad to be there. Taller and in higher grades, but pretty much the same kids we said “see ya later” to back in June. By the end of day one it felt like the same old thing. I’m not sure if that’s good or not, but it is what it is.

On the home front I’ve got a senior, a junior, and a sophomore! The senior was pretty indifferent about going and said his day was “fine.” He’s happy to be back in band and happy that they’ll be doing pep band again. The junior is happy to be with his friends, but was super annoyed that the busses still aren’t running on schedule! It was a big problem last year due to driver shortages and we were hoping it would be fixed by this year, but apparently not. The sophomore was a little excited about her new classes, but last night she got anxious and had trouble sleeping. This morning I had to drag her out of bed and the afternoon report was that school is stupid and her classes are lame and she can’t believe she has two more years of this. Day one. Whee!

I meant to take a selfie of all of us together, but (as you can see) some of them weren’t too pleased about the photos, so I didn’t want to push my luck. I decided to take a selfie of just myself when I got to school, but when I got there I was already later than I wanted to be and the parking lot was full of people, so my selfie didn’t turn out great. I tried again in the afternoon. It came out a little better. :)

All about Lex

This handsome fellow had a birthday recently. He is thriving in all ways. We had a quiet birthday celebration with just a few gifts — cookies, books, Legos, and money — just what he wanted! :) Here are a few pics of my favorite 17yr old!

Spring brings concerts and plays as well, which Lex has been rocking. He had his spring concert, a district music festival, the high school musical and the middle school musical – both of which he ran the lights for. He even went in early before the spring concert so he could program nice lighting for the concert.

He won a few awards this spring too! At the spring concert he was given the Spirited Percussionist award, in celebration of Armand Zildjian. It came with a nice certificate, a personal note from a guy named Damian Poludin in Texas who manages (runs? is in charge of?) the award. It also came with a check an a cool laptop backpack with drumstick holders for percussionists. It’s pretty cool. He was pretty proud of himself. I am too!!

Yesterday I got a text from Eve saying “Lex just won an award.” I was confused because it was the middle of the school day. Lex replied, saying it was a “come to this college” book award and he was mostly just excited for the book. Apparently they announced a bunch of “college awards” over the loud speaker. So random! :) When I got him he showed me the certificate and note that says he can get his application fee waived and qualify to apply for an annual scholarship. Yep, definitely sounds like a “come to this college” recruiting award. Sadly he didn’t actually get a book. They gave him a paperweight instead. I’m not sure what the deal with that is. I told him to ask the counselor, but he said no. :)

I’m so proud of this kiddo. I miss the tiny baby and curious toddler (though I don’t miss the tantrums!), but I love seeing how well he has grown up and how happy he is with life in general.

💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙