Maria's Interim Report

Here's what Mrs. Pearsen wrote on Maria's interim that she brought home today.

"Maria is so honest, responsible, respectful, and sweet! I love being her teacher!"

We really can't ask for more than that, can we?

Maria's New Room

It's done! Ben stayed home today and dealt with the carpet installers, then put all the furniture back into the kids' rooms. That included putting Sam's bed back together and assembling Maria's new loft too. When the kids and I got home, we helped to put stuff back - we all (except Sam) pretty much worked right up until dinner. Maria did a lot of the work on her room, with my help. I did have to redirect her some, though, when she kept getting distracted looking at stuff instead of putting it away.

The thing I was most worried about was Sam's reaction. Even though he was with us when we bought the loft I don't think he really understood that Maria was getting a loft and he was not. But we emphasized that he could get a new room when he's eight too. And we did let him get a bed tent which he picked out - it just has not come in yet. Hopefully we'll have it the beginning of next week.

Anyway, he was pretty good. I could tell he was disappointed, and quickly went from being in her room to playing Wii where he could forget about it. We keep telling him that his tent will be here soon. He was a little weepy right before dinner and asked me to cuddle with him (I'm not sure that has ever happened - Maria does, but not Sam). But I think he's OK with it. We'll see if he fusses at bedtime. It's a life lesson that he can't always get something new when Maria does (and vice versa), but its not an easy lesson.

Both kids went to Sam's T-ball practice with Ben. As soon as I am done here I am relaxing. It was worth working all afternoon to get the house put back together, but I am exhausted!

Four Pairs of Slippers!

We emptied out both kids' rooms this afternoon so the new carpet can be installed tomorrow. Ben also tore up all the old carpet and padding. So the rooms are completely empty.

I had encouraged Maria to get rid of some things during this process. She threw away 4 containers of Play-Doh, but only because they were hard. That's it. She put some stuff in the basement, but didn't really get rid of anything.

When I was clearing out her closet, I found 4 pairs of slippers. All are within the correct size range, but I never see her wear any of them. Rita and I have tried to get her ones that she will like (per her requests), but she never actually wears them, except for the one "Pajama Day" at school each year.

So when I found these four pairs, I asked her why she needed 4 pairs when she doesn't wear any, and asked her which pairs we could get rid of today. Her answer - one pair. The other ones, she claims, she likes and will wear. Even though it almost summer, and she's never worn them much before.

I see now I have two choices. Either let her keep all the stuff I would like her to get rid of and deal with her room being full of crap until she goes to college. Or do what I used to when she was younger - wait until she has a sleepover and Grandma and Grandpa's and clean out her room myself.

Ballerina

Yesterday was the first dress rehearsal for Maria's ballet recital coming up in a few weeks. The dance studio rents time at Marysville High School, where the recital is performed in their auditorium, a few times before the actual recital. The stage they perform on is much bigger than their practice studio, so at the first rehearsal here there's always a lot of figuring things out and working with spacing, etc.

Maria's ballet and gymnastics class were scheduled for yesterday, so we were there between 5:00 and 8:00. We did have a 45 minutes break to meet Sam and Ben for dinner. Anyway, I had been dreading this for a while - thought I would be bored to tears the entire time.

And guess what? I actually enjoyed myself. I brought along my book, but didn't even read it. It was fun to see how everything goes together, and Maria has really gotten so much better at both dancing and gymnastics. This is her fourth year dancing, and she has really come a long way.

I also noticed that Maria was placed as a line leader for the large group number, which shows me she's one of the most dependable ones in the group. And Miss Patty (teacher of older ballet students and studio owner) spoke with me for a minute about Maria. She doesn't know Maria very well since Miss Krista (Patty's daughter) has always been Maria's teacher. But Miss Patty took over for Krista when she took a whole 3 weeks off after having her first baby recently, so Patty has worked with Maria some. Anyway, last night she told me that Maria has such good posture and is a great girl - "a true ballerina." So that was nice to hear too.

I don't think I will enjoy the rest of the rehearsals as much since I've seen all the dances now. But soon it will all be over and we'll have a nice relaxing summer break.

Except for T-ball, golf camp, 4-H (we REALLY need to start on that project!), vacations, etc.

Let's all join the 21st Century!

I try to keep this blog to only amusing stories from home, since amusing/annoying (can you tell the school year is almost over?) stories from work would make this blog A LOT longer than it already is. But today I'm really annoyed by something at work and I'm going to vent.

We are wrapping up teacher/school board negotiations for a new contract covering the next three years. I'm not directly involved, thank goodness, but yesterday we received a notice about the contract changes we will be voting on. As expected, salary increase was not great since the school district has spent all year saying they're broke. Regardless, I have confidence in our negotiations committee and believe its the best we're going to get. What I could not believe was what many of my fellow teachers that I eat lunch with were upset about. Are you ready for this injustice?

The school district is forcing everyone to have their checks direct deposited. That's right, no more paper checks that you have to go to the bank to cash/deposit.

This was an outrage to many of the people I eat lunch with. Several of them are women who are about 15-20 years older than me and still have to teach even though they are above usual retirement age since they took time off the stay at home with their kids. And they are bitter about this and make certain to get in their "I don't know how you leave your kids in Day Care all day" comments to make themselves feel better. But their bitterness is a whole other topic. This post is about them living in the stone age.

Anyway, these people do not trust that new "Internet" at all. Anyone will be able to see all of their personal information if their money goes directly to the bank. Why would they need to have their checks direct deposited if they have to go to the bank to get cash anyway?

Cash? Who needs cash anymore? Honestly, if it wasn't for the kids' school lunches and allowances we would probably never have cash.

But if they need cash to feel secure, I pointed out that we get cash using the cash back feature at just about any store you visit.

That's not safe, I was told. Okayyy...

I also pointed out that Ben and I have been taking advantage of direct deposit since we started teaching 15 years ago when it was a pretty new idea. And no one has ever "taken" our 2-week salary. Ben and I even now get out direct deposit receipts online and can store them in our e-mail archives. No paperwork and more easily accessible.

And when I mentioned I do all my banking online, they acted as though I might as well be posting my SSN and bank account information on a billboard for anyone to see. I told them I helped my Mom get set up with her online banking and she loves it now (You do love it, right Mom?).

These people don't even shop on the internet.

I know that I married a bit of a technology geek and we may be more dependent on technology than most people. But fighting direct deposit? And voting down a decent contract because of it? Come on.

Random Updates

Here's what's been going on the last few days:

Maria's room is finally painted. It's white with one accent wall that is blue. Ben put the final touches on last night, and tonight she will sleep in there, with the mattress on the floor and the rest of her furniture scattered about. It's not worth it to put the whole room back together because...

Wednesday the carpet will be installed. Both kids are getting new carpet (their current carpet is from when the house as built in 1989!). That means Tuesday after school Ben will move every piece of furniture out of their rooms and take up the old carpet and padding. We didn't want to pay extra to have them do it - depending on how this goes, it may be the last time we do it this way. Ben took Wednesday off to be here when it's installed - then he'll be able to put things back. Maria's loft (which is in pieces in the basement and garage) will also be out up then.

This means that everything will be done before Ben takes his band trip to Chicago Friday through Sunday, thank goodness.

Sam's third soccer game was today - I took some video which we'll post later. IF they were allowed to keep score, Sam's team would have won. They also would have won last week. Sam has yet to score any goals. He does get in there with the ball most of the time, he's just not as aggressive as some of his teammates. Grandma and Grandpa Keller came to watch today. It was cold and windy, but at least it didn't rain!

Ben will golf for the first time this season tomorrow. Looks like he'll have a nice morning before the wet and cold weather moves in tomorrow afternoon.

Maria is over halfway through the book I picked out for her at the library and says she loves it. I will believe it for certain when she actually finishes it. I have yet to start "Women in Flight." I'm trying to finish "Atonement" for book club first but it looks like that may not happen. I have to keep up my part of the bargain!

Victory!...maybe

Maria will never read anything that I suggest. When she finally picked up the Harry Potter books almost two years ago, it was only because the really smart boy in her class was readiing it and she wanted to prove that she could too. Forget the fact that I had suggested it many times. But once she got into it, she loved those books.

But she finished the 7th Harry Potter in the early fall. And she hasn't really been into any books for at home reading since. Many times, I've gotten her things at the library that she has rejected. I've taken her to the library to pick out her own books, which she never finishes. At parent/teacher conferences , her teacher and I spent most of the time discussing this problem. Mrs. Pearsen gave me many lists with suggestions, and we both stressed to her that these were not my ideas, because that meant she wouldn't even give them a chance. She tried some of those, but none of them really interested her. She does her 15 minutes of reading each night for homework, and writes about it, but still hardly ever finishes the book. And the whole "Nothing is as good as Harry Potter" excuse is getting old after 9 months! My main concern is that over the summer, when she is not in school, she won't be interested in anything enough to read on her own without my forcing her.

Tonight I had time to kill at the library while she was a t gymnastics. I picked out two books for her and two for Sam. I tried to get something different for Maria - a break from the fantasy books she keeps trying to replace Harry Potter with. One was "The Cricket in Times Square," which I read when I was her age. And the other was by an author that also writes adult chick-lit type books that I like, but this book was for little girls. I told her about the books on the way home from gymnastics, and asked her to give them a chance. When we got home, she picks up an old book off her shelf to read for her 15 minutes of homework.

I was not happy and confronted her about it. I told her if she would give my book choices a chance, she could pick any book of hers for me to read and I would read it. She cried and I had to leave her to give Sam his bath, but I really felt like I had gotten nowhere. But after her bath, she brought me a "Women in Flight" book and told me she would read my book choice for one week if I would read that for one week. After that week, she wants the right to give up the book if she doesn't like it. I told her we had a deal.

I can't say I'm looking forward to reading "Women in Flight, " but I may learn something. And reading the same book will give us an opportunity to discuss them.

So I feel like I may have won. I was reminded tonight how Sam is considered the stubborn child in this family, but Maria can be just as bad. She just expresses it differently.

What a Week!

Not only are things getting busier with Sam's soccer and T-Ball seasons overlapping, and Maria getting ready for her recitals (our first dress rehearsal is next Monday for 3 hours!), but we (O.K., Ben really) are painting Maria's room this week as well. She turns 9 next month, and is growing out of her pink flowers and butterfly theme that I picked for her when she turned two. So she's been looking in catalogs since the beginning of the year, and decided on a polka dot/stripe theme in mostly blue and green with a little bit of pink.

Then we had to decide when to paint. Ben didn't want to do it over spring break, and I kind of wanted it done before summer vacation so it would be like a birthday present. So we chose this week, mostly because we didn't have anything out of the ordinary and this weekend is free too.

Monday after school Ben stripped the wallpaper. Only some of it took some wall with it. That meant he had to do a bunch of patching yesterday, sanding, taping, and priming today, and he will actually get some paint on the walls tomorrow. In the meantime, I am taking both kids to all of their stuff and cooking and doing dishes so that he is free to work in the room. Usually, this time of year when Ben is less busy, he helps out quite a bit. So we both are exhausted (although I do think I have the easier job).

We are hoping the room can go back together over the weekend. Maria has been sleeping on her mattress on the floor of the front room all week. But the carpet isn't here yet, and so there's no sense in putting her room completely back together until the new carpet is installed. So it looks like things could be torn up up for a couple more weeks! And it's already driving me crazy, even though I haven't even been here all that much. I just can't wait until its all done.

Earth Day

In celebration of Earth Day, or maybe just a coincidence, our re-usable shopping bags arrived today. We ordered them last week, after a dinner conversation sparked by a new Science World magazine that I had been using with my classes. I knew that both paper and plastic bags were bad for the environment, but this article pointed out some alarming details that I hadn't heard about. We have discussed in the past how we should just buy some canvas bags, keep them in the trunk of the van, and use them on every visit. But we never actually looked into buying them and convinced ourselves that recycling the plastic ones was good enough.

Anyway, that same night Ben started looking on the internet for shopping bags and found some that were reasonably priced and made from recycled materials themselves. We were amazed at the selection and price range of these bags. Starting with his usual Sunday grocery shopping this weekend Ben will use those bags. And he may be the only person in Marysville - we've never seen anyone else use them.

Over the past two years, we have changed almost all of our light bulbs to the super efficient fluorescent type, stepped up our recycling efforts for aluminum, plastic, and paper, and quit buying/drinking bottled water (when we got our new softener at the beginning of the year). Still don't have a Hybrid yet, but every little bit helps!

P.S. Sam's Kinderpaws group have been recycling there and talking about Earth Day a lot. They "recycled" old T-shirts (Tye-dyed them) and all wore them to the Earth Day celebration today. He takes aluminum cans out of our recycle bin, puts them in a bag, and takes them to Kinderpaws to recycle. So cute!

Huh?

Ben: Sam, do you want to go with Mommy to take Maria to her piano lesson, or stay here with me while I strip wallpaper off the walls?

Sam: I want to go ice skating.