A note from the teacher

On the same day that everyone forgot masks, we got covid tests (yuck, but not so bad), and I got the bad news that my surgery was canceled... I got this good email from Yoda's 6th grade math teacher. 

"I just wanted to send you a quick email to share how nice your son has been to one of our new students at school.  This student has come to us from Japan, and speaks very little English.  However, to ensure he feels included in the group work, [Yoda] has been typing to him on the Chromebook using Google translate.  It just warms my heart, so I wanted to share.  He’s also doing very well in math!"

My sister's visit

My sister came to take care of me and the kids while I was recovering from my surgery.  She came anyway and distracted me from feeling terrible, even though my surgery was canceled because the hospitals are full.

One thing we did was go to Mimi's orchestra concert.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dnTmYuPvbdYcAlRrBjCWhrOW1x9I5hDZ/view

Hopefully that links works if you want to hear them play the Beatles song "ob la di ob la da"

Mimi is on the far right side of the stage. 

A little bit from us

 

 

While putting up a quilt, "First we put on the backing, then the batting, then the top."

Parker, "why isn't it called the topping?!"

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While Yoda talked about FDR, Mimi asked, "who was he again?  Oh, yeah, he was in Annie." (That's a theater kid for you!)

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While watching a minute of a Steelers football game, "Are they called the Steelers because they steal the game?"

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While I was missing Parker, now that he is gone away to school, "it must be a long time since I last checked in with Parker" then I looked at my phone and realized we had texted like 4 hours earlier. 

Slide

 

Off to school part 2

 Parker is off to college, yikes.  Photos below

Greg and Parker took off early on Wednesday, I stayed home to make sure the younger kiddos went to school and stuff.  Every year since he was 3 Parker has been totally ready for school, running off to the door without even looking back.  College made him pretty nervous and that felt out of character.  But he slowly warmed up to college as he was able to make a schedule and book a dorm room, he felt better and more excited. 

Parker moved in and hasn't seen much of his roommate.  He seems nice and laid back, which will be good, since Parker has already locked himself out of his room twice. 

He attended all the new student orientation meetings and met people.  The new parent meetings made us feel better, but we still felt a little like this...

They said, we work for you, contact us.  They also said, when they look at applications they look to see if the student will be a good fit, and then they consider grades to make sure they won't drown once they get there. In other words, your student belongs here. 

Greg spent time visiting with family and hiking.  Their last morning they hiked to the Y together. 

We did tons of prep before they left, and I'm so glad we did.  We missed a few things and it would have been a pain to have a million things to track down, instead of just a couple things.  Next time (hopefully there will be 2 next times!) we will shop earlier, and make sure the bed is as comfortable as possible.  And also bring quarters for laundry because of the coin shortage, ugh.  

Everyone will miss him, he's so nice to have around. 

First day 2021

School starts this week and I'll post photos soon...

First off, Mimi went to her first day of 10th grade.  Officially the first day at the main high school is just for Freshmen, but her little high school has their scheduling day the first day. 

Fall 2021

Parker isn't off to school just yet, but he did heroically wake up early just to drive Mimi to school.  Such a nice brother.  We then spent the day fighting the crowds of parents and college students buying stuff at Target. 

Yoda wasn't even awake before they left.  Middle school is the last of the schools to start their day.  He's pumped to take the bus with a few of our neighbors and friends. 

Parker Graduates

It took us a while to wind down from all of the end of year celebrations, and to gather all the photos. 

*First his little high school.  

He attends a typical high school and classes, but he also attends their "Experiential Program" in a different building.  There are smaller classes, he calls his teachers by their first names, and they have old-school college style class scheduling.  

The big draw for us is that one week out of every year he picks his own curriculum called Interim, and the last semester of his senior year is called Walkabout, where he determines what he'll do for 2 eight-week sessions.  It's also a tight community of less then 150 students for the whole school (compared to the main campus high school that has close to 2000 students). 

It's a beautiful and quirky Tudor style building down the road from the district's 2 main campus high schools. 
 

One more time up the tree!  Can you spot him? 

The Saturday started off with the students sharing a 15 minute talk about their own Walkabout.  (Then we could listen to up to 5 other student's talks.)  It was really interesting to see how the students grew over their time doing something so different then just school.

Here is Parker talking about his time doing voice acting.  8 weeks with a coach and 8 weeks on his own. 

After a lunch break they started the wonderful senior recognition ceremony.  It was very personalized.  Each Senior invited someone, often a member of the staff, to share something about them and introduce them to the audience.  

Parker had an English teacher that he's become pretty close to over the years to talk about him.  He shared some class jokes and some heartfelt kindness.  No kid has it easy, our kid definitely hasn't, but it was nice to hear from a teacher who is on his side.  

Then this is totally different, the students circle the audience and they stretch a ribbon on their shoulders.  Staff members come around and snip the ribbon, so each student gets a portion of the ribbon.  It's symbolic of them being in the community and then being released I think.  I'm trying to get the video off my phone, it's cute.  

This is minutes after the ribbons were cut.  They then get to wear the ribbon at the main campus high school graduation-- see below...

This is the spot where he often ate lunch. 

*Ok, that was a very long, emotional Saturday.  Sunday was a quiet Seminary graduation where I didn't take any pictures.  But it was a tricky 4 years of seminary-- early morning seminary is always tricky.  I'm going to write about it here just for preservation, if this doesn't make sense, that's ok. 

Freshman year-- because of where we live, it wasn't clear where he'd attend seminary.  Most of the high schoolers in our ward congregation attend a different high school and we were also a relatively new ward so we didn't have a teacher.  So we found the students who attend his main campus high school in a different ward, he didn't know most of them.  Over the year (as often happens and it's understandable) a bunch of kids dropped out.  Then mid-year the teacher moved from just a few blocks from the high school, to a very inconvenient neighborhood.  

Sophomore year-- a new hope.  A few new families moved in and it looked like we could make the suggestion that we have our own seminary class.  An amazing teacher took over, it helped that he lives in a perfect spot for the high school.  But as things go, students dropped out and over time, Parker was pretty much alone by the end.  (Greg often attended so they wouldn't be alone.)

Junior year-- the amazing seminary teacher stuck with Parker!  Then the pandemic and yup, Parker and his teacher kept seminary going over zoom.  Now it was called Zoom-inary.  They moved the time to 9am and I started attending with Parker.  All this and they switched curriculums around at some point so Parker hasn't had any Old Testament for seminary, which is a bummer to miss out on. 

Senior year-- we lost our amazing seminary teacher but got 2 new amazing ones.  They were determined to make it work through the pandemic.  Our school district was all remote, and the other school district was hybrid, so between the two them they had 2 classes, one at 6am, one at 12noon.  This way students could decide and go to the one that worked best for their schedule each day.  This also meant there were lots of students attending, including Mimi! 

They kept it this way through all our changes (remote, hybrid, remote, hybrid, all-in).  When both school districts switched to all-in, there was just a few weeks left in the school year.  They continued all classes at 6am over zoom and the teachers switched off weeks.  Parker kept going, even though his schedule was bonkers with play practice, working a few days where he could, Walkabout, and a few classes at the main high school.  But that's what youth is for, right?!  

*Monday and the main high school graduation.

It wasn't clear until about 2 weeks before that day where the graduation would take place.  Normally it's held in the convention center on a Sunday, both big high schools, one right after the other during the day.  But a couple years ago we were told we would have to move to Monday or Tuesday night at the University's basketball stadium because of construction.  I think this actually proved to be a plus, because there's less demand for a Monday or Tuesday and we were able to keep the basketball stadium, where other school districts had to do drive-through graduations in the high school parking lots like last year.

What do I like least about graduation? 

Crowds- no problem!  Everyone was limited to 4 seats because Covid restrictions were still in-place.  

Families cheering so you can't hear the next kid's name- no problem!  I'm not sure why they did this but they paused a full 5-10 seconds after each student's name so we could hear every kid's name.  I loved this.  We did the math and it added maybe 30 minutes to the night, but so worth it!  

Finding a good seat- no problem!  Because of Covid they had to assign us seats through ticketmaster! 

Here are some photos of the night...

Panoramic photo

He's in there somewhere...

 

 

Here he is with his ribbon from the little high school and his Theater cords.  Just days before the end of his high school career he did the initiation that earned him these cords. I had no idea what they were for -- I guess there's all sorts of them! 

*Tuesday was chill, Parker could stay home and relax while his younger siblings went to school.  The elementary school held a tea for students who were graduating and still in the area.  It could have been better if some of the kids he knew had gone, mostly he chatted with teachers which was very nice.  

*Wednesday, Parker took off to the little school's field day.  They had bouncy house type inflatables and lunch.  It was a great day to finish off a busy and high energy week. 

Last Day 2021

Just for a reminder, here's a link to the start of Remote learning in the fall.

And here's a link to the start of Hybrid learning in the fall.  

Mimi is our only child not changing schools next year.  

May 2021

Yoda is off to middle school next year.  This was our last of 13 years at our little elementary school.  When we moved here, we found a month-to-month, furnished apartment and after a bit of looking found the house we bought and stayed.  

Here's Yoda on his way in.  They found the principle on the roof in a Shark suit!  That's the gym teacher taking a picture and posting it to Twitter. 

 

I have a few pictures of Parker and I'll post them soon...

Speaking of baby photos

Parker's school needs a baby photo for the yearbook, and I can't decide which one to send in...  If you have a preference, comment below :)

A) Swing
 

B) Book 

C) Hoodie

D) Beach 

 

And here's his senior photo just for fun

This week

Parker started his Senior year internship, called a walkabout.  

On Monday he got lost driving home during the 40+ minute drive.  On Tuesday he picked a scab and came home COVERED in blood.  On Wednesday he texted to say he was coming home early.  I was panicked that he had offended his mentor and something was wrong.  Nothing was wrong, the guy just needed to go home for something.  On Friday he met with the other senior walkabout students in a class called walkabout seminar, but I like to call it the talkabout-walkabout.  

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A few minutes into watching Home Alone, Parker says, "you know this guy is like 40 now?!"

Me and Greg, "yeah, we've know who he is cause he's close to our age."

A few minutes later, Me to Greg, "So Mackle Culkin was is in [name of TV show], it was really funny."

Parker had never heard the name of the actor in Home Alone, "What's a 'Mackleculkin'?"

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Me, like 30 years ago, "Women are like 1/2 the world, there should be a woman as president"

Person I was talking to, "NO!  That would mean the wrong things are happening in our country!"

Me, stunned into silence.  

Me this week, SO SO happy that we are at least a little closer to a woman as president, and I hope whoever it was that I was talking to 30 years ago is ok. 

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Me to Greg, "when you go for a haircut, please drag Parker along, don't give him a choice."

Later, Greg to Parker, "I'm going for a haircut..." (trying to figure out what to say to make him go with him)

Parker, "Oh, do you want a ride?" (trying to get out of the haircut he knows is coming)

The lady didn't have time for him until next week, he's lucky for now... 

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Parker, while watching a TV show that had people speaking Spanish, "Oh, my gosh, that's so weird.  I understand what they are saying...."

First Day 2020

We switched to a hybrid schedule a few weeks back, I grabbed a photo before they took off.

   Mimi, Freshman in high school!

 

Parker, Senior in high school!  

Mimi and Parker attend seminary at home over the computer and then drive off to their little high school together.  Halfway through the day they drive to the big high school for Orchestra.  

Poor Mimi has to go back and forth 2 more times during the day to get to all of her classes.  Fortunately we only go to school 2 or 3 days a week, so it's not that exhausting for her.  Parker did similar things his sophomore year.  It's a short drive though. 

Parker takes 3 classes at the big high school so he just stays there.  Then they drive home together.  Sometimes he'll have to stay for play practice, or he drives home early because he doesn't have a class.  If he does that then I go get Mimi at the end of the day.  Mimi's last class of the day is Latin and that teacher seems very funny because she always has good things to talk about!

Yoda, last year of elementary school- 5th grade! 

 

While the weather is good Yoda rides his bike with a buddy down the street a (Greg goes too because people on their way to work are TERRIBLE drivers and we want to make sure he's safe)

First Day 2020

(sorry this is very late) 

Just trying to keep things together amid this nonsense pandemic.  First our school district was going to be hybrid, then we were told we would be all remote until the end of October.  Now we are planning to go back at the end of Sept, we'll see...

For now this is how the kiddos are doing their school work:

Yoda is in this little nook between the laundry room and the kitchen table, we moved out the cubbies that held coats and stuff.  He is using a table we bought when we first moved into the house (off of Craig's list).  It's purpose changes all the time: game table, puzzle table, now a school desk.  He's using the computer that we bought specifically for school work and Skype a few years ago. 

Mimi is on the comfy couch in the living room, on a desk that we lucked out finding on Craig's list.  I wanted something pretty, not a folding table.  It looks a lot like the table Yoda is using.  Her computer is a loaner from school that she usually gets, even without a pandemic to help her with her reading and writing. 

Parker is on our previous kitchen table in the office/dinning room, it keeps getting moved around too.  In the spring he and Mimi were both using it in the living room on that comfy couch, but that was when video chats were rare.  Now that they have classes all day they need to have some space between them.  We brought back the little comfy couch that used to be in here years ago.  And he's using Greg's laptop. 

Last? Day

On the day that was supposed to be the last day of school I suddenly realized that we should take some photos.  Here's the link to just a few short months ago, but it feels like years. 

Mimi at the end of 8th grade.

Parker at the end of 11th grade. 

Yoda at the end of 4th grade.  

They even put on backpacks for me :)

Art at home

Yoda has been given assignments by his gym, art and music teachers to do some learning at home.  We've enjoyed the art the most, of course!  I pull out paints, cray-pas, clay and they are shocked that I have all these goodies hidden away.  We will definitely be doing much more this summer