Summertime and the living is easy

Well Reed has an entire summer of nothingness ahead of him. We couldn't interest him in any camps, and figured it wasn't worth the money or the heartache to force him to go to a camp. So his summer will be filled with video games, I guess. He spends some time listening to music and podcasts as well. His friends Alex, Robbie and Harrison (or some combination thereof) sometimes come by to get him to go on a bike ride, which inevitably ends up at someone's house (usually Alex's) playing more video games. Reed also does solo bike rides, and his chores have ramped up some for the summer. More dish-doing, more dog walking, so he's pretty happy about that! But it's the cost of being home all day.

Amy, though, likes to do stuff. This week and last, she's been doing the schools' "Summer in the Arts" program, where she's doing two Harry Potter classes, a cake decorating class and a digital drawing class. She's really enjoying it - wish they offered it for more than just two weeks! Then she gets a week off, and then it's off to a new Girl Scout camp called "Filmtastic" which (shockingly) has a movie theme and includes archery every day. Then it's Camp Crossroads again (aka "Harry Potter camp") which she's really looking forward to. Last is "Lion's Leap," which is the Lunsford camp to help sixth graders get ready for the start of school. Maybe we'll throw in a week or two of tennis camp there at the end, we'll see.

I really wish I could remember what I did to fill my time in the summers I was our kids' ages. I remember when I was 10 and Mom and Jim just got married, we spent the summer in our new house on Pepperidge Place. I think I watched a fair amount of TV (as much as I could stand, in the days when daytime TV only meant game shows, soap operas and reruns). I'm sure I listened to a lot of music, stayed up late and slept in. The following summers I know I spent some time with friends I'd made in the neighborhood, and of course when I was 15 I got a job at Roy Rogers. Ah, youth!

School's out for summer!

Somehow the first quarter of school goes by interminably slowly. And then - WHEW - made it to winter break. Throw in a million snow days and that smooths the way to spring break. And then you blink and - BLAM - the school year is done. I'd like to talk to Doc Brown about this whole space-time continuum thing.

We're done with another school year, and unbelievably we are also totally done with elementary school.

First and last days of 5th/7th grade - they're growing like weeds!

Both kids had terrific years and great grades. Let's start with the oldest. Reed ended the year with almost all A's, just a B in algebra for the fourth quarter. Overall for the year, he had all A's. And this with having nearly ZERO homework throughout the year - maybe a project or three that he worked on for a half-hour or so each. He said he did his homework in Resource (in the olden days it was called study hall) but who knows, he probably did it all during class. But I guess you can't really question his methods when he gets great results...while we wanted to tell him to work harder in Algebra, because we know he's capable of getting an A in that class too, it was pretty hard to do. "Hey kid who's getting great grades, they should be even better!" It's not the A that we wanted, it was just for him to do his best, maybe set a goal and work toward it. But he had a great year and had so many teachers that he enjoyed - Mr. Payton for Biology (had him for science last year too), Mr. O'Rear for Latin, Mr. Bauer for US History 1865-present. He even enjoyed the "Family/Consumer Science" (aka Home Ec) class, and definitely enjoyed Tech Ed. He kept his same small group of pals (Robbie Webster, Alex Arriza, Harrison Hill) and continues to prefer to just be at home hanging out by himself. This summer is a lazy one for him - no camps, no nothing. Just a lot of being around the house. He of course still loves video games and watching Netflix on his iPod Touch. He doesn't read much at home, well barely at all. Well I guess he reads the comics and the sports page of the Washington Post every day...that counts, right?

Way to go, Amy! So proud of you!

Amy also had a super year and again earned all A's. She has said all year that fifth grade is hard, and I think maybe a little of that has to do with already worrying about the adjustment to middle school next year. But she worked hard when she needed to (spelling tests are a challenge) and though she still wasn't totally happy with her grades throughout the year, we were all in for a surprise at the fifth grade promotion ceremony. She got the President's Award, just like Reed did! We were not expecting it at all - the school has a new online grading system so you can sort of see their grades, for the elementary school kids it's not really accurate and doesn't show a true, overall grade. So our best guess was that she had some Bs and wouldn't get the award. Plus when Reed got the award, his teacher Mrs. Bedrowsky (who is also Amy's teacher) gave us a heads up that he'd be getting it. She didn't mention it this time. So when they started giving out the awards, the first class only had a single person who earned it. Next up was Amy's class and they named probably 3 or 4 people before calling her name. What?! Yahoo!! Jim and my Dad were there to cheer her on too. Socially, Amy continues to be friendly with most everyone and well-liked by all. She still doesn't have that one true bestest best friend, but I know that will come soon - hopefully in middle school where she'll have the opportunity to meet a lot more kids. She still enjoys hanging out with boys, where I think a lot of girls her age have fallen out of that. (She also had her first crush, a boy in her class named Justin.) While she also enjoys do-nothing time at home, Amy continues to like to be out and about doing things and going places. She is so wishing that she was 12 this summer so that she could go to the pool on her own (meanwhile we can't get Reed to even consider doing that, and he's been old enough for a year). She has two weeks of "Summer in the Arts" through the school system, two weeks of Girl Scout camp and one week of "Lion's Leap," which is to get ready for middle school. I think she'll have a great summer and hopefully won't make herself too anxious over starting middle school in the fall.

Farewell, book box! And other nostalgic moments.

With the impending end of the school year, which spells the end of our time at Little River Elementary, I guess I'm feeling more nostalgic than normal.

This week I "retired" our book box. Sure, it was just a plain old plastic bin, but there were years where it was essentially filled with magic. I stocked it with good deals from the preschool's and then the elementary school's Scholastic book orders, picking out things that I thought the kids would like (or that were just really really good deals - you can't beat a $1 book!). A trip to the book box was a coveted treasure, and both kids would sift through before making their selections - "how many books can I get this time?" Sigh, those were the days. Mostly the box was for day to day rewards for good behavior, but prior to road trips I'd grab stashes of new books (ones that were already in the book box, and ones specially purchased [because I am a sucker for books]). The kids would be SO happy to have a pile of new books for a plane ride or a car trip. Ah, it was so easy to make their day then!

Alas, no more. I have completely lost any ability to pick books Reed will like. Well there have been a couple of outliers that he liked, but those are the exception, not the rule like they used to be. The books that have been languishing in the book box for quite a long time have now moved to a pile to be donated. The box will be used for something else. End of an era. *Sigh*

Now that the weather has improved slightly and we've gone at least 2 days without rain, the kids at the Employee Child Care Center are back out at the playground again. It's such a happy sound to hear when you walk out of the office! At the same time it feels like just yesterday and a hundred years ago that those happy sounds were coming from our kids. While I wouldn't wish to go back to those days (not giving up the ability to leave the kids alone for a few hours!), it is wonderful to think about our days at the ECCC.

And today is another sad anniversary. Six years without my Mom. Emotions all over the place. Mom, you're with us in our hearts every single day.

"Why?"

The other night as I was telling Amy good night, I told her that I think she's a pretty awesome kid. She said "Why?" I thought she was just being silly, but she honestly wanted to know why I think she's awesome. So I told her. She's awesome because:

• When she loves something, she really loves it. Really. She doesn't just like Harry Potter or the Warriors, or now Star Wars a little bit. She loves them with her whole heart and wants to learn everything there is to know about them. 
• She works so hard at the things she loves doing, like drawing. It's incredible how her drawings have improved over time – she doesn't give herself enough credit for how good they are. She's done a couple of time lapses of her drawings from start to finish, and it's amazing to watch. She's working on her recording techniques to better capture her work. 
• She's a prolific writer (and artist, too) but likes keeping the things she writes to herself. From what I can tell, she writes a lot of her own versions of Warriors stories. Maybe one day she'll work up to sharing them with us.
• She is kind-hearted and sensitive, and knows herself very well. Sometimes she shows such introspection that it's hard to believe she's just 11. Even her asking me this question - why do I think she's awesome – to me shows her maturity and self-awareness. 

Let's hope she truly heard all these reasons. She's definitely a totally terrific kid!

"Good Golly, Miss Molly!"

Today in the car, Reed said "Hey Mom, on Apple Music I listened to an album of Little Richard's and it was really good."

Well I guess that interest in 50's music hasn't waned just yet!

Busy busy busy

A lot of families in our neighborhood have a couple or three kids who are each involved in multiple activities practically year-round. That hasn't turned out to be how we roll, for the most part, but right now, we're living at least a semblance of that life. Reed has flag football (two practices a week and a game on Saturday) and Amy's doing Girl Scouts, tennis and since I took this photo of our weekly family calendar she's added piano lessons as well. Oh and Tod's playing softball again, one night a week, and has been doing some extra time at work too. It's all good, since these are things the kids enjoy, but man it's a lot! We're accustomed to being home all the time and having our weekends totally open, so it's a bit of an adjustment. We'll get back to being lazy-ish sometime soon, I'm sure.

An Amy for Amy

Back in February, Amy got a special gift from Grandma Allder...

Grandma gave this Madame Alexander doll of "Amy" from Little Women to my Mom when she was nine years old, in 1960. (Wanda got the Jo doll.) Over the winter, Grandma had Poppy locate the doll with the plan of passing her along to Amy. Her clothes and hair were in great shape, but her body needed some work....so Poppy took Grandma to Maryland to visit a woman who runs a "doll hospital" at her house for repairs. Then Grandma washed the doll's clothes and got her all cleaned up to give to our Amy.

Poppy and Grandma took Amy out to lunch at Ford's Fish Shack and gave her the doll, who now has a special spot on the bookshelf in Amy's room.

Amy hasn't read "Little Women" just yet - she started on it but didn't quite get hooked in, so maybe when she's a little older she'll enjoy this classic book.