Coaching Volleyball

 With everything getting shut down this summer, I believe I already mentioned that I put the kids into a Volleyball camp that our county was putting on just to get them some socializing again and some exercise. Matthew has mentioned quite a few times that he was going to try out for the Boys Volleyball team when he was in Atlee High School. I don't think he will make it since it is such a BIG school, BUT it is a very small program AND they lost some players so they are in a recruiting year. They both liked the volleyball camp so I found another volleyball season for them to work on some skills. I said that I would be willing to be an Assistant coach if they needed one. I was really expecting there to be a main coach and then I just broke off with a few and did drills......WELL, I basically have my own team! I am NOT the coaching type. My siblings are, but not me. Oh well, I can't back out now. Last night was our first night. It is a program for 8 weeks. Matthew is on my team, I believe I am teaching, 1/2 of the oldest kids. He is the only boy out of the 11 I have on the team. They basically gave me a list of things to day and for how long and then said, go have fun! Most of the kids I have, haven't really done much volleyball before. I think Matthew is probably the best one out of all of them. There is another girl who I asked if she had played before because when we got to passing she was doing it really well. She said her mom plays with her. Her mom played in High School! I asked why she wasn't out here coaching. I thought they knew the basics and just needed more work on them, like Matthew, but nope! I was really intimidated at first, but I am just trying to fake it until I make it. It has been a LONG time since I have actually been around volleyball drills. Both the kids had fun doing it last night so that was good. The thing that I hated the most is that the coaches have to wear masks the whole time. That would be fine if I wasn't a "coach" that ran around chasing balls and being a partner. When you have uneven numbers it is hard to be a partner AND walk around making sure people are doing it right, or trying to help them. When I started learning that they didn't really know anything, I think I started trying to come into that coach role a little more because I can teach them the things that I DO know. It was sort of fun, but I don't really like being in charge and I hated trying to talk to them through a mask. The kids only have to wear a mask until they get to their court, and then they can take them off, but still suppose to social distance.

If I knew this was it, I would have probably put Matthew up a level, but he definitely needs a lot more practice just doing basic skills and trying to control things. I was thinking putting him in this could be better with building his skills and his self esteem, big fish little pond. I feel like if I had put him up a level he would have been a little fish and a big pond and gotten discouraged.

We will see how the next 7 weeks go.

Michelle's Kindergarten Work

She is so sad and cute and again sad all at the same time.

It is just sad that this is what the Kindergarteners are doing for their cut and paste activity. However, I doesn't seem like Michelle is too bothered by it. She doesn't say a word when she has to put it on and then when she doesn't have to wear it anymore she doesn't rip it off. I am usually the one telling her, you can take your mask off now.

She just LOVES Kindergarten and wants to go EVERY day. We have a 3 day weekend that I am sure will feel SOOOO long for her.

This is to show that she really DOES know how to write her name correctly!!!

Allison loves being home when Michelle gets home. Now she is upstairs and usually in a class OR getting homework done before she comes down but she still loves to see her and play with her and hold her like a baby apparently.

 Yesterday, when I picked Michelle up from the Parent pick-up line and then got home, the bus came before we even made it into the door. So, I had asked previously if there was room for her on the bus. They said yes. So she won't ride the bus in the morning, because then she would have to wear her mask about 50 minutes even longer. So right now it is fine if I just drive her to school but then she will come home on the bus. Today was her first day coming home on the bus, I was a little worried that she may not get there correctly or someone would have put her in the pick-up line, but thankfully she got to the right bus. Apparently she sat in the wrong seat but her bus driver, Mr. Morris, who the kids had in elem for Allison's last two years was very nice and showed her which seat was hers.

Michelle Reading

Chris took the kids to the library and they checked-out some books. Michelle brought this one home and said she wanted to "read" it to me. I was like, ok, sure I will read it to you. After a few pages in when SHE WAS actually sight reading it to me, I started recording her.....

 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPIASIvNoD7uKIhzEMwkvMeiTF7cR_9JZrwNYLqlzh4BHKh8m1SBQcYEDtwIdYsgw/photo/AF1QipMfL-_fV7qB9LavOQfok4OaYYnccYz9V9MegP21?key=cE56LUo1TGFla1dpUlNlUTZ4bWxhQ1BCVDZhWDN3

Mommy/Michelle Date

I forget a lot of things. So when my kids ask me to do things, sometimes I just forget about it and sometimes I don't really know if they want to do it, or if they are just saying something because they think I want to hear it. 

When I told the kids I would take them to the zoo and then we never went, I really would have forgotten about until Michelle asked.

We hadn't taken any of the kids out for breakfast in a really long time, so when Michelle asked Saturday morning, Chris suggested I take her.

We had a great time, just her and I.

 

Allison's Math Class

Another thing about Allison's Math class. In 6th grade she was in Math 6. So this year she should be in Math 7.

When she looked at her classes she noticed it said Math 7/8. She was so confused and thought she was in the wrong class. She did more research and actually found a message dated back in April that said that her Math 6 teacher recommended Allison to skip up to Math 7/8, the more advanced math. She has been BEYOND excited about his. It makes her feel "I am smart now!" Which is sad that she thought she wasn't smart before.

 Chris is clearly much more intelligent than I. Matthew takes after Chris SOOO much. Allison takes after me SOOO much. I REALLY love math so it was fun for me to help her if she ever didn't understand something. Matthew has always been in the "Gifted" program or more advanced classes, and Allison hasn't so she didn't feel quite as smart. In 4th & 5th grade classes, I remember Allison saying, mom this math is too easy. After saying that a few times, I would talk to the teacher, but they knew what was going to be coming up next and such and felt like they didn't want to push her. I completely agreed. I wanted to make sure she had basics down before moving on. Usually shortly after she would say it was too easy, she would start running into more complicated stuff. So having her get moved up doesn't completely surprise me, but it makes her SOOOO HAPPPY!!!

What DOES surprise me though, is that any teacher would really recommend a student to jump a level when they didn't even finish out last year. So Allison went from not finishing 6th grade Math, jumping into 7/8. The teacher did recognize that they needed to so some review of Math 6, and Math 7 before moving onto Math 8 so hopefully so will do well with it.

Allison had a dream, I think before she even found out about her new Math class that she decorated a cake and it looked like a Math book. She has been wanting to decorate one ever since.

Chris's birthday was coming up and I didn't want to have two cakes, we don't need two cakes around here. So, since Chris is not a words person, he could care less what the cake looks like or what it says, he would just like some cake. He chose a lemon cake, SOOOOO......

ALLISON made this cake COMPLETELY by herself!!!!!

It was just a box cake that I picked up, but if I had given her a recipe, she could have done that too. She made the cake, then she found  a recipe for frosting, made the frosting, colored it, frosted it and decorated it ALL BY HERSELF!!! 

I wasn't even in the kitchen!

Then as I was busy with Michelle, Allison CLEANED up EVERYTHING that she used and wipeded down the counters, and then got all of the stuff out for us to have cake and ice cream for Chris's birthday!!

She was SOOOOO proud of herself.

When Allison was almost 8 years old, we were in Florida and Spencer's wife at the time was in charge of Activity Day Girls. She had me make frosting and teach the girls how to decorate a cake. Allison and another 8 year old just wanted to see how many different colors of frosting they could put on their cake. No rhyme or reason, just colors everywhere. 

My 10 year old niece, did a nice pattern of blue and orange color in the word BRONCOS and also the border. It looked simple but nice. The girl that was just about 12 made a beautiful flower. It was SOOO crazy to see the difference of 4 years. I am thinking that if I made all the frostings for Allison she could make a really nice decorated cake now as well. I should try that sometime. 

 

1st Day of SCHOOL!!!!

We were all REALLY excited to go to school.

Michelle started getting tears in her eyes the night before, so I was guessing that when I dropped her off at school she would start crying and that was going to be TOOO hard to just drive away.

Mask on ready to go!

Allison did NOT want to miss Michelle's first day. She HAD to get up to give her lots of hugs and a big pep talk. 

We FINALLY got Allison's laptop (issued from the school) on Saturday. She has been trying to get it setup and ready to go for her first day.

My best friend here just couldn't miss Michelle Thomas's first day of school! She brought cookies and a candy bar for their after school snack. She is so sweet to my kids!

Like I said, I was really worried she would be start crying when I dropped her off. She was fine, walked to the door and went in, not even looking back. I totally just broke down crying and crying all the way back to the house.

Once I got to the house, I had to kind of pull it together and get Matthew and Allison ready for their schools. I am SOO glad she didn't cry. I think it was a tender little mercy for me.

We try to let Matthew get as much sleep as he can to limit crankiness, so I did not wake him up until after I dropped Michelle off.

So today, only the newer kids went to school, which means that the Pre-K, K, and 1st graders were at elementary school. The 6th graders went to middle school and then the 9th graders went to High School. Since they didn't have an orientation this year, this was their day to do that, which I really liked.

However, if you were an online student, you started school this day so all three kids started.

 I have no worries that he won't have a problem keeping that mask on. He LOVES that he "has" to keep it on. He doesn't like people being able to read his facial expressions.

MY HIGH SCHOOLER!!!!

She LOVES that she got a laptop before Matthew. However, it was already planned for ALL of the middle schoolers to get laptops this year, but now they sent all of those laptops that the middle schoolers were suppose to get and sent them to all of the virtual learners K-12 and ordered more. The next shipment of laptops is supposed to come in December I believe and then the middle schoolers that are face-to-face should get them and then the high schoolers face-to-face and then I think all the kids 5th, 4th, and even 3rd grade should get one. Apparently our district got like $4.1 million COVID grant to get laptops and lots of hand sanitizer stations or something like that.

This is really her "classroom" or study area. 

We put her in my office so that I could hear what the teacher was saying because we have been hearing about teachers preaching their own views and agendas and stuff.

A couple things about Allison's virtual classes.

Allison's first class was Language Arts and there were about 30 kids in there. They she went to "PE" class. The teacher said, "guys don't raise your hand because there are 75 of you in this class and I can't see all of your screens."

I was blown away there are so many in the class. In regular years though, there are like 5 classes all in the gym. There are also about 5 teachers but they like all do the same thing? It seems so weird to me, so I am sure there were other "teachers" on the class but he was the lead teacher/coach?

They only met for about half hour and then they were free until their next block/class. On her list of chores each day she needs to have 30 minutes of exercise AND 30 minutes of outside time. They can do both of those outside if she want. She actually had 35 minutes until her next class so outside roller-blading she went!!

I was SOOO happy/sad when I went onto Facebook and saw that they had posted pictures of the kindergarten and 1st grade classes.

When I saw Michelle's class and saw my little Michelle, I just broke down crying again. I am so sad she is away from me, but hopeful that she has a good day.

I was glad to "see" her in her class.

Can you find her?

She is basically right in the middle. She has a rainbow backpack on the floor in front of her, which a white shirt and red bottom.

I was BEYOND excited to pick up Michelle and see how her first day was.

As I was waiting in the pick-up line, I was going to try to read something to be productive but I couldn't keep my attention on the book, I kept looking for her. When I finally saw her, I was so relieved, as if maybe I thought they would lose her or something, I don't know, I am a paranoid momma.

She jumped in the car and just starting talking to me, I had to pull her mask off. I think they just adapt to having it on, and then it isn't even there anymore. 

Her report was, "TODAY WAS AWESOME!!!" Later she said, "Today was the best day of my life. Every day I go to Kindergarten is the best day of my life!"

SHE LOVED IT!!!!!!

I asked her if she missed me and she said, nope! Which I am very grateful for. I would rather her not miss me and be sad while she is there. She did clarify that she didn't miss me, but she is so excited to see me when I pick her up. Best of both worlds right there.

They made this crown.

I think her left handedness is effecting her writing.

She is having a hard time understanding why this doesn't actually spell Michelle. It ALMOST would be cool, if she actually spelled it completely backwards, like the c and the h and the e backwards....almost. We clearly have more to work on.

Allison was also SOOO very happy to see Michelle come home. She wanted to hear all about Michelle's day.

Michelle said, "Emma came in crying." That makes me so sad for Emma. I am glad that wasn't Michelle.

She was so excited to go back to Kindergarten the next day.......

Allison had a fine day, even though she said probably about 10 times, I wish I was face-to-face. She likes her Math teacher, she has the same vibe as her Math teacher last year and Allison really liked her last year's teacher.

I met Matthew after he crossed the super busy street with the crossing guard. I was going to have him start coming home through a new neighborhood that was just built and sort of connects to our neighborhood. So we walked and talked. He had a fine day. Not too much to report (he is a boy and just doesn't talk quite as much as my girls do). We learned that walking home on the main road like they used to do is SO much better.

He has classes with upper classmen which is weird to him. He is taking Spanish 1, and his name is Mateo in that class. He only had 5 minutes to eat lunch, so he was finishing some apples on our walk home. He has a pretty good idea of where he needs to go each day in his new big school. Allison has A days and B days, (which is weird to me) but Matthew has the same classes each day this semester (only 4 classes a day). He will have new classes next semester.

Overall, the first day was good. Allison wishes she chose face-to-face. She decided the Thursday before school started that she wanted to go face-to-face now, but she is on a waitlist. I am still praying and hoping that she will get to go face-to-face. There would have to be another 7th grader from Chickahominy that was in Math 7/8 that would want to go virtual, for her to be able to switch. At this point that is unlikely but we have both prayed and if it is suppose to be, it will be. If not, she will endure virtual until 2nd semester afterwhich she can choose to go face-to-face, assuming we are still doing face-to-face.

(We have 4 middle schools in our district. 3 teachers at one of the middle schools were tested positive with Covid, and I think there are about 16 teachers from that school that were in contact with them, so they also have to be quarantined for two weeks. With this knowledge, that middle school didn't even open at all Tuesday, or Wednesday, and then they were doing virtual Thursday and Friday. Our district has a student holiday on Monday....probably for the teachers and staff to see how the first week went and what adjustments need to be made. That middle school will then open, or so they say. Hopefully that is the only "shutdown" that we have."

Day 2, Michelle woke up with an eye that was too pink to send her to school. It didn't itch, but I took her to the dr first thing to see what the dr said. The dr gave her some prescription and said if it isn't this pink tomorrow, she would be fine going to school tomorrow. Michelle was VERY sad to miss Kindergarten. She really had so much fun that first day. 

She asked to put little braids in her hair...

Her eye looks much better so she was VERY excited to get back to Kindergarten!!!

We moved Allison's "school room" up to the 3rd floor to have more space between us. I don't want her to get too sick of me....and vice versa.

Michelle Met Her Teacher, Mrs. Martin!!!

We had a drive-by meet the teacher and drop off supplies night.

We knew that Michelle's teacher was Mrs. Martin, but I had no idea who that was. Many of the teachers that I knew there all said she was really great so I hope she is.

We got to go meet her and first impressions with a mask and glasses on, says she is nice.

Michelle's New School

Michelle will be going to school!!!

Seems so weird! 

I remember when we had the realization that Matthew would be starting High School the same year Michelle would be starting Kindergarten! 

That time is HERE already!!

We didn't absolutely LOVE Cool Spring when the older kids were there. It was ok, but we felt like it was so big, we were just a number. In our old elementary school, they knew who we were. It just wasn't sure warm and welcoming.

The principal, was just that, a principal. The kids didn't really like her and I didn't feel all warm and fuzzy with her. You HAD to call her Dr. ----- whatever her name was. She was cordial, but not warm. Matthew hated her because she sent him to the principals office because he said fart. FART really???? I WISH that was the worse word the kids say at school. The principal even called Chris to make sure he knew that he said fart. Chris was so taken back that he would get in trouble for something like that. He should have said, why don't you call me when he says F**.... Unfortunately, lots of kids cuss even in 5th grade so this was weird that she was upset with him for THAT. Anyways, the year Allison graduated, that principal retired. Apparently they have had a new one. We have never met her before and we haven't really heard much about her because we weren't in the elementary scene anymore.

I have gotten back onto the elementary facebook page and I have been seeing videos that the new principal, Mrs. Williams has been putting out. She seemed pretty nice, and happy. We had a parent zoom meeting and she seemed to handle all of the questions really well and even when her laptop crashed she didn't get frazzled, was apologetic but then the assistant principal started helping out and it seemed like they really worked well together.

There was another parent zoom meeting a couple days later and when we (Michelle and I) logged on, she said, is that Michelle? My jaw just about dropped! Then there was another kid that got on and he was also a Kindergartner and she said, is that Brock? I was FLOORED!! I was like how in the world does she know this is Michelle!! She has never met her before. In her mind, she knew that she had a Michelle Thomas coming in as a Kindergartner, and when I logged in as Stephanie Thomas, she just made the connection.  She was recognizing the last names that she had seen. Michelle was excited to say hi to her. She seemed so friendly. She also has an incoming Kindergarten and 2nd grader. I LOVE that because she has a vested interest in the kids even more! 

THEN when we were with Mrs. Merrick taking the tour, I am positive that she didn't know the schedule, we just happen to pass her and even though we all had masks on, she still said Hello Michelle, how are you? I was just so surprised. She definitely has that warm welcoming vibe and it has changed the vibe of the school SOOOO much. She has such a loving vibe to her. I am REALLY excited for Michelle to be there at her school.