Saturday, March 13, 2010

what's the haps?

by teresa

Lauren has now officially moved out (the cot scheme worked). She is sharing an apartment with another woman from work and is planning to go back to school in the fall. Here's hoping! She texts me each night to tell me she is going to bed.

Nick had his festival band competition this morning. After months of tryouts, practices and four boxes of earplugs for the family, it has come to an end. Their performance was amazing and we (me, chris, ben, nanny jackie and nanny allen) cheered the loudest. What a gift he has in music. Now, if we can just get him on track in Algebra, I can stop the math tutor and switch to trumpet lessons. I can only imagine how much better he would play with a private instructor.

Ben has been obsessed with two things lately, reading and math. Why? Because it is a competition at school...why else? He is trying to earn 150 accelerated reader points by the end of the year so he can go on a special trip. He has about 80 and has kicked it in to high gear now he has entered the third quarter of the school year. We checked out every playaway (book on mp3) the library had and he goes to bed listening to it. Sounds like a good plan to me. The math obsession began this week when the school gave each kid an activation code to get on a First In Math website. You do different levels of math problems and earn points for each level correct. The scores are shown for the whole school to see and Ben must be #1. I have to pry him off the computer to go to soccer, dinner and bed. Then I noticed he had hooked up his wii to the internet and was playing it in his room when I thought he was asleep. We certainly never had this problem with the other children.

Chris has been busy getting our churches first Upward soccer league up and running. The evaluations were today and it seems to be a hit. I can't wait for the first games to begin in the next few weeks. We may even sign up Kaden, if he needs players on a kindergarten team. That will be a hoot.

This Monday is the third year that I have been involved making Easter eggs with the women's ministry. I am looking forward to spending my days with the ladies, it is truly my favorite time of the year.

2 comments:

Mom said...

I really enjoyed hearing Nick and the band play this morning. They sure have come a long way. I would have loved to hear them play more songs. I'm so proud of Ben, too. It's great that he loves math and reading. I hope Kaden gets to play Upward soccer. She'll probably do really good as long as nobody tried to take the ball away from her or accidently bumps into her.

Watkins said...

Love reading about your family adventures. Jamie is getting bored with her classes - no AR tests - no competition to motivate her. She did very well on the readathon though - 5000 pages. She was one of only about 30 kids (and a handful of 5th graders) in the whole school to do it though. She is ready for middle school and all it has to offer. I wish we could be there to order Easter eggs! We are on spring break this week.