Time Trials

Time trials for track have been going on at Southridge for the last week. Andrew got 8th in the 100m, not his best event, especially in the cold rain, and certainly not bad for a sophomore. He got 4th in the 400m with a time of 55 seconds, and so tonight he runs the 400m and 4x400m relay for varsity at their pre-season home meet against Gresham. He's nervous the coach will throw him in the 800m run at some point this season - a grueling event, but one he's very good at.

In other big, huge Andrew news: he did not set the curve in AP American History, he broke it! That means his score was so high his teacher opted to NOT use it as the high end of the curve. I'm a proud poppa!

Also still a sick poppa. Lungs are better (yay for lungs not heavy with crud! A vast improvement!), but random exhaustion and now a sore throat still plague me.

Last Day of School!

Mali is wearing one of three smiley-face shirts that she, Hannah, and Rachel bought so they could all match on the last day of school, and they're going to have everyone sign them. Mali cleverly attached three different color short sharpies to a necklace so she'll have them with her.
She's out early today, at 2:40. Andrew will be home by 11:30. It's sunny and warm here - ~73, so maybe they'll go to the pool. Andrew was there all afternoon yesterday with Rian, Tiana, and Eric (and Tiana's charge, Cody.)

ACT Prep

Freshman take a special test to prepare for the ACT. Andrew got a perfect score (rounded up), and got a nice certificate and a nylon shoulder bag in recognition of it. He was just happy he had the highest score in his group of friends, missing only three questions total out of around 140. Matias only missed one. But it's not a competition.

Tomorrow is the last day of school!!!! The kids are very excited.

Mali goes to school! and: Fun with sleep.

Mali appeared symptom-free this morning, I think because she was heading to school with a huge bag of presents for her teachers.

I went to bed early last night, while everyone was still in the room wrapping presents. It was kind of fun drifting in and out listening to them figure out how to wrap large spherical objects - though the one time I woke with Andrew staring an inch away from my face was a little disquieting.
So of course I woke up at 2:30, sure it must be somewhere near morning. By 3:00 I was up and working. At 4:45, just as I decided it was time to go back to bed, I heard Andrew's alarm go off. So I kept working until he hit his alarm two more times, then convinced him to eat breakfast and drove him, Eric, and Rian to their 5:30 swim practice and got bagels for Mali. THEN (6:00) I went back to bed. Then I got to sleep until Susy got up, showered, and started poking at boxes: poke, poke, poke, looking for a small one for some reason. THEN I got to sleep until my daughter decided I needed to get up. At least her bright and bobbly head at 8:00 AM was a reasonable alarm.
Now it's time for caffeine, and more work.

Straight A's for Mali!!!!!!

Since Mali was in 3rd grade our standing offer has been that as soon as she gets a straight A report card we would let her get her ears pierced. This was very convenient for us, since elementary school gives out only S's and O's and other random letters.
Today, Mali's first middle school report card came in the mail. Tension was a little high. She has taken the start of this school year very seriously, paying a lot of attention to her grades.
She took her report card up to her room to open it in private, you know, just in case. I knew we were okay when I heard a squeal, quickly followed by much dancing at the top of the stairs.

Mali chose Chinese food for her celebratory dinner, and we just returned from China Bay. She's up in her room now with Led Zeppelin cranked up on her stereo. Her friend Rachel's favorite song is The Immigrant Song, and apparently Mali has been influenced.

We've got Saving Grace from Netflix. I hadn't updated our queue lately. We're going to watch it tonight so we can quickly get back into Veronica Mars.

First day of new classes

Andrew replaces chemistry and Japanese with health and CAPS - Critical Analysis and Problem Solving. I remember he thought CAPS would be dumb, but he says it is surprisingly fun and interesting, though the teacher has a lot of rules. He brought me the list of them to sign. The rules remind me of our Freshman Engineering classes: assignments for grades must be in pen, pencil is only okay for homework - which must be done in a spiral binder and never removed, etc. It was Matias's favorite class, and Andrew has the same teacher.
The first day everyone had to give one interesting fact about themselves. Andrew's was "I put peanut butter on pancakes." Then they got to bring up any question they wanted for classroom discussion. They spent a lot of time talking about why they are here - why people exist in the universe.
Andrew says health looks like a lot of busy work. It sounds uninspired, not much different than the health class I took as a freshman in Springfield, Virginia. At least my teacher was a cool old lady paramedic.

Mali's new class is art. She says the first day is always boring, and has high hopes for the rest of the class. She asked Andrew if he signed the exacto knife pledge. She looked for his name, but only found Olivia's because hers was really big.

New Trimester -AND- Storm cancels swim meet

I drove Andrew and Eric to school early this morning after we bought bananas for the pre-meet, carb-loading breakfast. He called soon after to say tonight's meet is canceled: Forest Grove doesn't have school today because of the storm.

The new trimester starts today! Mali gets to start Art, and Andrew is done with Chemistry and Japanese for awhile. Yesterday they were out of school to give the teachers a chance to pull the trimester grades together. (Oregon is a teacher-friendly state, for the most part.)

Andrew complained about yesterday's day off not being a day off. He woke up after 11:00 and the next thing he knew we were in the car to meet Susy for allergy shots and lunch. We went for shots at noon since Andrew had swimming practice later in the afternoon (coaches don't get days off.) It took Andrew and I a long time to get to the hospital for the shots. Here's why. I exited the highway there, after driving through the edge of the massive puddle in the photo, which was still a couple of feet deep. if I'd seen the photo I would have known to just re-enter the highway, but instead we took a long detour. Getting home wasn't much better because we got stuck behind a fire truck removing a fallen tree from Greenway Ave. I dropped Andrew off at Rian's and they got to hang out a very short time before I picked them and Maddie up for swim practice. Afterwards Andrew had time for a shower and then was off to the boy's swim team party, where they watched 300 and ate pizza.

Mali was at Zoë's all morning making a gingerbread house out of graham crackers and anything else they could find. She says it came out really nice, and wants to save it until after Christmas. She had lunch there and then came home to change and go ice-skating with Rachel. She loves ice-skating, and must be getting better - she was happy she only fell twice.

Andrew got home from the party in time for us to watch Veronica Mars. I limited us to one episode so the kids could get to bed before 10:00. Andrew was very unhappy about that, but was in bed asleep before I was done saying goodnight to Mali.

Finals week.

Not much happening here today. Last night we watched Veronica Mars, all four episodes on the DVD.
Today and tomorrow Southridge gets out at 11:00 because of finals. I'm expecting Andrew soon, with news of his Japanese and Chemistry tests. Then he goes back for swim practice this afternoon sometime.
Today's theme for Highland Park's week of craziness or whatever is: crazy colors. Mali did not rise to the bait this morning.

Crazy Hair Day

Rachel didn't come over. Here's what Mali came up with for Highland Park Middle School's Crazy Hair Day:

Update - I like this photo better:
(plus she's got that eye-twitch thing going on.)

Another Early Morning

Andrew was up before 5:00 to go to early practice this morning. He has a math final today, but tomorrow is his hard day: Japanese and Chemistry. My perfectionist is worried, but he has a solid A in all his classes.
Mali has finals coming up too, but I don't know much about them. But I know that tomorrow is some kind of crazy hair day, and Rachel may come over before school so they can coordinate.

Maliday Schmaliday

Mali's maliday is turning into a bad holiday - yesterday we got another estimate for putting in hardwood floors, and it was good from a guy who's work we've seen, so we're having it done - This weekend - while we're gone to Crater Lake and Medford. So we have to get everything out of the downstairs today. Mali's plan was not to spend her extra time off cleaning and moving things.

Yesterday was extraordinarily hectic. We discovered Andrew's game didn't start until 5:45 instead of 4:30 like always, so our evening got all squished up. Andrew played great, and they tied 1-1 at Sunset High School (at sunset!). They went down by a goal right away, ferociously fought back to tie it at 1-1 in the first half, then got clobbered the second half but managed to hold on to the tie.
We rushed from the game to Mali's teacher conference at 7:30. Dinner was reheated pizza at 8:30. Happy Chompo to me.

Mali's conference went great: Her science/social studies teacher has Mali all figured out, and so Mali should be poised for greatness this year. And Mali talked to her large scary math teacher and sorted out her missing assignments. So the rest of her weekend is free and clear, except for the cleaning and moving part.

Susy took this great photo of the game at halftime. All my photos turned out blurry - it may have been too dark to capture all the motion going on.

School Orientation

Mali finally found out her hall Thursday when the mail came. She called Andrew from Rachel's house to check it at 3:00 - and there was much rejoicing, as she and Rachel are in the same hall, though different classes. They will share lunch period and possibly some specialty classes. Red Hall, formerly known as 'A' Hall.

Friday was orientation day for both kids/schools. Neither one was particularly informative, they still don't get their full schedules until the first day of school.