I took my Praxis I exam today. It wasn’t terribly hard, but I’m glad to have it behind me now. It’s basically a test to determine if I am smart enough to learn how to be an elementary school teacher! I passed. Yay! :-)
One step closer…
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Author Archives: Tessa
Soccer!
I signed the kids up for spring soccer, which started today. They were both pretty excited for it. I was excited when we got there and they participated and had fun! Flashbacks to t-ball years ago kept swirling in my head and I was hoping it would be better this time around. It was! It was windy and only 40° outside, so those of us on the sidelines were chilly, but the kids had a blast!
Caption courtesy of Eve.
They came home with an assignment to practice dribbling. Let’s hope the enthusiasm holds through the spring. :)
Spring clean-up
Aren’t they helpful?
Seriously though, Lex was very helpful with the raking and he dumped the wheel barrow out into the ravine all on his own, twice. It’s nice when he’s helpful. Eve just chattered for a bit then went to play in the dirt. Maybe she’ll be more helpful next time. :-)
Punctuation
Eve is reading the Sunday comics to me. Suddenly she gets up, gets a marker from then drawer, and starts making dots. I asked what she was doing and she rightly pointed out that they forgot the periods to end the sentences.
I’ve been reading the comics for years and never noticed that many of them don’t use periods. They use other punctuation, but then leave simple sentences un- punctuated. Weird, huh?
Oops!
I completely forgot to hang up Eve’s birthday collages this year! Oops! I was just cleaning off the mountain of junk piled on my desk and came across them. Sigh. I guess I’ll add “make 6yr collage” to my to-do list and try to remember to hang them next year!
Spring! (and riding with the big kids)
Today was a beautiful day all around. (the kids aren’t in bed yet so there’s still the chance of disaster, but I’m hedging my bets and calling it a great day!) I subbed at school today, in Lex’s class. He was thrilled. They are a busy bunch normally, but I think Monday must be their mellow day. Mellow for them, anyway. Still very busy!
When we got home from school it was sunny and in the 60’s so we had snack then headed outside to blow bubbles and ride bikes. I also swept a dirt road’s worth of dust and dirt out of my garage!
Fun with the new bubble blower!
While we were blowing bubbles a group of fifth graders came zipping by on their bikes. It was a group I haven’t seen hanging out in our neighborhood in the past. They ended up hanging out on our street for quite some time. One of the kids is in Lex’s class (his brother was part of the older group) and my two kids were fascinated. I told Lex he could ride with them if he wanted to and he was thrilled! He zoomed right up to them and joined the group. I have no idea what they were talking about or playing (if 5th graders even “play” anymore, I guess mostly they just “hang out”) but he rolled with them for awhile. Most of the time they were at one end of the street or the other so I wasn’t even really able to keep an eye on things. It was a big step for me! Before he joined the group they had been going from our street to another and back again, so I was curious to see what Lex would do if they left. I didn’t think he’d go, but I wasn’t entirely positive. At one point I noticed the group start to disband and a few kids split off one way while the rest went the other. I looked and looked and didn’t see Lex. Feeling a mix of surprise and worry and awe and… suddenly I saw him riding down the driveway at the end of the street, heading home! He didn’t leave our street after all! Whew! I’m not ready for that yet! :)
Smile!
Another benefit of fresh air is that Eve requested apples and peanut butter for dinner, helping herself to a cheese stick while waiting, and Lex happily accepted carrots on his plate. He turned the plate into a smiley face then ate the whole thing.
Welcome fresh air and sunshine! Welcome Spring!
Castle cake drawing
This is the next page Lex references in the post below.
A note from Lex
A love note to Lex
Cardboard boats and birthday cakes
Today Eve is 6 years and 6 days and we are officially done celebrating this birthday!
We had a fun and exhausting day today. I was talked into entering a cardboard box boat competition at the aquatic center. It was part of their annual Spring Fling to celebrate their 4th anniversary. It sounded like fun and I hoped the kids would enjoy it. We got to the aquatic center at 9am and were given a plastic garbage bag, a box cutter, scissors, packing tape, and a long list of rules. Oh, and plenty of cardboard boxes! Off and on over the next few hours we built a cardboard boat! We took breaks for snacks and for rubber duck racing.
The whole project wasn’t quite as exciting for the kids as I was hoping. They did a lot of waiting around while engineer daddy did his engineering.
Trying the boat on for size.
They didn’t provide us with any measuring devices (and we weren’t allowed to bring anything of our own!) so we did the best we could. Fortunately Eve just had her well child visit and we knew just how many inches tall she is!
As usual I didn’t know the schedule of events, so the kids had about one minute to decorate their ducks before the big race!
There were lots of ducks racing so they did them in groups. Lex and Eve’s ducks were in the final group. We had no winners in our family.
The boat is coming along nicely.
First cake of the day. They had three different cakes, so Alan and both kids got a piece and we all shared.
We decided to give our boat higher sides. Alan did some calculations about displacing water and such and the short sides were a little too short for comfort.
Now, for the moment she’s been waiting for, time to decorate!
Look how closely they are paying to Alan’s attempt at giving them rowing instructions. It was loud and busy in there. We were all tired by this point!
Smiley kids.
After we got the boat done we had about 45 minutes left until race time, so Alan and the kids changed into bathing suits and went swimming. I stayed dry. I don’t enjoy swimming when it’s so crowded.
Suited up and ready for a dry run.
Listening for final instructions.
I really need to test the video settings before making movies. I don’t know why they keep changing and I never think to check them before starting the video, right at the moment I want to capture! Sorry for the blue tint and extremely low quality. If the aquatic center posts any better videos I’ll link to them later. What you can’t see well in this video is Eve completely panicking when the boat rocks and disolving into tears. She didn’t crying stop until about 10 minutes after she got out of the water.
This is the final picture before they went under. If you zoom in you’ll see Lex looking a little nervous and Eve completely in tears.
Alan jumped in and rescued the boat.
Two happy boys, one wet boat.
So, a few lessons learned here. First, the kids are not very good rowers. Second, they were so excited about winning that the idea of NOT winning didn’t even occur to them. You can see right from the beginning that they got off to a slow start and were immediately distracted by the other teams. Third, Eve apparently didn’t think our boat was sinkable and when it started taking on water she panicked and it was all over from there. Maybe we should have spent some time discussing what to do if/when water gets into the boat.
With their young age, lack of rowing abilities, and complete lack of focus they didn’t stand a chance! Oh well. Lex had fun (though he also cried a bit because he was sad the boat sank) and I suspect if you ask Eve next week she’ll tell you it was fun too. Give her time to recover. :)
After that excitement we rushed home, inhaled bagels for lunch, grabbed the castle cake and party supplies and rushed out the door again. We were barely home for 15 minutes before leaving for her birthday party.
Gymnastic was fun. We had seven of her pre-K classmates, plus Lex and Eve. They bounced around like crazy people for awhile, then went down on the floor and did the routine for an hour, then back up for cake and presents. It was over before we knew it!
My lovely princess castle cake! I won’t go into details on my thoughts on this cake as I know I’ve mentioned it before and everyone tells me it was wonderful so I’m going to be ok with that.
Side view.
It’s impossible to take a good photo in this place!
Happy Birthday dear Eve!!
Alan entertained the crowd with jokes. They were all amused. :)
Presents!
The gymnastics place is fun, but it’s not my ideal location for a party because there is very little time or space for the kids to just play together. It’s also a very rushed party. You get one hour of gymnastics and half hour for cake and presents. They had parties back to back today too, so as we were arriving the party before us was leaving, and we were rushing out the door at the end to allow room for the next party. Most of the kids didn’t have time to finish their cake and Eve rushed right through the presents. That said, she has been asking for a gymnastics party for a few years now and I was happy to not have to clean for and plan another birthday party! An hour and a half, in and out, and we’re done celebrating Eve’s birthday!! I’m done party planning and cake baking… until next month!
Tomorrow morning we have brunch plans with another family, and then we can rest. Monday it’s back to school!
But now, I need sleep.