S & R The Mound Edition 8 Oct 2005

The Bs are doing great. J is "enjoying" the challenges of High School (about 2300 students in the school)! He enjoys his free time by reading, playing "volleyball" (a version of the game he and S1 play on the trampoline), playing tennis with S, etc. He is in the Teacher's Quorum presidency and is working toward his Duty to God award. One of the more interesting school projects that he has been assigned was to make a model of the earth's layers and to do this in a unique way. He used different colors of Jell-o to represent the layers of the earth. It looked great! J is also old enough to attend the infamous "stake dances" where he gets a chance to hang out with his friends. S1 is really doing well in middle school (they have at least 1300 students there) and likes her teachers, well, most of them. Her mid-term report shows that she is capable of keeping up with her schoolwork so far, which is a good thing. She keeps busy in her spare time by running for her school's cross country team, playing soccer, and going to achievement day activities. She has a great opportunity to be a lunchroom helper at her school. She gets out of her class before lunch five minutes early, serves in the lunchroom for about 10- 15 minutes, and then has the rest of her lunchtime to eat and hang out with her friends. In return, she gets free lunch every day and also gets paid $.50 a day (yes, that is fifty cents per day). That's about ten dollars a month not counting the cost of her meals! What a great deal! H has a really good teacher this year. He is going to keep her busy. She is working on Idaho History right now and is also doing a pioneer trail activity that is challenging. She had to decorate a binder for her Idaho history class, and it was a really fun project. H also enjoys playing soccer, reading, and skating in her free time. She also set up a "school" in the basement using her white board she got for her birthday. Her and her teacher's assistant (E) teach S2 her math, spelling, abc's, etc. E has the unique opportunity to be in a 2nd and 3rd grade split class. She has a really fun teacher who is very organized and really nice. She is doing "math ladders" (timed math tests to see how many correct problems you can complete in a minute). She is also an excellent reader and a very talented soccer player. Not to mention her second job as H's teacher assistant! S2 is attending a co-op pre-school and really having a great time doing it! Every Tuesday and Friday from 10:30 a.m. to noon a different mom takes a week and teaches. We have set up a schedule for what we do, how long it takes, and which "themes" we each want to present, along with a letter and a number for the week. It works out great. S2 finally realized her life-long dream of being able to play soccer. She makes at least two goals every Saturday and she loves the after-game snacks! As parents of these talented and busy children, S and I are also kept pretty busy. S recently got called as the ward clerk, which is a calling that he enjoys, and I get to be the compassionate service person in our ward and just received a second calling as the ward organist (every other Sunday, since there are two of us!) Well, there are a lot more things that we could say, but we thought we would leave some room for the rest of you guys!