The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

* Great day teaching at RES. I think I lost Ollie, who had tears standing in his eyes the way he always does when he doesn't understand something right away and goes into the shutdown mode, in our discussion of rhyme scheme in poetry, and it was probably even worse as we got into accented and unaccented syllables in scansion. But it was productive, we covered good ground, and I have some very fun students in my class. The IEW writing class went even better. We watched a video and there was a near revolt when I mentioned working again with writing from the Sea Wasp outline, so I substituted their homework assignment outlines and paragraphs for our who/which exercise, and it went well. I feel like most of the kids are very comfortable now with making a keyword outline from a short source text and with combining lines of the outline by using a who/which clause. Next week we will be adding a few more elements rather quickly so that we can progress to more interesting compositions. I'm really liking the video format, which is helpful for them as reinforcement and helps me to know exactly what I'm going to present the next day in a logical and systematic manner.

* Amazing camping trip this weekend. Our homeschool group now does several campouts a year, and this was as memorable as the rest. We went to Bear Creek Lake State Park and had a nice loop that allowed our whole group to be together near a clean and well-equipped bathhouse, hiking trails, and within a short walk to the lake. Many games of capture the flag, zombie tag, pet wars, card games like Spit and Kings, and who knows what else were played. There was kayaking, chasing, burning everything (including the lid to my Sigg bottle) they could get their hands on, truth or dare, sleepovers in other people's tents, and clubhouse making. The setting was lovely, the weather perfect, and the company unparalleled.

* Kerry ran his first triathlon this weekend, and he is very proud to have made it through without stopping and without fail. Now he wants to sell the Bowflex, which has been gathering dust, to buy a road bike. I'm a bit cautious about spending so much so soon, and a road bike is quite an investment, even from Craig's list, even from Ebay. The Triathlon was at Lake Anna, a nuclear plant heated body of water, so even though it was October, which is a questionable month for open water swimming without a wetsuit, the water was about 84 degrees. Now he is chomping at the bit to do it again. Perhaps this will be the fire under him that will drive him to exercise daily!

* Frances is going to be travelling to Washington, DC this Friday with her dance company to perform at the Department of Education. My source isn't always totally reliable, but I hear that Michele Obama might be there to see the performance. Frances leaves early in the morning in the van with the other company members and will be one of just a few children dancing. She is so excited! Since the election, she has had a bit of an obsession with the Obamas. She plays with her Sasha and Malia Obama paper dolls, she wrote a letter to Sasha asking to meet her, and she received a letter back, with an official presidential seal, from Michele Obama, and she is fascinated by wher ethey go to school and how they deal with their family's fame. I truly hope that she does get to shake hands with the First Lady!

* Frances is reading so well now. It's unbelievable how much progress she has made since May. Tonight she asked me to find her a fairy tale to read, since she likes to read to Rutledge, and she read The Three Bears from a book that was definitely not written for emergent readers. She went through page after page of dense, single spaced typewritten text (this is from an Oak Meadow collection designed for parents to use for storytelling). What is most exciting is that she is just so motivated and wants to read and show what she knows. I think she is still surprising herself that she can just look at things and know what they say. While we were in the checkout line buying Gatorade today, she looked over at a tabloid magazine and asked, "What does 'Backs Out of Divorce' mean? Or she'll ask, "Why is there a clearance sale there?" or "Why is that road named Lake Harbour and why does harbour have an our in it?"

* Walter reached a score of 8-8 in his Bantam tennis match today and went to a tiebreaker, where he ultimately lost. He was in tears from the intensity and just the confusion of why the game wouldn't end when he thought he had already finished. It was an insult to have to do all of this switching and odd score-keeping with the tiebreaker when he had been up 8-7 and that should have been it. Believe me, Walter, I've thought that many more times than you have. Just let the game end already, and let it be mine. We lost all 5 lines today, which is close to our usual team score for a match, but I was incredibly proud that he had such a close score. His past two matches ended with him losing 8-1. He's no Roger Federer yet, but the improvement over the beginning of the season is striking.


The Bad:

* Ollie lost his tennis match and is discouraged. We need to get out frequently to practice.

* We couldn't go to the County Band Night because of the "Ugly" below.

* Our new purple sea slug in our aquarium disappeared without a trace.

The Ugly:

* As the evening progressed, the pieces all fell into place and we realized that Kerry's missing iPod, my missing cell phone, and two missing digital cameras, one of which was going to be returned to Wal-Mart for a refund today because I ended up choosing a different one, were all connected. It seems that they were stolen from our cars while we were unloading triathlon and camping equipment. All told, they represent about $1300 worth of items, and although our homeowners insurance will cover the loss, our deductible is about $1000, so it probably isn't even worth filing the claim. The worst part is that I'm without a cell phone until we settle this problem. I still have another year on my contract, and I desperately want an iPhone, but we are locked into a 2 year contract with Verizon and Kerry doesn't want to switch to AT&T anyway because their coverage is poor, including being unavailable in the Philip Morris production facility where he works. I don't want to pay hundreds for a cell phone that I'll only have one year, and I liked the one I had because it was shock and water resistent, designed for construction sites. And worst of all, all of my camping pictures on that camera and my beach pictures are gone. Not to mention I don't have my good camera any more. There were two other car break-ins in our little neighborhood last night, so perhaps they were all related. It's been almost 2 years since a big rash of things like this happening. And while it is most likely kids trying to get some extra cash (or beer--fridge break-ins are really a big thing out here in suburbia), it's very costly to us.

So there's the rundown of the weekend and day. Upward and onward to tomorrow. I have some LLL work to do in the morning, my kids have a ton of schoolwork to do to catch up after the weekend and RES classes today. They have homework for Latin class in the afternoon, they have math homework that they should have been doing for days before now, and they need to catch up on trumpet and flute practice. Here's to less of a mixed bag of a day tomorrow.