Daily Life

Now that we're through the holidays, it's pretty much back to normal life around here.

I turned 51 on Monday. Rick bought me this for my corner of the family room.  (The room is supposedly my office but I don't need the whole room and right now there's a ping pong table in it that leaves me about a 6 ft by 4 ft area). Rick got me two FSU shirts (but they didn't fit and have to be exchanged) and NCIS LA #3.

My mom sent me this.

Jessica got me a CD of the top Christian songs.

From my brother. (He sent money and Jessica picked it)
My sister sent money, Adam gave me money and Ty gave me chocolate.

We bought pomegranates at the grocery store. Tyler looked  up how to eat them on the Internet.

I made potato soup in the crockpot. The recipe has loads of bacon, cheese, heavy cream etc. We're going to make some changes to the recipe before next time. It's good but it's very rich and uses a lot of ingredients. We only needed about half this much too. This is a 7 qt crock pot. 

I had a meeting at Jasmine's school to go over her testing, so Tyler and I had lunch with her--Sarku's and Chick Fil A.

Jasmine tested much higher this time. The last battery of tests had her IQ pretty low, and I requested a retest. This time is was 24 points higher. Overall she scored at 12 yr 3 mos in mental ability. (She turns 12 on Feb 18). Her math reasoning was quite low though. But reading was at the top of the charts. I think she scored higher on the test than what she can actually do in the classroom, but it doesn't really matter.

Jasmine worked very hard all last week on a book report that she understood was to be given orally today. So she practiced it until it was within time limits and pretty fluent. She got to class today and #1 she was the only one who'd done hers. #2 She was told it was to be written not oral, but no form had previously been sent home. No problem because she wrote it out anyway. AND #3 she was told she couldn't do her report on The Hunger Games Book 1 because it had been made into a movie and books that had been made into a movie were ineligible. That is NO WHERE on the forms she brought home. So her teacher told her to do it over.

That teacher left early from the meeting, and I was surprised when another person in the meeting said that Jasmine was having trouble in that class because Jasmine needs to "feel the love" and no one feels the love with that teacher. The teacher said that the other teacher was not a good match for Jasmine. Normally the teachers don't make comments like that about the other teachers, but I'm glad she did because it explains a lot. Jasmine has felt all year like that teacher does not like her all. That's sad, but Jasmine is going to have to realize that not all teachers are going to be warm and fuzzy toward her. So I guess we will be redoing the book report. She was originally going to write it on the second book in the Hunger Games series but it's a more complicated plot, and she was having trouble summarizing it. One thing the other teacher told me at the end of the meeting is that Jasmine's "extended time" clause applies not just to testing, but to other work so I can request extended time for the project.

Jasmine has  been putting together a major history fair project the past three weeks with lots of help from Jessica. I'm glad Jessica knows how to do a power point presentation. It's looking impressive but so much still to do in documented primary and secondary sources and preparing the oral presentation to go with it.

We've had plenty of assorted appointments for the kids the past three weeks too. It's been a little crazy--orthodontist, dentist, counseling, medications etc. They are scheduling an EEG for Jasmine too.

So basically it's just been our normal crazy life here lately.