Honor Night

Last night we went to the Honor Awards Ceremony at Zane's school. He made the Principle's Honor Roll (3.5-3.99 GPA) again this year, and we are so proud of him!

Zane's cheesin' with his award

Zane and his cousin Keenan, who is in 8th grade. Don't they look thrilled?

7th Grade Winter Band Concert

Zane's late winter band concert was last night. His band did a fantastic job. Raegan also did an awesome job of sitting and listening through the majority of the concert. (We have to sit through about 40 minutes worth until Zane's grade is finished with their pieces. For a two year old, that's pretty good!)

This one cuts off before the end of the song because I ran out of memory on my camera. I should try deleting pictures every once in a while, huh?

Before the concert

My cheese monkeys!

Again, with the excess cheese..... :)

Intently watching

Random shots of Zane leaving the stage

Seventh Grade

Zane started seventh grade this last Tuesday. I cannot believe that he's that old! It seems like it wasn't that long ago that he was this roly poly, mile-a-minute two year old. :)

Zane's Science Fair

Zane's science fair went really well. It was a madhouse of people. I guess I should have expected that, since there's probably almost 300 students in the 6th grade, but I didn't really think about it until we got there. I was only able to get a few good pictures because there were so many people milling around, but at least I got those. Zane and his partner ended up getting first in the People's Choice category for his section of the sixth grade! Awesome!!!!

Nice smile there, Zane. lol

That's the "Stop taking my picture already" smile.

Showing the video to people.

The display. I am very pleased to say that Zane and Ajay did the whole posterboard themselves. See, when you don't do your child's schoolwork for them, they can still do a pretty good job. AND they learn something from it. :)

Science Fair Project

Here's the video of Zane and Ajay shooting off their air cannon.:

And a couple pictures:

Putting together the cannon

Zane looks like a delinquent in this picture. Yes? lol



Update on my smarties!

Whew! Another busy week over. Between that and no internet (or cable) from Wednesday through Friday (ugh!) I haven't had a chance to blog. Lots of updates though.

Zane finished his math state assesments this week. He did the reading ones about a month ago, and got an exemplary (highest category you can get) on those! We should find out his math score pretty soon. This week in band, his teacher told him that he had the potential to be the best trumpet player in the class. There are 11 trumpets in the sixth grade band, so that's a pretty high compliment. Zane took this to mean that he doesn't need to practice as much anymore (ha!) Teenagers and their logic sometimes....

Zane's science fair is on Tuesday. He and one of his classmates made an air cannon. They aren't allowed to actually shoot it off at the science fair (thank God!) so we have to videotape Zane and Ajay shooting it at home and then load it to YouTube so that they can play it on a laptop at their display table. I'll post the video once we take it.

Raegan still doesn't care to watch cartoons on television (which is just fine with me!) but she was absolutely fascinated when I was watching a little bit of Dancing with the Stars last Monday. She said "Whoa!" and stopped to watch, then started twirling around in circles. Twinkle, Twinkle has been replaced by Itsy Bitsy Spider as her favorite song. She does these hugely exaggerated movements for "down came the rain" and it's adorable. She also loves playing Ring Around the Rosy, especially if the whole family will join in with her.

Raegan knows many body parts now. She names eye, nose, mouth, teeth, and knee, and she can point to all of those, plus ear, hair, neck, hand, arm, foot, leg, and belly. She loves showing her belly! :) She knows the noises that a horse, bear, lion, bird, dog, cat and sheep make, and she loves reading any book that has animals or babies in it. Raegan's big obsession right now is babies. A six month old girl started at daycare a couple weeks back, and Raegan is CRAZY about her. Raegan already says her name, and Angela said that she likes to give her pats on the back and always wants to give Angela the diaper when she needs to change the baby. Yesterday when we went grocery shopping, Raegan kept asking "Baby?" and looking around every aisle we went down. We only saw one baby in the whole store, but she sure was looking.

Pictures and videos to come.....

Proud mama/stepmama

Some cool things going on with Zane and Raegan right now:

Zane's on the honor roll. Have I mentioned that on here already? We have a nice kelly green honor student bumper sticker on the Mountaineer to prove it. He's also in the midst of making an air cannon with a friend of his for their science fair coming up next month. Zane's school in Manhattan had a science fair every year, but his elementary school here did not. I'm excited to go to another science fair again.

He's also going to be getting an award for the exemplary grades that he got on his state assessments. How cool is that?!?! Not only is Zane smart, he can handle test taking pressure also. :)

Raegan says "mine" and "my" all the time now! She also scolds Daisy or Radar if they get to close to something she's playing with. She shakes her finger and them and says "NO NO Daisy" or "NO NO kitty". It's really quite cute. She's definitely in the egocentric, world-revolves-around-me stage. :)

Raegan can also put on her jacket/coat all by herself. We put it on the floor upside down and she puts her arms in and flips it up over her head. I would say she's able to get her arms through succesfully on the flip about every other time. Pretty dang good for 19 months old. You should have seen her face the first time she did it last weekend. She was so proud of herself!

Zane's band concert

So, two weeks later, I am finally getting around to posting pictures and video from Zane's band concert. I blame it on the Kindle Luke got me for my birthday. I am so in love with that thing. Books that are out of copyright are free, so I can read tons of old classics. I read Little Women earlier this week, and I have Pride and Prejudice already downloaded and waiting. I'm in the middle of a book called After the Leaves Fall, which is fairly decent. Some of the more current free books are decent, and some are definitely NOT, but there's something to be said about having it all at your fingertips and not having to drive across town to the library. Especially now that gas is up to $3.39!!!! I keep hearing that it's going to get around $4 before the end of the year, but I really hope that's not true. I guess we'll be putting the money we save on groceries and heating towards gas. Yuck.

Anyways, Zane's band concert was February 21. It's amazing what a difference a year makes, because his concert sounded so GOOD this year. Not that it didn't sound good last year, but they are all a lot smoother and are playing much more complicated songs. I really do hope that this is something Zane sticks with, because he has a talent for it and if he continues to play well he could snag some good scholarships for college (and get to go to a bunch of football games for free!)

Tough guy :)

It seems like these days Zane cannot take a picture without making some kind of face. Even when he's trying to take a good picture. Ha. He still looks pretty handsome though.

 

Actually got a picture of him during the concert!

 

Miscellany Monday

Finally! Something to participate in that makes a jumble of random thoughts okay. :) I love being random.....

1. Snow day
Or ice day. Whatever you want to call it. Zane said last night that he was really hoping we wouldn't have school today. I poo-pooed him and said that the weather channel didn't even put a percentage amount on the sleet we were supposed to get last night, so I was sure we would have school. I even put my phone on the nightstand, and when I looked at the clock and it was 6:05 I said, "Guess we're having school today." (District is supposed to make a decision by 6:00 a.m.) My supervisor called me at 6:12. Awesome.

2. Zane's grades
I don't think I mentioned it on here yet, but Zane made the honor roll. He finished out the semester with 6 A's and 2 B's. Which is exactly what his grades are right now a couple weeks into this quarter. For the rest of the year he'll be taking General Music instead of Art, because that's how they do optional ninth hour in middle school. He wasn't too thrilled about the thought of General Music at first, but he's really excited about it now because they're going to learn to play guitar for a two week period after Spring Break. He's thinking about taking Guitar as one of his electives next year. If he really likes it this spring, we may look into getting him lessons for the summer.

3. Running
I'm up to 1.25 miles on the treadmill now. Which I know that being able to run a certain distance on the treadmill doesn't always translate into being able to run that far outside because of wind, weather, etc. But before I took this up I couldn't run at all, so I'm pretty pleased. There's going to be a 5K fun run here in town on February 26th to help raise money for Reed (the little boy from Raegan's daycare with the tumor that I blogged about in this post. I've been saying for months now I want to finish a 5K (and wasn't able to at Thanksgiving because I got sick and it messed up my training), and I thought this would be a good way to support Reed's family and it would be really motivational for me. For anyone local, there's also a 2 mile walk, and registration is by donation, so you might consider doing it. Let me know if you want more details!

4. Organizing....
....sucks, but I sure do feel good when I have things all in their place. :)

Update

I'm being a bad blogger lately. It seems like we've just been going, going, going every weekend for awhile now, and when I do have down time I would rather curl up with a book and a glass of wine than do anything else. :) No pictures for this post, just an update of what all we are up to.

Raegan:

Raegan is fully weaned now. Three weekends ago I just started telling her no and giving her a cup of milk before brushing teeth and bed. The first couple nights were rough, and she was PISSED. :) But after the first few nights she adjusted to it very well. We have a pretty good routine now: bath, jammies, cup (usually with water now)/snuggle/book (if she'll let us), brush teeth and bed. Sometimes if she's still a little riled up we'll let her walk around and play for a few minutes, but no crazy times with Zane.

Raegan's vocabulary is expanding every day. I'll try to list it all here but I'm sure I'm nowhere close to remembering all of them. Right now she's saying: hi, hello, bye bye, ni-ni (night night), drink, nak (snack), baba (cup), up, no, Mama, Dada, kitty, Daisy (sometimes just Daiz), bubba, uh oh, ow. I'm sure there's more! Raegan also shakes her head yes and no, very accurately to tell you what she wants. If she wants a drink she'll go to the refrigerator and stand by and start going "eh eh eh" (it's a very specific sound that she uses just then). If she's hungry she'll go to her high chair and try to climb up in it. When we tell her it's time for a bath she'll walk to the bathroom herself, and when we tell her it's time to get dressed she'll go to her changing table. She'll also go to the door when we say "time to go bye bye".

One of Raegan's favorite things to do right now is buckle the straps on her changing table. She's done it several times now. She also likes to put the shapes in her shape sorter - she's not to the point where she can match them on her own, but if you put the right hole facing up she can get the shapes in pretty smoothly. She has this ladybug toy with shapes you push into the ladybug, and she will push them all in then hit the top of the bug to make them all pop out again. She also loves rocking in her rocking chair and talking on her cellphone. She'll hold it up to her ear (sometimes her neck) and say "hello". It's too stinkin' cute! One of Raegan's other favorite things to do still is peek-a-boo. It's so fun to hear her crazy laugh when you get going with that game.

Zane:

Zane turned 12 yesterday! Where does the time go? He's still doing very well in sixth grade. He's doing much better at not talking as much during art class, and his high A reflects that. :) His biggest challenge right now is remembering to turn in his practice sheets for band (and his B, as opposed to the over 100% he had last quarter, reflects that). It's a lot harder without me reminding him every week. His first middle school band concert is next month. I'm excited to hear how much the band has improved since last year.

Zane's really into Greek and Roman history and mythology right now. If you ever have a question about either of these subjects, let me know. I'm sure Zane knows the answer! lol

Hmmmm, what else? It's hard to find as much to write about Zane, because he's older and he doesn't change nearly as quickly as Raegan does. Which is good, because I don't think I could keep up with the both of them if they both developed so quickly!

Zane's fall conference

Zane's parent teacher conference went very well tonight. Middle school is a lot different that elementary school, because he has 8 teachers now instead of just one (plus specials and reading) so I wasn't really sure how the conference would go. The teacher that's assigned to do conferences with us is Zane's social studies teacher. It's kind of strange that he talks about the other classes too, because he knew about the subject matter but wasn't always sure what the assignments in the folders meant, but it worked fine. I would rather not have to go around to 8 different teachers, I'll tell you that!

Mr. E. told us multiple times that Zane is very organized in his class. Woo hoo! After such a struggle last year to get him to turn things in, he appears to be doing much better. Well, not in art, where he had multiple NHIs (Not Handed In), but in the other 7 subjects yes. Luke and I both feel (and I think Zane's mom does too based on what she was saying to Zane) that it's a bit ridiculous that Zane has a B because of not handing in his work in an elective that he chose to take. If it were a B based on his work, fine. But in looking at his grades on assignments, it appears that his B is solely because he had maaaaaany assignments he didn't hand in. We've always told Zane we expect A's and B's because he is intelligent and perfectly capable of that. :)

So Zane has 6 A's and two B's. And two of those A's were 100%, and another was a 99%!!!! Awesome! So far, middle school seems to be going well for him, and we are very proud of him!!!!!

Boo on you Blogger!

Could someone tell me why Blogger's video uploader isn't working? Bah! I have this really cute video of Raegan torturing petting Radar, and I've been trying since last night to get it up and it will not load. So instead, I'll just blather on for a couple minutes, then post a couple random pictures.

Tooth #7 is slowly making it's way in on the bottom, second to the left. You can see the white bud right now, but I would expect it to poke through soon. I wondered if Raegan wasn't going to have another one come through soon by the way she was chewing on her finger all weekend.

Raegan adores peek-a-boo. First I cover myself with the blanket and she pulls it off, then I cover her and I pull it off. After doing it a couple times, she will put the blanket up against her own face after she pulls it off me, like she's telling me it's her turn. And she'll get real still and just giggle while she's waiting for me to pull the blanket off her. We did it for a good five minutes tonight, and it's just so much fun!

Yesterday was a horrendous day at work. Since this is a public blog, I can't really say anything, but trust me that it sucked. After we got home Zane was doing his homework and Raegan was sitting in her high chair eating a snack. I kind of leaned my face against the tray of her chair and she started feeding me some of her puffs. Not my favorite food by far, but she thought it was hilarious and who can resist that? Then we went out on the deck and played with the water table for awhile and played on the trampoline. Definitely a much better way to end the day.

Zane had his first playing test in band last Friday. They have to individually play a piece that the whole band has been practicing. In front of the director and the whole band. Yikes! Zane brought home his scoring sheet today, and he got a 100%! Awesome!!! He also got progress reports for three of his classes today, and he has A's in all three of them. He has a 99.14 in social studies. Good grief! :) But then on the other hand, he has a bunch of assignments missing in art because he failed to tell us he needs a specific type of folder to turn things in with. Sometimes, that boy....

Okay, a couple pictures: Never mind. Apparently there is something wrong with all of Blogger's uploading, so no videos and no pictures from me tonight. :(

Zane's poem

Here's the bio poem that Zane had to do in school a couple weeks ago. He got an A+ on it, which means I'm not just biased and it's truly awesome! :) I wish I could figure out a way to load his Power Point about himself that he did last week. It's better than anything I ever could have done. Seriously.

Since you probably can't read it very well, here's what it says:

Zane

awesome, funny, smart

sibling of Raegan

who loves family, friends, and animals

who likes tigers, wolfs, and popcorn

who fears snakes, spiders, and college

who gets angry when some one takes my stuff,

when people are mean to animals, and when people

are mean to my cousin

who hopes to go to college, to be a Zoologest,

and get through middle school

Resident of 1200 E Ellsworth

Jones

Our week

Picture-less update on the kids:

Zane:
Zane is doing really well in middle school so far. We were kind of worried because of his huge lack of organizational skills, but he seems to be doing well so far. He's only had one late assignment in the last three weeks, which is excellent for him. I took a peek at his grades online and as of yesterday he has all A's! He's never had a problem with understanding the material, it's just remembering to get everything done and turned in.

Soccer practices started this evening. We're doing something new this season since Zane is too old for YMCA sports. He's going to play on a middle school (6th, 7th and 8th combined) team through Parks and Rec. Luke said there's only a couple other 6th graders on the team, but I figure that will be good for Zane. Apparently there was a kid at the skills assessment last week who was over 6 foot tall. How do kids get to be that tall when they're in middle school? Jeez.

Zane has finally decided he wants a haircut. All I can say is thank the good Lord Almighty. He needed one about 2 months ago. :)

Raegan:
Raegan has slept through the night for almost two weeks now. She usually wakes up between 5:30 and 6:30 every morning. If it's closer to 5:30 I put her back down after she nurses and get her up around 7:00 to get dressed and walk out the door. I don't know if she was just really tired from her birthday party this weekend or if she's really playing hard at child care, but she's been in bed before 8:00 every night this week.

I'm slowly starting the weaning process. I've taken out the nursing in the late afternoon after we get home by giving her another snack as soon as we walk in the door. Today she ate a 4 ounce container of strawberry yogurt in one setting. And still ate a good supper. Next week I'm going to have Angela stop one of her bottles during the day. Slow and steady....

Raegan is a climbing machine! Today she climbed up on top of her Little Mermaid push toy and proceeded to climb up onto the couch. It seems to me like she can probably take off walking any time she chooses to. I think she's still just a little nervous about letting go. :)

We've been enjoying the much nicer weather. Last night we put the water table out on the deck and played in it for awhile. Tonight we went on a long walk. I hope that fall is here to stay! I can't wait to take the kids to the pumpkin patch next month! Fall is seriously my favorite season.

Well, that's about all in our neck of the woods for now.

Another week done

Well, Zane made it through his first week of school, and Raegan and I through our second week of child care/work. Zane's only had a little bit of homework so far, but next week it's going to pick up, at least in band. He's supposed to be practicing 100 minutes a week, which is a pretty significant jump from 60 minutes a week last year. In attempting to *nudge* my husband into being more responsible for Zane, I'm leaving all trumpet practice and signing of practice sheets up to him. I really hope that both Zane and Luke can keep up with it, and that Zane's grade doesn't suffer too horribly. :) I started this new trend over the summer, and Zane practiced maybe once a week, and you can hear it in his quality of playing these days. Hopefully now that he's back in school they will both be on the ball a little more.

Raegan is adjusting really well to child care. Yesterday and today she leaned out of my arms to go to Angela, which while that's a really good thing, it did make me sad for just a moment. At the end of every day though she's very excited to see me, and that's a really nice feeling. I love the fact that they go outside every day (in the early morning and she has a very shaded backyard), and they went on a walk whichever day this week was cooler. However, I'm pretty sure Raegan will always love her Granny Nanny the best. :)

6th grade!

As of Monday at 7:35 a.m. Zane is officially a middle schooler. He said that he was able to get his locker open without any problems and didn't have any trouble making it to his classes on time. He says the art teacher is "awesome" but it stinks that they don't have recess. They do have P.E. every day now though, so I think that helps to make up for the blow of no recess. :)

What a good looking guy!

And a silly face.

Raegan and her awesome big brother.

Enrollment

We went tonight to enroll Zane in middle school. I cannot believe that he is going to be roaming the halls of that big school in less than two weeks. The nice thing is that the sixth graders are kind of segregated from the 7th and 8th graders - their classes and lockers are all in one wing. Zane's locker is right in the middle of all of his core classes, and it's not too far of a walk to Art, P.E. and Band. We couldn't get his combination lock on his locker to open, so if we have time tomorrow I'm going to take him back over so we can fiddle with it some more and probably get some help. Another nice thing that USD 305 does is that the 6th graders go to school for a full day before the rest of the middle school starts. It's not really a school day, more of an orientation. And then that evening Luke and I will get the joy of spending an hour and a half (who plans these meetings?!) at the Parent Night meeting the teachers and learning a little bit more about what middle school will be like.

I jokingly told Zane that we're going to homeschool him or have him do online school after this year, because next year it's going to get ridiculously expensive to have him in middle school. The fees break down like this (we only had to pay the first two this year):

Enrollment: $60
Activity Ticket and Yearbook: $25 (I *know* this isn't a necessity, but what kid doesn't want a yearbook, and it would have been $25 for just the yearbook alone)
Gym Clothes: $20
Activity Fee: $50 (this is for him to be in band or a sport)

Yep. Ridiculous. Why they have to wear specific shorts and t-shirts I don't know. Seems like he has a whole dresser full of shorts and t-shirts that he could sweat in just fine. *shrugs* And why 7th and 8th graders need specific gym clothes and 6th graders don't, I couldn't tell you.

So the boy is enrolled and starts on August 16th. Yikes!

Thoughts

I managed to hang out on Zane's last day of school for about an hour before I had to get back to work. Hanging out with him at school is so much different than it used to be. When he was in kindergarten, first and second grade, hanging out meant I was right with him the entire time. I sat by him on the bus ride to a field trip. I sat with him while he ate. I stayed right by him and some friends on a field trip. I'll be honest - I didn't make it into his classroom nearly as much in third and fourth grade. This last day of school was the first time I've been in all year, which is not what I wanted, but with using all my time off on maternity leave, it just wasn't avoidable. On Thursday, hanging out meant looking at his artwork with him, chatting with him and his friends for a couple minutes about Chuck Norris (lol) and taking some pictures. I helped serve pizza, so I didn't sit by him while he ate. But that's okay. It's a part of Zane growing up. There was a boy there who actually sat on his mom's lap for a good portion of lunch, and I was thankful that Zane is not like that with me. That Zane was making memories. That Zane was with his friends laughing and telling Chuck Norris jokes. On that note, did you know that Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light because the dark is afraid of him? Oh, I laughed so hard.

So yes, being around my kiddo is different now. But it's still great. I leave you with a couple pictures:

Zane has played soccer with the kid in green for years, and he's moving this summer. :(

He really looks like his dad in this picture. I am oh so familiar with that look.....

Zane's best friend.

He is always dancing! I love it!!!

The girls randomly inserted themselves in the picture. :)

Ch-ch-changes

Today is Zane's last day of fifth grade, which means he is officially done with elementary school. I cannot believe how the time has flown. Is it going to go this fast with Raegan too? I'm managing to find time between a million meetings at work to go to the 5th grade pizza party for a little while. Hopefully I can get some good pictures of him with his friends. If I do I will post those later.

Zane's Graduation

Zane's fifth grade honors night was this evening. (We're not *supposed* to call it a graduation, but that's what I keep calling it!) He got the President's Award for outstanding academic excellence, which means that he had to average a 90 in all subjects in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, and get above an 85 on state testing. Smart boy! My pictures of the ceremony are not that great, because the lighting in that gym hates me (ha!) but I'll leave you with a couple. I cannot believe he's going to middle school in a couple months! Scary....

In front of the school before the ceremony.

I don't like this picture at all because she looks like a little girl instead of a baby. Ugggghhh!

Cheeseball :)

Singing songs at the beginning.

Goodbye Heusner!

Zane with his fifth grade teacher, Mr. Boyer.

Daddy trying to keep Captain Fussypants entertained for a moment longer. :)