Random Tid Bits

1. My older sister stopped by to give Mica a bag of clothes from my oldest nephew. Get this Mica's taller than him. The bag went to Isaak. He took in most of the pants. The shirts that my sister raved about were from J. Crew. I thought maybe Isaak wouldn't like them because they had pink on them. Not the case. He didn't like them because they are button down. "Mom that's just too much work!" He has a lot of clothes already, so I didn't push the issue. 





2. Travis is taking a class where he has art critiques on his work. It's pretty hard because his work takes so long to produce. He's been trying quicker things. He's making things out of found materials more and more. I guess the class is good in the fact that it's pushing him to use different materials other than bronze or steel.
   
   He has to read gobs of pages, for the class. Much of it is very abstract, and hard to retain. Then they discuss it. That gets hard with having kids. 


3. We had flash flood warnings on Thursday. If this is going to be another year like last year, I don't know how the farmers are going to last. :(


4. We've had some turn around with Admissions Reps. This isn't a bad thing. I actually like the person in charge way more than the other guy that was in charge before. Someone was hired under her. I don't know him at all. We were sitting in a staff meeting. I had my mug that says, I survived another meeting that should have been an email. No one has said anything about it the last 2 or 3 meetings. A few people saw it, and laughed. New Guy pointing at it, "So what do you mean by that?" I replied with, "It just means I'm silly. I even make fun of myself." He didn't respond. I don't think he approved. 





5. I decided I'd spend an evening entering giveaways. I hadn't purged in doing that for awhile. Many are multi blog giveaways. Ones where you have to like 15 blogs Instagram posts, some comments, then they send you to 15 FB pages, on to 15 Twitter pages, and it just kept going...Do you like these types of giveaways? I just about had carpal tunnel after entering a few. When you look at the entries it's 1,000's of people. My chance of winning is like 0 to none. 

Our Meeting With the Principal and Teacher Went Really Good!

I didn't want to leave my readers hanging...so the meeting with Isaak's Principal and teacher went really good!

We didn’t go in attacking anyone. I was afraid I would cry, and didn't. It was great we had everything written down, so we didn't forget things.

We do know Isaak has filled his own plate too full. Two things in particular are towards the end of his school day: Chorus and Student Council. Student Council doesn't happen all the time. But they have meetings, and rotate with taking care of recyclables. When those things happen Isaak has to hurry to go to Safety Patrol. Then he can't get back in his classroom to get his homework. He sometimes misses the end of the day announcements. He may drop one. He’s a people pleaser, so that might be hard.

He tanked a test, so we talked about that. He’s usually great with math, but word problems get him. He’s to practice online. The teacher is going to be more informative on when tests will happen. Right now we only know the day before. If he doesn’t have his math book with him, then we can’t help him. He didn’t know what deposit or withdrawal meant, so vocabulary talk before tests. Other kids struggled with that too.

It turns out because Isaak’s a people pleaser, he does too much homework. She’ll give him every other problem, and he does all of them. He thinks he’s being ultra good by doing that.

I talked to the teacher about delivery. Like instead of saying, “You have 14 pages of fun work to do by next week, or you don’t get to watch movies with the rest of the class.” Say, “You have to do 2 pages a day out of this packet, for a week.”

The Principal will be meeting with him to talk to him about his thoughts. He knows who Isaak is, but has never really had to get to KNOW him because he's a good student that pretty much stays out of trouble. The Principal wants to get to know Isaak more.

We have a follow up meeting in January.

I do think the teacher is hanging onto busy work too much. She loves these sheets that has a big scrambled up long word, and the kids have to make shorter words out of the letters. Then there's another side that has synonyms on it. I suggested to keep doing them, but also having reading with questions that go with a book of of their choice. I don’t know that, that will happen.

I guess they are having more recess time, but Isaak didn’t think so.

The Principal thinks Isaak is too tuned into others emotions, which their are some bad apples in the class. He’s also full of empathy, so that will be hard to overcome.

I made it clear that this is our first year with problems. It’s not 1 person’s fault, but we have to work with one another to figure out why he’s struggling.

The view of it seems that he filled his own plate too full, and for some reason hasn't connected well with this teacher.

One thing is great: Isaak's teacher has gotten him to work faster. That's always been a struggle. He's just a slow poke. His teacher last year tried using a timer, and that sort of worked. His big eyes kept glancing at the timer. She shows the class a photo on a screen, puts it up for a certain period of time, turns it off, and makes them write down all they can about the photo. It's cut his test taking time down a lot! He still tests well. 

10 Years

So Daddy and I have been married for 10 years.

Goodness we look young! It doesn't seem that long ago, but it was.

We met in 1994. Both of us went to the same college. Daddy followed me around during orientation. Grandpa Spiehs said, "Do you think that guy will be our future Son-In-Law?"

We both went out with different people and stayed friends.

Sometimes you don't realize that you want something until it's gone, out of your life for the most part. I went to grad school and that's when I realized that Daddy was the one.

We were both seeing other people. I broke things off with the guy I was seeing and wrote Daddy a LONG letter. Yep I wrote a letter. Now one would send an email.

That poor girl Daddy was seeing was heart broken. It was all my fault.

Daddy made one of his first rings for me. I gave him a Cracker Jacks box that had a fake ring with a note attached that said, "Will you marry me?" We both in our own way asked each other the same question that day.

My something old were my Grandma's (Great Grandma to the boy's) pearls. My Grandma passed away so early that even my Dad (Grandpa Spiehs) doesn't remember her. My something new was my ring. My something blue were my Bridesmaids. They wore periwinkle dresses.

We kissed the longest kiss. Our car had "T & A" written on it. It stood for Travis and Alissa, but could be thought of as something else.

We stayed in a hotel for a few days. Then went on a road trip to Wyoming a year later for our honeymoon.

Daddy sent me these today at work:

I took them outside to capture them. The lighting is horrible in our building.

 

Here's a close up view. They were made to look like flowers from our wedding.