Meet and Greets

The girls had their meet and greet at school to drop off school supplies and meet their teachers this past week.

Emily has the teacher she and I wanted--for 3rd grade! And her bff, Kendall, is in her class, too. 

Eva is in class with most of her friends. She is going into 6th grade, which is middle school. Their school has changed 6,7, and 8th grades to match the schedule of the high school. They will have a block schedule now. They have 8 total classes that they take, but only 4 in a day, and they rotate each day. This is supposed to transition them better when they do get to high school.  This year is also the first year that they have to dress out for PE, as well as the first year they will get grades for Spanish and computer.  Their English teacher is their homeroom teacher, but they will switch teachers for every other class, just like high school.  Eva is so excited about this schedule. She says it makes her feel older. 

Sigh. It makes me feel older, too.

Busy Times

My last post was in May at the end of the school year. What was supposed to be a fairly quiet summer ended up being pretty busy.  Here's the quick recap:

We've had hair cuts...

We went to Grand Isle for Father's Day with some friends. I believe this has become an annual trip. The kids have a great time and so do the adults.  By sheer chance, this year we ended up staying in David's dad's cousins camp. It was a great location:  2 blocks to the beach and its own pier on the bay.

I quit my job working for a State Farm agent and went back to my degree, geology, and accepted a job working for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.  It's a great place for me to get my foot back in the door while relearning all I forgot.  I now have a commute in/out of Baton Rouge, but I go in for 6:30 am and leave at 3 pm.  I pretty much miss all of the traffic each way, and I'm home for 4 pm. The hard part will be when school starts and I won't get to see the girls in the morning before they start their day. A little face time may be needed instead.  

I had a couple of days off before starting the new job, so we decided to surprise the girls with a last minute beach trip.  The weather started off looking bad, but ended up being beautiful, as Destin always is.   

Oh, before the beach trip we tried camping in Oak Mountain State Park, dog in tow, but the weather there was really bad, and we ended up leaving after one night (we were only staying 2) because it really was going to be a rain-out.  That also prompted the beach trip: we wanted to end summer on a good note.  

July also brought my 25 year high school reunion. I have not been to my other reunions, partly because I was only at Ursuline for my senior year and I really feel like the reunions for my high school in Dallas are the ones I should be going to - it's just hard to get to those.  I opted to go, figuring this would be the only one I attended.  We had a good time and it was nice to see some of my old (and by old I mean some of the ones I've known since I was 4-5 years old) friends.

That pretty much concluded the summer. The girls start school in a week - 6th and 3rd grades. Eva is in middle school, and they are beginning the transition to high school. HIGH SCHOOL!  They now have schedules that match the high school so they are better prepared when they get there, or so they say,  They have a home room teacher for english, then change teachers for everything else, like high school.  They have 8 classes they take, but only 4 in a day and it rotates each day.

Wish us luck with our many changes, and I'll try to be better about updating this blog as events occur.

End of the Year Awards

Eva received an Honor Roll award for having a GPA of 3.5 - 3.99 as well as the President's Award. 

 

 

Emily received an Honor Roll award and medal for having 4.0 GPA all year. She was one of only 8 in the entire 2nd grade. She also received the Sunglass award in class because she is so bright! Lol. 

So proud of my girls. One more day of school then they turn into 6th and 3rd graders!

Eva and Reading

Eva had 25 AR points last year. She said she didn't have a goal this year, but her points for 5th grade were 233.  That's quite an improvement,! 

 

The downside is that all of her friends have very high AR points (one had over 450 and another over 300), so she has a lot of competition.  I'm just so proud that she improved so much! Thank you, Harry Potter and Hunger Games!

 

 

Emily and Reading

Emily was very excited (and I very proud) about receiving a high score in her benchmark reading test at school...and having no homework for the last 'real' week of school.  She and 2 other kids tied for high score, so they all received the slip of paper below. 

 

I have to say that I was very surprised to hear that she did so well. She's never been a reader and rarely finishes a chapter book before moving on to a different book.  She tends to bring a different book home every day or two.   She seems to like comic book style books the best, but all in all not really interested in reading. 

Her teacher said that she went from unsatisfactory in reading at the beginning of the year to mastery in reading at the end. That's quite an accomplishment for her.  In math she went from basic to advanced.   Her teacher is recommending that she stay in the advanced classes at school. 

I am very proud of her and her hard work.

Batting Video

Just a quick video of her batting at practice last week.  She likes to look to see where the ball is going when she is supposed to be sprinting to the base.  You can hear David yelling at her to stop looking and she keeps looking. Lol.  We'll break her of that soon.

Softball

Softball has started again, and sadly these are the only 2 pictures I took. I think the others got deleted by accident. I'll post more after the next game. 

 

The pitcher walked her.  I am very proud of her for not swinging when I know how badly she wanted to hit that ball. She loves batting, and she's good at it.

 

Luau

Eva before her luau dance at school, the last dance of the year. 

 

 

 

 

Art Gala

Their school is a performing arts Inter Baccalaureate (IB) school. Basically, this means that their school makes art, music, and performing arts a requirement (and priority) for each student.  Each spring the school puts on an art gala to showcase a couple of each student's art from that year.

 

Emily did a portrait of Rosa Parks (directly above her head). 

 

Her snowflake:

Her 'Parts of a Plant":

Eva's class drew silouettes of themselves then filled it in with things that represent themselves. In case you can't make them out, there are kittens, dogs, macaroni and cheese, tacos, books, orange, Lindt, Gordon Ramsay, Hunger Games, cookies, bacon, Harry Potter. That pretty much sums her up, lol.

They also made suncatchers:

Afterwards, all the kids who were in Company sang a few songs from the Peter Pan show. 

 Emily and her bff.

 Another one.

 

 

 I love this one.

 

 

 They do love each other.

Ballet Pictures

Normally, the ballet pictures are done so well, but this year her lighting must have been off. Emily looks like she has a spray tan in her solo pictures. The group picture has some of the girls so washed out and the others look spray tanned.