Prom Update

Alyssa has a date!  She asked a very nice sophomore boy to the prom.  He's a boy she's known since middle school.  They were in jazz choir together. His mom is a middle school teacher.  Now we have to shop for a dress.  Thankfully Macy's has all of their prom dresses on sale, and I have a $20 off coupon too.  I think we'll be able to get a dress for about $50.00.  Hurray!

Updates

Forrest's mom is back at home.  She's making great progress and was released from the rehab center after only two weeks instead of the three weeks originally recommended.  

Forrest is in the middle of a repair job at our house.  We noticed a strip of wall along the sliding glass door had soft spots and bubbling paint.  Forrest spent all day Friday searching for the leak.  He had to take down some drywall and found several pinhole sized spots all in a line in the drain pipe from the guest bathroom.  They look like nail holes.  The builders thought they were hitting studs when they were actually hitting pipe.  It took 12 years for the leaks to be big enough for us to notice.  Thankfully the area is small and there was very little mold. We're leaving the drywall off for the rest of the week so everything can completely dry out.

I'm onto my third Nevada Barr mystery.  I ordered them from the library and they haven't come in the order they were written, but that's not proving to be a problem.  I've now added Mesa Verde National Park to my list of places I have to visit some day.  That's where the Anasazi dwellings are most accessible to the public.  My sister and I have planned Mom's Get Away weekend for mid-April.  It will sure be nice to escape from the demands of husbands and kids for awhile.

Noah's basketball team had a successful end to their season. They finished 3-1 in a round robin style tournament the weekend of the 14th.  We had his basketball team party on Saturday night.  Noah and Forrest's first baseball game is tomorrow.  The league lost his team's jerseys over the summer and had to order new ones.  Hopefully they'll be here in time for the game.

Alyssa has scheduled a visit at Western Washington Univ. during spring break and a visit at Saint Martin's for the end of April.  She is preparing for her AP US History exam in May and her senior project proposal.  She hasn't been invited to the prom, but she's hopeful.  Although I think she's more interested in the dress than any of the boys at her school.

New Author

I've discovered a new (to me) mystery author.  Her name is Nevada Barr.  She write mysteries about a National Park Service law enforcement officer named Anna Pigeon.  Each book takes place in a different national park since rangers rarely stay put for more than a couple of years.  Barr weaves an intricate story amidst the beauty of our nation's national treasures.  Her descriptions are amazing.  She just released book #14.  I read a review of it in a magazine and was intrigued so I went to the library to start with book one, The Track of the Cat.   I'm really looking forward to working my way through this series.

Testing Season, Tweeners, and Basketball

It's come again, that time when teachers of the benchmark years (4th, 7th, and 10th) start to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because we haven't covered everything that might be on the test that decides whether our district has met AYP.  The poor high school teachers start their testing season March 16th.  Thankfully I have till after spring break to take my students through their final prep.  My grade level team and I are so concerned about our students that the final three weeks of March  will find us grouping for math so that we can better use our para-educators, and we'll be teaching math twice a day.  My focus will be on measurement.  

Our biggest problem with math this year is that we have two different sets of expectations to teach.  Our state instituted new math performance objectives this year, however, this year's state test was printed with the previous set of expectations. So I have to teach the old math standards so the kids will be prepared for this year's test and the new standards so they'll be ready for 5th grade.  

Forrest and I have officially become "tweeners." You know those people who still have kids at home and ailing parents to care for.  Forrest's mom is in the hospital.  The doctors originally thought she'd had a stroke.  It turned out to be bleeding on the brain rather than a clot, but the effects on the body are very similar.  Forrest spent three days in Spokane meeting with her doctors and the director of the rehab center that she'll be moved to late this week.  It looks like she'll be in the rehab center for three weeks relearning some of the skills she'll need to continue living on her own.  My mother-in-law is a very independent woman who likes to do things her way so I'm sure having to be on an institutional schedule will be trying for her. Thankfully she has three grown grandchildren in their late twenties and early thirties who live nearby who can help out between Forrest's visits to check up on her progress.

Noah's league tournament starts Friday night.  For once we're not in the same half of the bracket as the top two ranked teams.  They boys have a good shot at making it to the final round for the first time ever.  His team's fourth place finish has also earned them a spot in a tournament the following weekend.  In that tournament the top four teams in his league will compete against the top four teams from an Eastern Washington league.  And guess what? Baseball practice starts tonight.  I'm ready for basketball to be over so we can move onto the slower pace of the baseball season.