Last week Kaleb had his first concert, and last night Kayla had her first concert. A world of difference between the two schools. Kaleb is in the best public school in the county. I tried to get Kayla in it when I needed to take her out of the charter school, but it was full. So she is in our zoned school, which is the worst middle school in the county. It really showed in everything from the school building to the kids to the parents. I posted about Kaleb's concert last time, but I'm going to repost my favorite picture of him.
Kayla's concert was in the cafeteria which was not only not decorated, but it smelled strongly of vomit. It is badly in need of renovations. A few parents were dressed up, but many were in ratty clothes that didn't smell much better than the cafeteria. Even if you don't have dress clothes, you can be clean and neat, showered and hair combed!
A band director from another school came and played with the band to help them out.
We went to taco bell afterward.
Rick had a bit of bronchitis and Kaleb had a big case of sassy mouth, so neither were there.
On Saturday we decided to take the dogs to Pet Smart for photos with Santa. I had Kayla and Jasmine with me, and River, who was staying with Hunter's dad and stepmom, met us there. The dogs had no problem with Santa after sniffing him thoroughly. River wanted nothing to do with him. But that was understandable. We came out with okay photos.
Me with Sadie Rose.
Kayla with Caspian.
Jasmine with Travis.
All of us with Sasha
I took some cute pictures of River last night, but to avoid photo overload, I'll post those tomorrow.
The past few days have been more exciting than normal. I'll share part today and part on Wednesday to avoid overload.
This week Kaleb had his first band concert.
Trying to inconspicuously do a selfie during the concert! Jasmine and Kayla were there, but Ty got called in to work.
With his band director.
I really like this picture of him. I can't do an enlargement though because it's on my phone. My Nikon has been at the Nikon repair shop since October!!
Then we came back to the house to celebrate Adam's 21st adoption day with Chinese take out.
Tyler had to work, and Jessica didn't show up until after we took the photos.
They don't look much like twins anymore.
Jessica and Tara
Adam and Kealen. Adam works really early.
This a video of Kaleb that won't post where I want it to.
On Friday Jessica and I took River to the kids' parade.
Saturday morning we had breakfast with Santa!
They took pictures and were supposed to post them, but they haven't yet, so this is what we have. I hope to have better pictures to post on Wednesday along with some more activities! And hopefully my camera repairs will be done,and I won't have to depend on my phone for photos.
We had a lot of Christmas activities planned, but we've skipped most of them. All three kids have a lot of undone assignments that need made up. They also have tests to retake. For some reason our district has decided that test scores must make up 95% of the grade. Thankfully along with that, most of the teachers are encouraging students to retake any tests that are below 70%. Last month I met with just one person for Jasmine's IEP update. No teachers came. We talked about how to get her grades up to passing. But in the weeks since then, it hasn't happened. Last week I asked for a meeting with her teachers. That took place yesterday, and all but one teacher came. And I am actually very thankful that he didn't. He has no clue when it comes to Jasmine. He told her there was no reason she was flunking algebra again this year. If she'd just have a positive attitude she could do trig. Um. Yeah. Not so. He's not her math teacher, he's her band director--smart and was in all AP classes. Unfortunately Jasmine does not have the genetic gift for that. Then add in the other factors. Not happening. I will be very happy if she does her best and hopefully passes all the required classes. Every single teacher said the same thing. She's a great kid. No problem in class. They look forward to seeing her every day. But she is not turning in any homework, projects or take-home tests. So we made a list of what has to be caught up. I went to parent portal and made a similar list for the twins. Kaleb never bothered to complete his science project. He did the experiments, just didn't write it all up and turn it in with his abstract and charts. I gave up on trying to get him to do it and e-mailed his teacher. He has until Monday (two full weeks late) to do it or get an alternative assignment.
"How does the length of a closed end tube effect pitch?"
So, no tree lighting, one concert on Sunday but skipped the one Monday night. Other things have come and gone. This is not the way I like to do things. But we have Kaleb's concert Thursday night, Jasmine marches in the kids' parade Friday during the school day, another tree lighting Friday night, (Jasmine is supposed to sing twice at a church but doesn't plan to. It's a county choir so no grade and not required), breakfast with Santa Saturday morning, boat parade Saturday evening, something else I can't remember. On the up side, River is doing more and more each time I see her. I had lunch with her in the mall food court Monday and then she came over to stay with us for a few hours until Hunter was home from work.
We are finished with adoption class. But as I think I said last time, they've said they aren't going to even get to our paperwork until January at the earliest. So I just need to focus on other things and not sweat the wait. The good thing is that I know a social worker in another county that I had the privilege to meet at a writer's conference. She is genuinely a good person, and she let Parris' case worker know we are interested in him but that our county is in no hurry to get to our paperwork. She sent our 2008 home study, but that is 8 years old. The twins weren't even home yet. Jessica was a junior in high school, and she now pregnant with her second child! I wrote a description of our family now and included a couple of pictures, and she sent that too. Unfortunately, she hasn't heard back. We really haven't done much this week. I signed up for nanowrimo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's a commitment to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. That comes out to 1,666 words a day. I am at 34,263 so far, and pretty much on target. Yesterday there was a write-in that went to three places. The writers started at one place and wrote (or drew), walked to the next place and then to a third place. Jasmine and I caught up with them at the third place. We took a couple of pictures outside and a couple inside.
Ha! Check out all the sugar in this picture! Jasmine helped me with it :) We are coming up on crazy times, as are the rest of you I'm sure. We have friends coming for taco soup tomorrow night and hope our adult kids can join us. Jessica is hosting Thanksgiving. The big Christmas parade is Dec 3, and I think both girls are in it. Kayla can't really play the music, but I think they are going to let her play with the older band anyway. It's a title 1 school who just hopes the kids show up for school, and she will have lots more chances to succeed without having to be the best of the best. December 4th is Jasmine's carols concert, and the 5th is the festival of choirs. The 8th is Kaleb's band concert. The 9th is the Millville parade, and all the schools bring their preschool and kindergarten children. I think every school band in the county is there for it. I find it a lot more fun than the long. boring Christmas parade. The 10th is breakfast with Santa. After breakfast with Santa, Kaleb has a swim meet and the parade of boats is that evening. It turns out the 10th is family day where Hunter works, so River can't go with us. The 13th is Kayla's concert.
The 16th is Rick's work party, and the kids have early release on the 21st. So that's what is ahead for us! What's next up for you?
This weekend was the most stressful one for Jasmine yet. On Friday night she marched at a football game. Then on Saturday all the area schools competed in the district 2 Florida Band Assessment for marching bands. Her band got a superior, which was no surprise.
You can see Jasmine in white.
Then today the band had their big annual spaghetti fundraiser.
Jessica and Hunter were celebrating their anniversary, and Adam was at his reserve weekend.
We had a sweet group of girls. And Kealen so Ty wasn't the only guy. Yeah, I know you're wondering. They were so busy arguing with Rick about what to wear that they hadn't left the house yet when we were seated, so they missed it.
The band members were dressed as lumberjacks.
So the most stressful band weekend is now behind. There are three parades coming up --Veteran's Day, Christmas, and Millville.
In the next post I'll share about Ty and my date with River!
Monday is usually when I talk about what we did over the weekend. This weekend was stressful. Jasmine had to march at a football game Friday night. The band left school at noon on Friday. They went to an elementary school for a concert. Then they went to the game. They got back to the school to unload after 11, and she got to bed after midnight. She was up the next day to help us set up at a flea market. We were selling stuff to help the twins raise money for their mission trip. Unfortunately we didn't raise a lot because people wanted to pay a quarter for everything!!! I had all the clothes for $1 and people would walk up and ask if we'd take .25 for an almost new pair of men's pants. So frustrating. I had taken some of my books to sell, but never put them out because I knew they'd offer me a quarter! Tara came to pick Jasmine up at 9:30 to take her to the school to go to two competitions in AL. The bus had problems, so they missed the first one. They were supposed to be home at 10 p.m. but got home at midnight!
While Jasmine was at competition, we took the jet ski out one last time for the year. That's because the flea market was at the bay where we jet ski. Jessica ate lunch and took out a kayak and the jet ski once and then headed out. She'd been at the flea market since 6 a.m. setting up and had to work in the evening.
It was a beautiful day and hot even though it's cool in the mornings now.
We even went back and got the dogs after most people had left. First time the dogs had kayaked in a year.
Sadie's first time in the kayak.
Travis even went on the jet ski, although he wasn't sure he liked the noise.
I think they liked the grill hot dogs best of all.
