School Photos--COVID Style

 My friend Kathy offered a deal to take school pictures. I am so happy I took her up on it!

Love how these turned out. So much personality.

This is my favorite!  Sarah is so happy to be an Einstein Tiger...except that it doesn't really feel like it.  We drove through the brand new building to pick up her books and music for band.  I hope that she'll get to start in the building at some point. 

Libby...so unhappy to be pulled away from friends (Harides) to take pictures.  But she got into the mode.  She's getting her work done.  With some prodding.  We have a Saturday morning Starbuck's run where we create her to do list to catch up on everything.  Yesterday I didn't actually see her canvas page, but she remembered she had 3 things due and told me she did them all before she ran off to play.  She also had a babysitting job yesterday and has saved up (by selling paintings and babysitting) $100.  She's pretty proud.  And ready to spend! 

Ben only has this one pair of glasses right now.  Mom fail.  I thought I had made them an appointment with their eye doctor, but the doctor was on maternity leave, so I guess I just got on the wait list? So these glasses are actually from year before last.  His other ones have all died.  So I finally made an appointment this week.  But too late for these pics not to be in transition lenses.  (Never again!)  So many ruined photos.  But I love how the pics turned out.  They perfectly capture his 9 year old adorable awkwardness.  No pockets, so not sure what to do with his hands.  Can't get enough of this guy! 

Traditionally I also get a picture with whoever is at MP with me.  I kind of wanted a pic with all 3...but I told myself that if school was in session for real, it'd only be Ben. 

I'm trying to take the advice from this awesome talk I listened to this year and embrace this year! 

How to Act While Being Acted Upon | Kevin J Worthen, Aug 2020

Kitchen progress--What's Behind the Ovens?

 This week one of Derek's former wrestlers (his first State Champ) who is now a brick mason came to take a look at our unique oven situation.  The big question before we could move forward with the kitchen remodel was--can we fit a bigger ovens into our wall?  

To find out, we needed to take the ovens out of the brick wall.  Derek was pretty giddy with what we found...which was lots of space!  There is like a 2 1/2 foot gap behind between the back of our current cabinets and the fireplace on the other side.  The wall around our oven isn't supporting any weight, so we can remove it or change it in any way we'd like.  So we can fit in the ovens, or recess the fridge in that spot.  Our contractor took a look and so did our designer.  Then we put the ovens back in (Derek and Joe did the work, with me making helpful comments like, "Maybe you need to sand down that wood around the hole to make it fit back in.")  They ended up needing using the sawzall to shave down the frame and fit it back in.  Whew.

Anyway, plans are in motion.  Probably we will start officially in December or January.  Hopefully appliance factories go back into production!

What we have...so cute.  But so old. 

The cavernous space behind...(there is a secret cave basically that is sealed up--no access even in the crawl space).

What I want...

   

New House Color!

Boy did our house need painting.  It has needed it for a long time.  After we did the roof, we realized we had been deferring a lot of maintenance on the house.  We also realized that since we got such a screaming deal on our house, we had a lot of equity we could access to do the work.  And then interest rates dropped below 3%.  We jumped on that (Derek's favorite home project is refinancing.)  It took 2 months to close the loan because during the process we discovered that an old refinance from 2015 had never been reported as closed to the county.  But finally we closed the loan--and none too soon.  It was the week our house painters did the house!  (We scheduled them as soon as we started the loan paperwork, figuring the refinance would come through in plenty of time).  

The house looks amazing.  And now the kitchen renovation will commence.  We hired a designer last week.  She is doing a site visit this week.  Yikes! 

Our painter said, "Well, this house isn't the standard box we usually paint..."  Yeah.  That's why we love it.  And why it drives us crazy.  

I tell you what, this whole home project thing is going to help teach me patience.  There are so many steps.   So many layers!  Even finishing the front door (getting new hardware) is taking forever (because of course our doors are not standard hardware backset).  

And I still haven't finished the office.  But I made some more progress this week.  Maybe next weekend I'll finalize?

Welcome to the Family--TUBA!

 We highly encouraged Sarah to stay with band.  The middle school band teachers are awesome.  There are so many benefits of music.  And the middle schools have eliminated all honors classes by calling everything "Honors."  (A strange move that I understand, but don't.)  So taking band is another way to try to track her with higher achieving kids.  Anyway, in middle school, they can try new instruments.  Sarah got really excited about the TUBA.  This thing weights about a zillion pounds.  It is totally unwieldy.  But, since she doesn't actually have to take it to school--I said yes.  She can play it at home in the new music corner of our living room.  

The music corner.  I also hung my guitar on the wall to encourage me to play it more.  I've been playing piano most nights to help de-stress after my screen filled days.  

Sarah looks pretty darn good with this tuba.  She can already make some good sounds.  Despite her dad's naysaying, I'm proud of her for wanting to play something different and going after it.  

Back to "School" 2020

 We had our first week at "school" this week.  School was each of us in our own space with a laptop on zoom.  But--I have to say, it wasn't that bad.  It actually felt like school. Student/teacher interactions.  Lessons delivered.  Work completed.  It was so much better than I expected.  It is still a whole lot more work to prepare than for regular lessons.  But I feel like it will be sustainable, as long as I have time on my weekends to do some work.  (Because by the end of the school day I am SPENT!). I just sit and stare into space.  And burn dinner.  And aimlessly weed my flower beds.  Hopefully I'll develop more stamina.  This week I only did 1/2 day on Wednesday and 3/4 on Thurs/Fri with students and filled the rest of my day with family meetings.  That was a nice way to work in slowly.  Also, since I moved to teaching Highly Capable students--it turns out they are highly capable of attending school and meetings with teachers.  I had 100% attendance and 100% of my families met with me.  Not too shabby.

And did I mention that for now, I only have 22 students?  (That may change this week depending on the 4th day count...we have a surplus of teachers with many students in our district deciding to homeschool or move.) Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to move forward with my 22!

All of us looking happy for day 1! 

Libby all ready to learn in her bedroom.  With her jeans with holes that she made herself because her mean mom didn't want to buy jeans that already had holes.  

Sarah's room is great--the only problem is that the built in desk has the window behind her creating a ton of backlight.  Problematic for Zoom.  I can't believe that when they put in that built in (maybe 30 years ago), they didn't anticipate that a student would need to sit there on Zoom for 3 ninety minute periods a day.  Haha.  (We couldn't even have imagined it just a year ago!) The curtains help, but I may need to get something to create a better blackout.  

Sarah's original schedule on Skyward was wrong.  But we didn't get the update until she'd already attended all the wrong classes on day 1.  Not a great start to Middle School/6th grade.  But she was cheerful about it.  It's not as embarrassing on zoom to be in the wrong place. One interesting development...she's decided she wants to play the tuba.  Oi!  Goes against our policy of small instruments.  But she's pretty determined to play something that other Nortons didn't play. 

Ben all set to learn.  He loves the teacher that he had this week.  She's interviewed for the long term sub job--his official teacher is on maternity leave.  I hope he'll get to stay with the sub he loves.  We will see what the 4th day count brings.  They may bring in another teacher from the district to take that position.  

He's the only one that remembered to write his grade down...and you can't see it.  But it was a great effort.  So I'm posting.  4th grade! 

My principal came by and did his usual paparazzi in my classroom. Usually he's taking pics of kids and teachers.  This year, it's just me.  On day 2.  I believe at this point I was reminding students that to use an acronym in the Zoom chat, like LMFAO is against school policy...because the F and A stand for swear words.  Sigh.  

Overall, I find myself looking forward to this week of teaching & learning.  I'm learning as much as I'm teaching I think.  Which is actually not a bad thing--for now.  I hope I can get into a rhythm quickly though.  Wish us luck!