Today went fine. Normal school day. I had rehearsal after school for our teacher talent show act. Then took Madi to get her haircut. Have needed to take her for a while, but it's been hard to find time available to do it. So we made time today and I scheduled it a few days ago. Looks really cute! She took about three inches off it so it's now just a little bit below her shoulder. Picked up the girls, went home to pick up a meal, dropped the meal off at a friend's house and then came back home to get the girls fed, dressed, and put to bed.
Then tonight we got ready for the garage sale tomorrow. We'll leave early for my parents' house. Madi and Riley are selling lemonade, muffins and cookies. I made the muffins and cookies tonight. Madi helped a little with the muffins as did the girls and Jeremy. Riley and Julia love to sit in front of the stove watching them bake. Julia kept saying "Muffins! Yeah!!!! I like it!" Packaged them up and am now finally settling down to 'relax' for the remainder of the night. Now just hoping that it doesn't rain so we can sell some things and get some things to someone else's home!
Friday, May 11, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
CHIP
I finished sending in all of our pay stubs, daycare costs, paperwork and other fun things to try to get Madi registered for CHIP - Medicaid Healthcare next year. Was a little bit different process.
Just got the info back and she qualifies for it! So thankful God is providing it again!! Really awesome.
And again, we have no payments to make for it. Wow - another awesome thing.
She'll be covered until the end of October. Not sure why it ends in October, but possible that we'll have to submit again six months from now to see that she still qualifies. But it is very good news!
Just got the info back and she qualifies for it! So thankful God is providing it again!! Really awesome.
And again, we have no payments to make for it. Wow - another awesome thing.
She'll be covered until the end of October. Not sure why it ends in October, but possible that we'll have to submit again six months from now to see that she still qualifies. But it is very good news!
Grades
On a great note, Madi had a fabulous report card! With a 100% in math (woo hoo!!) and all the other grades above a 94%!! So good for her for working hard to keep her grades going so well. She's hoping to finish the year strong and I have no doubt she will!!
She also got chosen to be a part of the talent show this year. She will be performing the song "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift with one of her friends. She'll also perform her Zumba routine. It will be next Tuesday at 8:30am as well as 7:00pm.
Yesterday she was able to go on a field trip with her class to the Mesquite Rodeo. She loved it. Talked a lot about it and a 13 year old girl riding and all the tricks they did. She was able to share some popcorn with a friend. She could have brought some of her money for souvenirs, but I reminded her that she was working to save up for an iPad and she'd have to decide where she wanted her money to go. So she saved it. Awesome choice - especially seeing that she already has about $100 towards it and is only $300 away. Sounds like a lot, but she'll get there in no time.
This weekend we're making cookies, muffins and lemonade to sell at the garage sale we're having. Should go great!! Madi gets all the profits from it. She'll also sell some of her old clothes and rollerblades that don't fit and get the profits from that as well. I'll be teaching piano lessons over the summer at home so she'll watch the girls in the playroom or let them watch tv in our bedroom and we'll pay her $20 a day. Will be helpful for us as well as her.
She also got chosen to be a part of the talent show this year. She will be performing the song "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift with one of her friends. She'll also perform her Zumba routine. It will be next Tuesday at 8:30am as well as 7:00pm.
Yesterday she was able to go on a field trip with her class to the Mesquite Rodeo. She loved it. Talked a lot about it and a 13 year old girl riding and all the tricks they did. She was able to share some popcorn with a friend. She could have brought some of her money for souvenirs, but I reminded her that she was working to save up for an iPad and she'd have to decide where she wanted her money to go. So she saved it. Awesome choice - especially seeing that she already has about $100 towards it and is only $300 away. Sounds like a lot, but she'll get there in no time.
This weekend we're making cookies, muffins and lemonade to sell at the garage sale we're having. Should go great!! Madi gets all the profits from it. She'll also sell some of her old clothes and rollerblades that don't fit and get the profits from that as well. I'll be teaching piano lessons over the summer at home so she'll watch the girls in the playroom or let them watch tv in our bedroom and we'll pay her $20 a day. Will be helpful for us as well as her.
No No Drama
**Realized I wrote this in the other blog instead of this one. So I pasted it in here.**
Galations 6:9 has become my mantra the past few days. "Do not grow weary in doing good..." It goes on to mention that we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Has been a trying week. No planning period for two days due to third grade musical rehearsal (my own choosing as we needed the rehearsal, but made for long teaching days). Riley crying every morning. Julia crying every afternoon after school. Both due to not getting food fast enough, getting food but not the kind they wanted, food being too hot, food getting too cold. Madi talking and mumbling constantly. Constantly. I mean non-stop talking. And having to ask many times to have her say it again as I can not understand what is being said. Then finding out it was a joke or something that made no sense at all. And trying to be patient without saying "ok. whatever." Meetings after school. Prep for talent show for next week. Girl drama due to talent show acts. Calgon - take me away!!! Definitely had time to practice living out this verse!
Today Madi and three friends were told they could come inside to their classroom to practice during recess for their talent show act. They were trusted to make the right choice and rehearse in the room by themselves as their substitute teacher had recess duty. Hmm... thinking that trust was broken for the rest of the year. And also thinking that wasn't a good choice in the first place. However, the responsibility to make the right choice then rested on them as they were trusted with it.
Madi's talent show partner chose to go outside and play as did her friend Talia's friend. So that left half of each act practicing and the other half outside. Strange. As I told her later, it's better to practice an act that is for two people with those two people. Anyway.
Come to find out that Madi couldn't access the song she needed on YouTube (due to district changing what is allowed on YouTube) so she thought it would be okay to go into her friend's locker and her friend's backpack and find her friend's iPod to use. Mind you - they have had lecture after lecture about respect for others' property - not taking things out of their backpacks, etc... as Hailey's iPad and iPhone were both lost and potentially stolen out of her bag a few weeks ago. So it's been a huge topic in her classroom. But Madi wanted to practice and figured she could get it out anyway. So she did.
The girls practiced their songs a time or two. Then decided to get out a stuffed animal eagle and throw it around the room. They were loud enough with it that a teacher who had her class at a bathroom break (and the bathrooms are loud!) could hear them yelling and laughing loudly and chose to walk into the room to find out what was going on. It was very obvious that they weren't doing the right thing and practicing. So another teacher was brought in to talk with them as she needed to get back to her class. They were then sent outside on recess. Madi told her friend that they had used her iPod. Her friend became very upset because it meant that she had gone through her things to use it. And she didn't have permission to use it.
The girls all came into my room while I was teaching second grade. Totally not okay as Madi knows it is not okay to interrupt teaching time to deal with girl drama. They wanted to talk about all the changes they were making to their talent show act so I sent them out and told them I would be down there when my class was over.
I made my way down the hall toward Madi's classroom to hear her teacher trying to get her to come out in the hall to talk with the other girls and to understand what had happened. They were explaining it. Madi said she was borrowing it. To which she learned (from us and Mrs. Campbell) that borrowing means you have permission to take it. This was not borrowing. This was stealing. As Jeremy put it, "If I borrowed someone's car to drive around for a little while and brought it back, it's not borrowing. I had stolen it." She was asked to work it out with the girls. Mrs. Campbell had to ask her twice to apologize to which Madi said a quick 'sorry' and went on with things. She asked her how she would feel if someone used her iPod without permission. Madi told her that she wouldn't have a problem with it - "I wouldn't care" was the response. The girls worked it out and Madi was very nonchalant about the whole thing. "Oh - we worked it out. All is good!" And off she sauntered to class. Totally okay with it.
Jeremy and I talked about it for a good 30 minutes or so to figure out how to handle it. Not punishment for punishments sake or to make her feel bad - because she'd feel more mad than bad about it. But to truly make her understand that taking someone else's property is not okay. That it is small decisions like this that will lead her to making bigger decisions later on. She didn't feel that it was wrong. And she was very much okay with what had happened.
So we had a talk with her tonight about property, respect for others' things, thinking before acting and how trust can be easily lost as well as built slowly. We also talked about what could have happened had they played with it, put it back and then come back into the room to find it was missing. They would have been responsible.
Our discipline for her is that she is tech-free starting tonight through Sunday morning. Living unhooked from all technology - unless Monica calls or she has to do FasttMath. Giving her time to think about things. As we told her, saying "Don't do it again" or "that's your warning" doesn't work with her because she just thinks of other ways to get away with things and is always trying to work the angles to see what she can get away with rather than being okay with following rules given her. Part of what makes her smart. And part of what could ruin her future if not harnessed correctly.
So that was today in a nutshell.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Field Day!
Wild to think that Field Day was the first event that Madi ever attended when you guys first came to drop her off. Has been almost exactly a year since Madi came here. Wow - it went so fast and went so slow at the same time.
Madi had fun at field day. She really liked the station where you take a wet sponge and put it on your head while you run and the scooters. In the afternoon, the kids were able to bring their bikes and helmets. They had a race behind the school for the older kids. And in the morning, the younger kids got to learn about safety.
Only 18 days left of school. Not that I'm counting...
The next two weeks are some of the busiest of the year. Lots of end-of-year things to do as well as the 3rd grade musical performance, talent show and fifth grade graduation.
Madi had fun at field day. She really liked the station where you take a wet sponge and put it on your head while you run and the scooters. In the afternoon, the kids were able to bring their bikes and helmets. They had a race behind the school for the older kids. And in the morning, the younger kids got to learn about safety.
Only 18 days left of school. Not that I'm counting...
The next two weeks are some of the busiest of the year. Lots of end-of-year things to do as well as the 3rd grade musical performance, talent show and fifth grade graduation.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Numana
This morning Madi, Riley and I went to church at 8am to help a group called Numana. They provide food and water for the starving in Africa. Our church had them bring a team to help lead us in packaging food. We signed in and then got beautiful head covers to wear. :) I mean, hairnets :)
We were told to stand in a line and they waited for a minute until there were fourteen of us. Then we went into the sanctuary. There were many, many tables set up in factory lines. We were sent to Table 1. Everyone was given a certain job by the person in charge of our table. It went like this:
Gather bag, scoop beans, scoop rice, scoop soy, add vitamin, weigh bag, set in container, seal bag, press items in bag flat and stack two high over 18 rectangles, package 36 bags into box and seal box - then yell and hoot and holler and cheer once box was ready to send!
The kids had to be on the end where we were pressing the bags flat and stacking them high. Madi wasn't too happy about this at first and wanted to scoop the food. She didn't want to press them or stack them. I told her that every job was important and that no matter where they needed us, we were there to help get this food to the people who needed it. Everything we did today was meaningful and purposeful and important. She didn't complain after that for the rest of our time.
Madi got really into it after a few bags. She was smiling and enjoying herself. It was a little bit hard for Riley to press the tough soy down and the beans, but she did really well. Madi got to help seal the bags for a while and then helped press the bags down and organize them on the chart on the table.
Each bag feeds six people. Totally amazing because it is about the serving size Jeremy and I would eat just the two of us for dinner. The goal was to serve 600,000 people and create 100,000 bags. They had scheduled for it to take 4 hours, but they said we finished in record time in only 2 hours.
The entire time we were packaging, there was worship music playing, someone explaining what exactly the meals do, talking about starvation in Africa and how Numana plays a part in helping. There was a gong that was hit after we reached every 10,000 bags. Sometimes we reached it by 20,000 bags so quickly that they just skipped some.
About halfway through, Madi said "I want to do this again next year! I feel so good helping." I told her we'd try to do it again if they had it and that she absolutely should feel good about helping - she was doing an awesome job!
At the end, I bought two tshirts. She's really excited to be able to wear to school on Monday and share about her experience. We talked tonight about what an awesome thing it was that we were able to use our time and do simple tasks that will help so many people. Was a really great way to look outside ourselves. And such a fun day!!
Gather bag, scoop beans, scoop rice, scoop soy, add vitamin, weigh bag, set in container, seal bag, press items in bag flat and stack two high over 18 rectangles, package 36 bags into box and seal box - then yell and hoot and holler and cheer once box was ready to send!
The kids had to be on the end where we were pressing the bags flat and stacking them high. Madi wasn't too happy about this at first and wanted to scoop the food. She didn't want to press them or stack them. I told her that every job was important and that no matter where they needed us, we were there to help get this food to the people who needed it. Everything we did today was meaningful and purposeful and important. She didn't complain after that for the rest of our time.
Madi got really into it after a few bags. She was smiling and enjoying herself. It was a little bit hard for Riley to press the tough soy down and the beans, but she did really well. Madi got to help seal the bags for a while and then helped press the bags down and organize them on the chart on the table.
Each bag feeds six people. Totally amazing because it is about the serving size Jeremy and I would eat just the two of us for dinner. The goal was to serve 600,000 people and create 100,000 bags. They had scheduled for it to take 4 hours, but they said we finished in record time in only 2 hours.
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| Ready to start!! |
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| Organizing bags |
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| Getting ready to flatten her bag |
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| Small bag feeds six people for one meal |
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| Kids were able to draw and write messages on the boxes |
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| Madi is sealing the bag while the lady holding it is stretching (so glad she can't see this picture - she wouldn't like me very much for posting it -hahahha) |
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| One of Riley's drawings on the box |
The entire time we were packaging, there was worship music playing, someone explaining what exactly the meals do, talking about starvation in Africa and how Numana plays a part in helping. There was a gong that was hit after we reached every 10,000 bags. Sometimes we reached it by 20,000 bags so quickly that they just skipped some.
About halfway through, Madi said "I want to do this again next year! I feel so good helping." I told her we'd try to do it again if they had it and that she absolutely should feel good about helping - she was doing an awesome job!
At the end, I bought two tshirts. She's really excited to be able to wear to school on Monday and share about her experience. We talked tonight about what an awesome thing it was that we were able to use our time and do simple tasks that will help so many people. Was a really great way to look outside ourselves. And such a fun day!!
Friday, April 27, 2012
23 more days
School is almost over. Amazing! And that means one more daycare payment for two children and this is just a total miracle. And one of the best feelings ever!!
Madi had a good week. To be honest, I can't remember too much of it. Riley was sick on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday with fever. So she was home from school on Wed. Madi had STAAR tests on Tuesday and Wednesday. Said she feels like she did a great job (and I have no doubt that she did!!)
She got her report card and had all A's again!!! She's doing fabulous!
Tomorrow Madi, Riley and I will be going to church from 8-12. We'll be packaging food for a group called Numana. They deliver food/water to starving people in Africa. It's awesome that it's something that the girls can do with me. Gives all of us a chance to give some of our time to give to others. Great lesson for sure. And should be a lot of fun!!
On Sunday, we'll be celebrating Riley's birthday. Very low-key. No birthday party with friends this year. She'll bring donuts for her class on Wednesday which will be fun! Instead we're basing the birthday on the book "Tea for Ruby." Ruby is invited to have tea with the Queen. The Queen sends her an invitation and then Ruby arrives to find that the Queen is Grandma!
So my mom sent her an invitation in the mail to the princesses (Riley and Madi) inviting them to tea with her. The four of us will go down to the American Girl store to have lunch there. And then Riley can pick out her first American Girl Doll. She has no idea and it should be lots of fun! (not to mention more economical than the parties we looked into at other places... yikes!)
Madi had a good week. To be honest, I can't remember too much of it. Riley was sick on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday with fever. So she was home from school on Wed. Madi had STAAR tests on Tuesday and Wednesday. Said she feels like she did a great job (and I have no doubt that she did!!)
She got her report card and had all A's again!!! She's doing fabulous!
Tomorrow Madi, Riley and I will be going to church from 8-12. We'll be packaging food for a group called Numana. They deliver food/water to starving people in Africa. It's awesome that it's something that the girls can do with me. Gives all of us a chance to give some of our time to give to others. Great lesson for sure. And should be a lot of fun!!
On Sunday, we'll be celebrating Riley's birthday. Very low-key. No birthday party with friends this year. She'll bring donuts for her class on Wednesday which will be fun! Instead we're basing the birthday on the book "Tea for Ruby." Ruby is invited to have tea with the Queen. The Queen sends her an invitation and then Ruby arrives to find that the Queen is Grandma!
So my mom sent her an invitation in the mail to the princesses (Riley and Madi) inviting them to tea with her. The four of us will go down to the American Girl store to have lunch there. And then Riley can pick out her first American Girl Doll. She has no idea and it should be lots of fun! (not to mention more economical than the parties we looked into at other places... yikes!)
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