This little girl is in love with her new hobby. She loves going to her riding lessons. She will not commit to any other activity before clarifying that it doesn’t interfere with her lesson first. She does great. It is amazing to me how she has no fear, she just goes for it and does whatever her teacher says. The other girl she rides with is Peyton. They like to take turns bringing apples and carrots to the horses for a little treat afterwards. They give them to all the horses, not just the ones they rode that day.
She has her pants, shirt, socks, boots, and helmet all set out so it looks like a little person on her floor days before her lesson. She comes home and gets changed and counts down the minutes until it is time to go. It is fun to watch her.
I made a friend too. This cat comes and jumps in my lap every week and takes a nap. I am not a big cat person but he keeps me warm so I allow it. He is pretty sweet. The first few weeks he would try and I would shew him off, so he would sit right next to me. He has a little bucket that he curls up in sometimes too-which is pretty stinking cute. He finally wore me down and I let him curl up on my lap.
Matthew was to cool to go to the pumpkin patch with us this year. The girls and I went to the Louisburg Cider Mill. You can watch the process of them making the cider from a whole apple to sealing the lid on the jar. They also have pumpkin spice donuts that are made fresh and you can watch that happen too.
We didn’t have a ton of time this year so instead of meandering through the entire pumpkin patch the girls picked a pumpkin from the mini patch they had next to the store. They could pick any pumpkin they wanted as long as they carried it themselves. I had my hands full of donuts and all of our cider slushies. We had to stop and give Emilee a few breaks on the way to the car but we made it, and ate another donut to celebrate.
We decided to get extra donuts for our cousins. They had a visitor that had COVID when she came so they have to quarantine again, and on day 10 of their quarantine Ross and we think Lauren came down with it too. We thought they might enjoy some fresh donuts. We took some to Grandma and Grandpa Terry too as a perk for living by us.
I thought this was a handy dandy apple chart. Big shocker that all our favorites are the sweet ones.
Well, it was delayed 2 weeks and then middle school and high school were changed to virtual only for an undetermined amount of time based on a ridiculous skewed made up ‘gating criteria’ but we had the first day of school this past week!
The principal kept all the walkers until after the car riders were gone so Allison sat in the class room an extra 45 minutes, got home an hour after school ended, and crossed a four lane road without a crossing guard, but after what I can only imagine was a full inbox, many phone calls, a meeting with the teachers, and even more in person conversations she decided against that and let the kids go when school was over the next day. This was a big issue several years ago but the principal in her never ending attempts to control every single thing tried it again. Four years left of this woman…four years.
Allison rode the bus the first day with Emilee so she wouldn’t be by herself and is in 5th grade. Her last year of elementary school. Her teacher is Mrs. Brown and seems to be pretty awesome so far. Back to school night was all virtual and she did a good job so you could actually hear and see what was going on. I think she will be a good fit for Allison. As I mentioned, she can ride the bus but most of the time wants to walk or ride her bike to see her friends because none of her best friends ended up in her class. We have made the deal that on days I work and dad isn’t working from home she has to ride the bus, other days she can pick. She is going to do one more year of girls scouts. She is doing cheer one last time (hopefully) and has gymnastics twice a week for 2 1/2 hours. She color coded all of her school supplies to the correct pencil box they go in. As usual she is up to date on all the school gossip and happenings, even some from the middle school, despite being with her class and her class only all day long. Lunch is in the class room, and recess is rotating to different areas with your own class. She is glad to be back in school though and see and interact with more people.
Emilee is starting 2nd grade. She will ride the bus each day. She puts her mask on and they take her temperature then she is whisked away to the school. Once she is dropped off she walks around a one way loop at the school until she arrives at her classroom. Her teacher this year is Mrs. Trimble. Allison had her for 2nd grade as well and I wasn’t impressed. I requested a change but the principal said she can’t do anything about it. For now we will keep her there and hope that it goes well. If it doesn’t I will have a meeting with the principle about it. Anyway, she is doing good so far. There are 18 kids in her class, 6 of those are girls. She seems to be pretty comfortable now since she knows most of the kids and is familiar with the school. Recess rotation on the grass with no balls and not allowed to play tag is pretty boring but she did find two frogs so that brightened her day. She is not going to do Girl Scouts this year. Hopefully activity days will be starting again before to long. We will get her on a basketball team in the winter. We are also looking into horse lessons with her bestie Reese once a week.
Matthew is in 8th grade. He started conditioning this summer with the intentions of playing football but ended up deciding against it. He has put on a grand total of 5 pounds this last year and 1 inch making him 5 feet even and 85 pounds soaking wet. He decided to focus on getting better at basketball and baseball instead of getting squished in football. He was supposed to start school full time in person, but the school switched a few days before school started to all virtual. Apparently it is safe enough to play sports…but not sit in a desk at school. So he has four classes a day for 1 1/2 hours each via zoom. That is a long time to be staring at a computer screen. We are trying to make the best of it and hopefully it will not last much longer. He is pretty social and is finding and settling in with a good group of kids it seems like. None of them are close enough to hang out after school without parent assistance in getting there but they are close enough it is pretty easy to get them together. There is one boy in particular we are glad he is buddies with. Tyson Beshore. The whole family is a great family, anytime we can get them together we are more than happy to do it. Matthew can get his learners permit for driving in October. That is pretty crazy.
So the 2020 school year if off to a start. It is going to be a different, frustrating, and hopefully end well but we will see. I hope my kids can learn and grow mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally.
Thanks to her friend Stella, Emilee was willing to try a new sport this Spring. We signed her up for Softball. It ended up not starting until June but we were still able to do it.
Practices were fun and she liked going to those, but once games started it was a little trickier to get her there. I ended up bribing her with an ice cream cone from McDonald’s after each game she went to. We still missed a few but she got to most. She did really well too! She got a few good hits in and ran the bases. She chased the ball down and threw it to first a few times and got two outs. She learned a lot about how the game works and what you are supposed to do on offense or defense. They usually got a team treat afterwards to that was a motivation for her to go. I didn’t know that until after promising her an ice cream cone so she loved getting a bonus treat.
She loved when we would come watch her too. Allison and I made it to most of the games. It was a bonus when dad and Matthew came, his baseball overlapped a lot.
Dad and Matthew tried to help her practice hitting and play catch with her during the week too. Emilee is naturally athletic but she is averse to sweating so we are hoping she will push past that and try again next year.
This is a day that I usually prefer to pass by unnoticed and then pretend to be disappointed when someone remembers we missed it. Most of my family seems to be on the same page with my opinion, with the exception of Allison. She anticipates it for months and has almost the same giddy excitement she has for Christmas or her birthday when it gets close. With the entire Nation on stay-at-home orders I think in general most people paid more attention to it this year, simply because of lack of other things happening. Allison had a long list of tricks ready to go.
She placed a piece of card board in all the toilets. Thank goodness she hasn’t discovered other ‘options’ for this classic trick, that I will not even mention here because she does eventually read this.
She put tape across several doorways. This happened to be the day I did laundry and often was carrying things in front of me so I couldn’t see as well. So I personally ‘fell’ for this one at least 5 times and so did others. She was very pleased with herself.
I also found tape covering the faucet when I turned it on in my bathroom.
The one she did that made me chuckle the most was drawing on Emilee’s arm while she was sleeping. Emilee came in and said, “Mom, I don’t remember drawing any of this on my arm.” She still draws on herself enough that it was a total possibility she did it, but was confused she couldn’t recall it.
Allison’s pride and joy prank for the day was getting a hold of Matthew’s cell phone and changing her contact to “Campbell” who is Matthew’s crush. She then texted him like she was Campbell. Matthew figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t Campbell but he thought it was her sister. He even told Allison about it and she was giggling while she sat right next to him and continued to text. He figured it out shortly after that. Then I helped him change it back and change the password on his phone so she couldn’t get into it anymore.
The winning prank of the day was by me though. Thanks to my neighbors. They pranked me first with the following pictures.
This is the Governor of Kansas. I was shocked when I saw the schools would go through July.
Once they new they got me they said they were looking it and would send me more info when they found it. A minute or so later she said here is what we found. and send me this.
I was still a little confused and thought it was not very appropriate of the Governor of Kansas to do something like this. Then I saw the subtitle-the Hogan’s are the neighbors that sent it to me. They got me good. Then I decided to pass it forward to my kids.
Allison was mad for a good 30 minutes before she calmed down. 🤦♀️
As I have mentioned part of the reason for our pre-Spring Break is because it is parent teacher conference time.
I went and saw all of the kids teachers and saw how they are doing. Matthew was supposed to come with me and show me a presentation that he had made about how his year has been going. He was sick so I just went myself and his teacher showed me. He is doing great. He catches on pretty quick most of the time and things seem easy. His biggest area to grow in is challenging himself more. Not just doing the minimum and being done. Pushing himself to go above the minimum even if it is uncomfortable (because it will be) and growing more than the ‘requirement’. When I was telling him how his conference went I told him this is a nice way of his teacher saying-don’t be lazy, and I agree. He rolled his eyes and said ‘okay mom’. Then I gave him a hug and told him I am proud of his effort he does put in. I know a lot of moms that have to remind, nag, beg, threaten their kid to not just do homework but turn it in, and even admit they have it. I ask Matthew on occasion if he has done his homework but more so he doesn’t feel like I don’t care than I am worried he hasn’t done it. Since Kindergarten he has come home and done his homework on his own unless he needs help without being asked.
Allison was also supposed to come with me to her conference. She did and showed me her slide presentation she prepared for me. Then we went through some of the papers she had written the first part of the year. She is doing very well and her creativity shows just as much in her school work as it does in other areas of her life. I took a picture of a couple so share. Even her research reports are fun to read. She is a talented girl. She excels in many areas. One of her favorites right now is Math. She seems to have a good portion of her dads engineering brain. I am very proud of her and how hard she works. Her area of improvement is to slow down and take her time. It isn’t a race to finish everything. Then she gave me all the sticky notes she had collected from various teachers on the board of “items needed” for their classrooms, while she was waiting for me to finish Emilee’s conference. When I tried to explain the items are for the kids/parents to get that are actually in that teachers class and picking one was enough she was mortified at my “lack of caring for others and their needs.” When I told her I would split the cost of whatever she wanted to get for the teachers she put a few back and kept a more reasonable amount of sticky notes. 😘
Learning about geese was more entertaining then I thought possible
All from the head of Allison.
Emilee was the only one that was not supposed to come to her conference. While I enjoy my children’s company this is the way I prefer to have a parent teacher conference-with just the people listed in the title of the event. Emilee has improved her reading a lot this year. I will admit I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the year. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to even try to read. She has tried hard and is doing really well now. In Emilee’s life in general I feel like she has started to accept the fact that she can do a lot of stuff for herself. While she is the youngest and all of us are guilty of just doing things for her because it is easier-and quite frankly she prefers it that way- I think we have made great strides in her willingness to try doing things on her own and for herself. She has shown it in playing basketball and not taking herself out of the game because she is ‘done’, making her own peanut butter sandwich, and reading books on her own even though she might not know every word. Her teacher said she is a happy fun girl to have in class and I am proud of her too. She had a very good folktale about how guinea pigs learned to run I got to see at her conference.
It is Valentine’s celebration at school time! It was Emilee’s turn to have me help at her class party so I went and ran a game for them. There were many cute boxes and lots of excited kids. It is cute to see them deliver all their valentines. I helped with a game called Cupids Arrow. Each kid get a straw and a bunch of q-tips. They put the q-tip in the straw then blow through the straw and try to get it in a bowl. One boy started at the game area and was not happy at it because ‘the games are always boring and the worst part of the party’. Once I explained and started the game, he ended up being the biggest fan and was hard to get to move on to the next area. Emilee opted to go with a traditional mail box for her Valentine Box that she decorated.
Handing out her candy and excited about the candy she will find in her own box when she is done. The girl has the worlds biggest sweet tooth.
Allison’s party was not at exactly the same time so I was able to stop by and hang out with her at her party for a little bit too. True to her previous endeavors when making her Valentine Box she had to go bigger then the year before. Last year is her last year to make boxes which will be sad to not see the creative ideas she comes up with, but good in that they can’t get to much bigger or she won’t be able to carry them with out help. She went with the Rooster theme like last year but created an entire scene instead of just one rooster. This poor guy is running for his like so he doesn’t get eaten by the roosters that are quickly gaining on him. The last rooster is reminding them that they are vegetarians and don’t really want to eat him. The barn door is where you put the valentines.
Allison stuck with the Rooster theme again this year.
Emilee tried basketball again this year. She played on a team with her friend Stella. Stella’s dad was the coach for the team.
She has done a really good job. You can tell that a few things have clicked for her on how to play so she enjoys it more and her skills are getting better. It is fun to watch.
The girls are still young enough that some pretty cute mistakes or distractions happen during the games too. Sometimes they get confused and shoot at the wrong basket. Another time two girls that were guarding each other decided to take a break for a minute to play patty cake together.😂😂
