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Category Archives: Owen

Back To School Night 2016

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So, as you know, Owen was OVER THE MOON about being assigned to a classroom on the second floor at William Halley ES—and all the thanks go to Principal Chianetta for making it happen! So when we actually got to his classroom, he was super excited and almost immediately went to look out the window!

He was his typical shy self at first but eventually let me take a picture with his new teacher, Ms. VanDerhoff.

Unfortunately, none of his six or so close friends (kids that we know well) are in his class but it turns out our next door neighbor is! (This is her first year at Halley—she went to private kindergarten.) And of course he knows lots of the kids because he knows everyone. 🙂

We had some extra time before the teacher’s presentation so I took Katie down to see her classrooms and find out who her teacher was. We hoped to have Miss Heather again because we LOVED her but knew it wasn’t guaranteed. As soon as Miss Heather saw Katie, she grabbed her and gave her a huge hug…then told me that Katie was being moved to the older room since she’s now four and then walked us over to meet the new teacher. You could see that Katie was a bit upset but the good news is that the assistant from Katie’s old room moved to the new room! So she has Miss Anne (our friend!) in her room. Yay! The teacher seemed very nice and I know we’ll get to know her better and everything will be okay. Eventually Katie came around to being in a different classroom.

Then it was back up to Owen’s classroom where we got the basic rundown of his classroom. The biggest change that I could see is there’s no bathroom in the room!

Then it was outside to check out the new playground equipment…

And both kids are now excited to get back to school. Yay!

We surprised Owen with the classroom he wished for!

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Owen has said he doesn’t want to move because he wants to be here for third grade because the third grade classrooms are upstairs and he really wanted to be upstairs.

So in talking with someone (I can’t remember who), they told me that two of the four second grade classrooms are actually held upstairs! So I talked to the principal, explained we wouldn’t be here for third grade, told her Owen’s wish, and asked if he could be put in one of those classrooms. She said that would be no problem. 🙂

Tonight we saw the official class lists:

We told Owen we had a surprise and showed the picture to him, wondering if he’d be able to figure out what it meant. It took him a minute, but he did! And boy was he EXCITED!! Jumping around, screeching, hugging us like mad…

 

I love a happy boy!!

Summer Slide Worksheet? CHECK!

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He finished his Summer Slide stuff a few days early (280 second grade workbook pages, ~700 pages of reading, and 70 pages of handwriting practice!) so guess who’s starting his Lego reward right now?

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Overall it was more of a fight than I thought it would be—he’s a typical kid who never wanted to spend the 20-30 measly minutes a day to do what he needed to do, so when it compounded and he’d have to work for 2-3 hours to catch up he became a hot whiny mess. And this was even after I put the Lego reward on display! The only time he got really excited about “doing homework” was this week when he saw how close he was to the end.

But, he now knows how to do 3-digit addition and subtraction (along with lots of other stuff) and his handwriting is MILES ahead of where it was. We still need to work on reading comprehension and composing sentences, but overall, he did a great job! YAY OWEN!

Pirate’s Cove, Take 2, NO POOP!

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We convinced Tom to take the day off work to come play with us!! We were there right when they opened, so I tried to take a bunch of pictures quick before the background was overrun with people!

Owen wasn’t thrilled with stopping to get his picture taken!

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I even went down the slide!

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A Pokémon gym was right at the entrance, so Tom took Owen over to battle!

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I didn’t have my camera with me when we were closer, so this is a quick pic from the other side of the park. I even went down the red slide! (I have to admit, I was actually a little nervous at the top—I haven’t been on a slide in a long time—but it was fun!) We never did get Katie to go on it, which is a bummer because I know she would have loved it! (As it was, I had to practically BRIBE her to go down the little blue slide above—she wanted NO part of it. But once she did it, she loved it!)

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So we had a nice, relaxing day…and best of all, there were no poop incidents!!

It was great fun…until someone pooped in the pool. Twice.

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So earlier this summer I bought three afternoon tickets for Pirate’s Cove Water Park from a deal site—and we finally got around to using them today (which we had to since they close on Labor Day!).

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So we get there at 3, get the bag unpacked, get in the pool, and within 15 minutes, it was announced that everyone had to exit the main pool and it would reopen in one hour. (They didn’t say it was poop, but we were 99% sure that’s what it was.)

Ugh.

The whole point of this place (for me!) is that Katie and Owen can both go in the main pool so I don’t have to be in two places at once—the big waterslides with Owen or the kiddie pool with Katie (and neither has to be bored sitting out at the other). So first we went to the kiddie pool where Katie had fun and me and Owen sat on the edge of the pool. Then Owen wanted to do the big waterslides so we went over there for a bit and sat and watched him. (Katie was tall enough but she refused to try them…even though they weren’t much different than the one she loved in Kalkaska.) Then we went back to the kiddie pool and left Owen at the slides.

The hour passes and everyone gets back in the main pool. Within, I’d say, 30 minutes, they announced the pool was closed again for 45 minutes! And this time I know it was poop because I saw a lifeguard get gloves on and reach down into the pool…and then as we were filing out, I saw little pieces of poop all over.

SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE? I know you want your little ones to have fun in the “big” pool but COME ON. Have some respect for EVERYONE ELSE. The world doesn’t revolve around YOU. 👿

So, to recap, we got there at about 3:05 and were in the pool until 3:15 and then we were in the pool from 4:15-4:45. So 45 minutes total—and they close at 6! So I told the kids to pack up, we weren’t staying, and I was asking for a refund. They were actually dealing with a few rainchecks as we walked out, so the guy didn’t even question me and handed me a voucher for three full-day passes! So instead of just an afternoon, we now had a whole day! If we wanted to try it again, that is…

He looks like a soccer player!

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It was crazy insane hot tonight so practice didn’t last very long. 

Then little sister wanted a picture, too. 🙂

As a sidenote, we still don’t have a coach and it’s quite the cluster. It’s clear no one at the soccer association really has any idea what’s going on and that makes it very frustrating as a parent. This came in an email after practices:

 
My reaction was SERIOUSLY? It is OUR job to find a coach? WHAT?! I posted as much on Facebook, lamenting that this can’t be typical…and unfortunately was quickly told by many that yes, it’s very common—lots of parents with zero soccer knowledge end up coaching soccer. Ay yi yi. So stay tuned…there’s stuff in the works.

They love when I bring the waterproof camera!

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It was back up to probably 98 and 85% humidity so we spent four hours at the pool today. The battery on the camera was running out after the first hour. 🙂

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Then Katie wanted the camera so I coached her (again) on how to hold the camera so she wouldn’t get her fingers in the way… She does pretty well.

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She never wants to practice floating when I want her to…so she just decides to do it whenever. I have to say it freaks me out just a little. 🙂

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Owen’s first ever soccer practice!

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I thought I’d take a lot more pictures but it didn’t turn out that way! Katie enjoyed running around playing with Owen and the other kids. We probably should have put her in soccer, too, but honestly, I’m just not that ready to commit to that many hours of sports—their practices are at different times, so I’d (we’d) be at the fields for three hours on Wednesday (her from 5:30-6:45 and him from 7:00-8:15), plus another 1:15 for him Friday, and then two games each Saturday from 9-11:30. Yuck. I know those days are coming…but I am just not sure I’m ready yet.

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First we were on the wrong practice field—they have like 14 teams practicing at once and we didn’t realize there were two teams named Revolution (because the whiteboard didn’t differentiate them!) so we went from a field with great sideline seats to a half field with crappy viewing…and then our coach didn’t show up (and hadn’t emailed ANYONE to let them know) so there was a scramble to get a substitute coach so any real practice started about a half hour late…and I didn’t feel like hovering while he practiced (though, honestly, the first practice would have been the one to do it at). So I sat on the sidelines and this was the craziness.

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Click to see a larger version.

But he loved it, had a great time, and didn’t actually do that bad!

The syrup incident.

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It had been a day. You know the days that you have every so often where the kids aren’t necessarily being awful, but they are being slightly annoying about lots of little things all day so that it all adds up, so that when something like this happens…you lose your shit?

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Yeah. That was my day today. 😐

The short story is that the kids were messing around on the table and the syrup was in their way (left out from breakfast, but it had been there all day—and Katie tried to tell me the spill was MY fault!) and somehow the syrup “slipped” out of his hands and crashed to the floor while spilling syrup as you see above (I’ve had Owen tell the story three times and still am not clear). To be fair, I did end up apologizing after all was said and done (my reaction really was a bit extreme).

Owen’s reward for being bored.

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I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital this morning—plus lab work—and even though I told him to bring something to keep busy, he only brought his Pokémon book and he quickly tired of that. It was a long wait to get my blood drawn (almost an hour) so when we were done, we went Pokémon hunting…and he won the same gym twice! (Well, at least that’s what I’m pretty sure happened and what these pictures mean!)

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Catching up on his summer reading.

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Owen isn’t great about keeping up with his Summer Slide reading, so we’ve had to have some days where we read 40-60 pages to try and catch up. (It’s not as bad as it sounds—it’s not like he’s reading full chapter book pages. Some of them are, but some are also books for Katie with one sentence per page. So it averages out.) Notice he had a buddy today, as well.

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