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Author Archives: Jen

Throwback Thursday—I’ll never forget this.

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Do you know what it is?

It’s from my grandparent’s screen door in Bay City.

I remember when we were cleaning out the house after my grandpa died I mentioned something to someone about keeping the door or at least the L…but I could only stay for a day or so before I had to head back home to North Carolina so I never knew (or asked) what happened to it.

Until today, when I posted it on Facebook. My mom said that the people who bought the house back then only recently replaced it…so someone in our family could have gotten it. Dang.

Veteran’s Day

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We all went to the Veteran’s Day Assembly at Owen’s school. It was very nice, and each of the grades performed either a song or poem. During one of the songs, every child who had a military family member stood up and waved a sign that said “Thank you, Service Members!” (This is a photo from a random person on Facebook.)

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We were a bit too far back to see well, so it wasn’t until afterwards we learned that Owen didn’t stand up…because he was shy. Poor kid. It wasn’t like he was the only one, either—there were probably (conservatively) 50 other kids standing up, too.

This was what he brought home from school:

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1st Grade Veteran’s Day Assembly project

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Owen’s teacher emailed me last night to see if I could help with a class project today for the Veteran’s Day assembly on Wednesday. It was last minute but she thought maybe I could do it since I was already going to be in the classroom (for a makeup P/T conference). I quickly agreed because I like helping out—and I could bring Katie. 🙂 She said she’d let me know what the project was when I got there.

Hoo boy, LOL.

It wasn’t just a CLASS project, but a GRADE project. An ART project. Where I had to paint everyone’s hands to make the stripes on a flag. And stick their name stickers on as well. So, around 100 kids 2-10 at a time in a hallway…ON MY KNEES the whole time.

I gave up control of hand placement on about the fourth red hand, LOL.

I had on the wrong clothes—a tank with a swingy top which kept flapping about getting close to the paint (washable, of course, but still…I’d have worn something different if I knew I’d be painting).

I had the wrong hair—I wore it down, but with all the moving around and kids and close quarters and paint…I would have worn it up.

And my knees. My poor, old, broken knees. I can barely deal with kneeling for five minutes, let alone an hour. I wouldn’t have said no even if I knew, so it doesn’t really matter…I’m just lamenting my old knees and how I took some strong drugs and am currently writing this entry sitting with my feet up because it hurts to walk. 🙂

It was fun overall (though a bit messy and chaotic), some kids recognized me as Owen’s mom, the teachers really appreciated me being there, it turned out cute, and I was too busy to worry about Katie but Mrs. Talley said she was just fine…and I walked in after to see Katie just sitting with the kids (not even with Owee!) watching the math lesson. 🙂

  

First 1st grade P/T conference

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On the way in, we stopped to see Owen’s Hero submission for Veteran’s Day in the main hallway:

  

Overall, Owen is doing great!

He’s ahead in reading—she said she’s had to keep moving him up levels! He’s currently on Level 8 (levels are much different than back in our day) and needs to be at Level 16 by the end of the year…which his teacher said she wasn’t worried about at all. 

He’s doing well in math—he got 13/14 on a recent makeup test from the week he missed (but she didn’t give him any instruction like the rest of the class had). And the question he got wrong he just didn’t pay close attention to the instructions because he was likely going too fast (it was 4 + 2 = ___ + 3 and he wrote 6).

He’s also doing well in social studies, science, and writing—and I got to quickly look at his journals. 

He uses his time well (an improvement from kindergarten) and behaves in class. 

His teacher said he had no major areas that needed improvement (yay!)—just basic (expected) things like using upper/lower case consistently and correctly, spacing between words when writing, etc…all stuff we know and are working on. 

And we got a list of questions we need to ask when he does his daily reading to help prepare him for the state testing at the end of the year (like Who was the main character? What happened first?) as well as more critical thinking like this:

 

Katie’s first haircut!

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Though I’d recently been thinking about getting Katie’s hair trimmed, I hadn’t yet gone through with it. But, when we ended up across the way from a kids’ cut place (Cartoon Cuts) at the mall, we asked if she wanted to get her hair cut and she said yes!

And she did amazing! It helped, I’m sure, that she got to watch cartoons the whole time! 🙂

  
       

He blow-dried it which made it look completely unlike her normal self, and of course, we couldn’t get her to pose for a decent pic.

The neat thing about an actual kids’ place? I got this automatically. 🙂

Then it was off to the bouncy place—her treat for being a good girl during the haircut.


This was the photo attempt at home:

So I’ll have to get a better one tomorrow. 🙂 

I know she’d be thrilled. 

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So, while we were cleaning out Marsha’s apartment, I found two $50 QVC e-gift cards (from us and Tom’s brother, from maybe 2012 or so)—I took them with me to check if they’d been used. They hadn’t. So I had a $100 credit. The next day, I found a manila folder with three more QVC gift cards…dating back to—ARE YOU READY?!—2008!! I was sure they’d had to have been used because she LOVED the silver jewelry from QVC and had a lot of it…but grabbed them anyway just in case.

So fast forward to last night when I was putting away all the jewelry pieces of hers that I had chosen (for me and Katie) and I realized that my jewelry box just wasn’t big enough—I just didn’t have the space for mine plus hers (she had A LOT of jewelry and I had picked quite a bit, though it was still a fraction of what she actually had). I then realized that I have jewelry in a box, in a hanging case, in a drawer, and in random spots around the bedroom…and that that’s kinda silly and I’d actually get good use out of a standing armoire.

I ended up at QVC because I vaguely remembered wanting one from there years ago…and they had EXACTLY what I wanted…on clearance…with free shipping! It was more than I’d wanted to pay, but not bad considering what other ones cost and that it would last me the rest of my life. Tom agreed I could get it so I dug out the folder of QVC gift cards to check their balance. And none of the three had been used. NONE! So I had another $95 credit! So after almost $200 credit, I owed about $65.

So…Marsha unknowingly bought me the perfect Christmas gift—something I loved, wanted, and needed—that could house all the great jewelry I got from her…and I know she’d be thrilled.

What a discouraging week. Blurg.

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I’m really bummed this morning. I just weighed myself for my weekly weigh-in and…I’m up about four pounds from last Sunday!

WHAT?!?!?!?

Now, granted, last Sunday I weighed on a different scale (at my mom’s house)…BUT it’s the exact scale we have and my previous weighings on her scale showed similar results to mine (meaning I weighed myself Sunday night when we got there and it was up 2-3 pounds from my house, which was likely attributable to weighing at night with clothes as opposed to naked in the morning).

If our scale is right, I didn’t lose anything at all the entire week we were in Michigan when I was eating like a bird because I wasn’t hungry. Seems highly unlikely. Gah.

THAT SAID, I know I haven’t been 100% on my game because this past week just felt off all week. One or two days I ate a few pieces of Halloween candy (like a few sweet tarts, a mini kit kat, and a mini Reese’s cup—allowed, of course, except I didn’t eat them at the “right” time)—then I ate “dinner” (1/3 cup mac and cheese and 1/2 a brat) at 8:00 even though I wasn’t technically at the correct hunger level. And I didn’t exercise like I normally do. And on more than a few days it felt like I just wanted to eat ALL THE FOOD ALL THE TIME (even though I didn’t). It’s not “that time of the month” because that doesn’t happen on the birth control I’m on…but whatever the reason is I hate it. I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry. But I want everything. And my normal willpower has dissipated.

Fortunately, this is a new week and I’ll just get back to basics (again) and hopefully I’ll lose another seven like I did a few weeks ago.

But in the meantime, I do try to remember that I’ve already lost a serious amount of weight in quite a short time and I should be thrilled (which I am!) but it’s hard not to be somewhat discouraged about such a huge unexpected swing. 🙁

They are both so sweet.

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So we’re watching Inside Out and some scene comes on where the characters are crying.

Katie: What’s he doing?
Tom: He’s crying. It’s good to cry. It’s how we deal with things.
Owen: Like when Grandma Marsha died.
Tom and I look at each other and get teary.
Me: Exactly.
Owen: And we won’t forget her…
Katie: Because she’s always in our heart.
Tom and I look at each other again and just about lose it. The kids weren’t phased at all and just went back to watching the movie.

I’m glad the things I’ve said to them have sunk in, even if Katie doesn’t specifically understand yet.

My outgrown monkey

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Because I like to plan and shop ahead, I’ve had this 18m Halloween costume for probably 2-3 years…but unfortunately she never got to wear it and now it’s too small. (Last year would have been perfect but so was the MSU Cheerleader.) Surprisingly it still kinda fit so I had to get a picture! She was SO excited to be a monkey!!