Candice & Todd's blog: May was insanity!

Just when you think things could not get any busier.....
It does.
It did.

We survived. (barely!)

Isabella had her dance recital in early May. One thing that is kind of funny about this....she is SO serious. She says that you're not supposed to smile - that's why she doesn't look too happy in some of these photos. It's not that she wasn't happy -- it's just that she has her stage face on!

Isabella was the youngest kid in this group. It's a K-2nd grade Hip Hop class. She's the only Kindergartner / the littlest kid on the class. Perhaps because of this - she has a couple of scenes where she's in the middle / front and all of the girls have their hands on her shoulders. She kept telling me that she was the princess of the show?! ha~

We won't be going back to that dance studio... we liked it -- it was just too far away! She wants to do something more traditional like ballet or tap/jazz... both of those are offered closer to home in her age group.

Our friend Cecilia - who came to her ballet performance - came to this one as well. (She's a fan of our little dancer!)

Isabella still wants to play baseball too. The end of her all-girls baseball team came to an end. She did pretty well.... hard to tell if we won or lost games since they don't keep score at this age, but the kids had fun and learned about the game. She made some new friends and the coach has talked about keeping the all-girls team together.

They are the first all-girls baseball team for the league, so it's history-making. We'll see how things go and keep our eye on these spunky, strong girls!

At the after-the-season party, Isabella was more smitten with a worm that she found than the cute baseball cupcakes. (of course!)

One of the mom's got a sponsor to get trophies, but they came late, so there was a get-together after the season to share trophies and stories. :)

There is a family we've gotten to know over the past year or so.... their son, Daniel, has played on Mercer's team a couple of times. Because we're at the ballpark together, his little sister, Daniella, and Isabella have had lots and lots of time together on the playground and on the bleachers. Daniella was one of the little girls on the team. They have a love-hate relationship. Both are very strong girls. They butt heads. But - they love each other and have a lot of fun together too. :)

(Before Daniel grew his hair out, people would confuse him and Mercer on the field. Isabella and Daniella would also get confused on the field as well.) ha!

Mercer and Daniel are here in their Dragons uniform (in blue). The Dragons season has ended as well. These 11 and 12 year old boys started out slow and they really came together / started winning some games mid-way through... in fact, they ended the season with a 7 game winning streak. (A few games into the season, we were lucky to have a girl named Gabby join our team. Such a power-hitter and a good player all around!) Unfortunately, they didn't keep up that streak where they needed -- they could have really used it in the playoffs.

Mercer is still going strong as a pitcher and first base man. He gets rotated out into outfield sometimes, too. Todd was one of the coaches for the Dragons this year. It's funny to hear kids call him Coach outside of baseball. (ie - one of the kids is in Boy Scouts and it just caught me off guard to hear someone call Todd that there!) :)

Check out the kids' "official" Spring Baseball photo. So glad to have gotten the "sibling" pose instead of individual shots! :)

There's another team that Mercer plays on that Todd is not the coach for... so he can just go / relax and watch baseball. The other team that Mercer (and Daniel) play on is the hold-out from last year's All Star team -- the "travel / tournament" team that formed at the end of last summer called the Spikes. Here's an unofficial photo of these guys. The Spikes tournaments been getting off to a slow start this spring. Several of their games and scrimmages have been called off. But - they're practicing every week...the boys individually are getting better... and they are all just improving as a group.

(All-Star baseball for this summer began at the beginning of June. There will be more about that in the next blog.)

Side topic, but was reminded by this photo... Mercer was late for practice and wasn't dressed quite right for the photo because we were dealing with a mini-crisis at our house: Isabella got lice / got called home from school early that day. Todd handled everything... lining up the "lice magician" to come to our house that evening and inspect ALL of us. She inspected Todd and Mercer first so that they could go on their way to baseball practice & jump into this photo! No one else in the family had it amazingly, but apparently Isabella had had it for awhile, as there were multiple generations of them on her head. (Apparently, each year after the 5th grade trip, there are kids that come home with it. I wonder if some people brought it back again this year??!!) The woman was STILL working on clearing up the infestation when Todd and Mercer got back from the 2 hour baseball practice that evening!! The woman came back out 2 weeks later and re-evaluated Isabella... so far, so good. ~whew~ (note - my head was itchy just writing this blurb... so interesting about the psychology behind the mention of it! ha!)

Had muffins with the kids at school before dashing over to my own school. It was the first AND last time that I had breakfast / muffins with BOTH kids together at West Side.

Mother's day was a wash-out, but we got in a nice bike ride the day before on the M2R (Marietta 2 River) Trail. That weekend was the M2R Trailfest that brings so much great energy to our city... new art installations, activities, and bands along the route. (And the last time we see our friend / former neighbor Wayne with his band before he moved in June.)

Todd and Isabella went ahead and around the corner to hear the band. Mercer and I participated in the public adDRESS poll about arts in the city. (After you cast your opinions, they gave you colored ribbons that corresponded with your answer.)

It was interesting to hear Mercer's perspective on art... and that they surveyed him / wanted his opinion!

We went to the new Food Market off of the square for ice cream afterwards. This is the rarely seen "Mercer-Bird" and the more commonly seen "Copy-Cat Bird." :)

(The next day - actually Mother's Day was a wash out. I stayed in our room grading papers all day. wonk wonk~)

In May, we went to the Greek Festival. My former colleague does the choreography for the dances, so we always have to talk with her and see the dancing in the outdoor amphitheater. (Love this amphitheater... try to snap a photo of it each year while we're there and it's just too hard to capture, so went to the architect's website for the professional photo.) At first, Isabella wanted to dance, so she dragged me down to the bottom step... but, when it came time for others to jump in, she didn't want to / was a bit shy.

We always have to sample lots of fantastic food. And - now added to the mix since Todd worked on one of the buildings out at the site - he has to catch up with his building committee members that he got to know so well. It's just one of those things that we do each year now... sort of an annual tradition.

Of note: if you ask her about her favorite thing of the evening (mine had to have been the orzo lemonade or the baklava-topped ice cream!)... she was SO OVERWHELMED by the fact that she drank a Sprite out of the can.

She's had it at home before in a cup, but.... this was BIG for her! :)

Mercer and I have been serving at our church. I'm a deacon and have meetings / serve on the Green Team. Lately that means that I help wash coffee mugs in the big commercial dishwasher because we don't want them to get Styrofoam cups back after writing a grant for mugs / putting them into place! Both kids have helped me with dishes over the past several months. Isabella still thinks it's a novelty. Mercer isn't as enamored by the big, loud, steamy dishwasher.

Mercer has been serving as an Acolyte many Sundays. He carries the light down to the front, lights the candles. Then he extinguishes them and carries it back to the back. His favorite part is ringing the church bell in the balcony when he serves at the service that is in the historic sanctuary. (It's hard to see, but wanted to find a photo of the back of the sanctuary. There is a chain / rope to pull that is hanging down from the ceiling... can see it in the middle along the back wall.) It's pretty hard to pull, but he's big enough to do it and he thinks it's pretty cool that he's signalling to all of Marietta that it's time to get to church... it's about to start~

I got to climb up to the attic earlier this year to peer in as an engineer I used to work with was doing an energy audit for us / making recommendations about building science and insulating the attic.

The bell tower has been replaced by a "standard" wood / painted bell tower, but original one sure was nice! (There were steel beams inside the bell tower among the heavy timber trusses of the original sanctuary... I wish I had my camera when I went up!) It was funny to see the rope / chain running from the floor of the attic up through to the bell.

Something else that M participated in this year: something called Rise Up - an after-school Biblical "character-development" program for K-5 kids. Tagline: Meaningful. Messy. Memorable. This was the first year it was held at their school... and we offered to let M go by himself without his sister -- so that he would have a special thing of his own at after school.

His basketball coach was the mentor for the 4th and 5th grade boys, so that was cool.

Looks like more than a hundred kids joined. Isabella is interested in doing it. She'll do it next year. Looks like they had fun! (On the last day, they pulled the 5th graders up on stage and silly-stringed them.)

Between my crazy schedule of getting all of the grading done, going through testing at my school... which is just insanity of it's own... and end of year stuff there PLUS working in all of the events and activities for the kids... we barely survived. (I got sick right at the end -- from being run down, no doubt.) But we did make it through! I'll post a couple of highlights from my school before getting into the loads of stuff that we did at their school.

I taught a STEM class... and it was quite a bit different than the STEM work at my previous school. It was harder to manage because of the large class size and the behavior of the students. Also - although we were in the STEM academy and it's a limited number of kids who can be in it... there were a number of students who did not want to be there and brought down the others with bad attitudes. It stinks b/c I really loved doing STEM projects and activities at my other school.

Out of the entire school year - we managed to work on 2 projects that I enjoyed and we'll do again. (although with these raging hormones of the boys... some projects got destroyed each time because they made each other mad. (those were write-ups / disciplinary action required.)

Anyways.... here are a couple of pictures from one of the activities: building bridges out of Popsicle sticks and glue / then we tested them for strength.

Mercer and I built a bridge over spring break so that I could practice testing the process for holding weight without accidentally destroying a student's bridge. I can't remember how many bottles our held, but it was over 50 lbs. (We filled up the basket with as many bottles as possible -- it literally couldn't hold any more bottles otherwise, it would have held more than 50 lbs... by the time we had to stop, it didn't even budge.) The most that one of the student's held was somewhere in the 23-34 lb range.

The other project that was fun (not pictured) was building a prosthetic hand out of cardboard, straws, tape and string. The idea was that the students had to pick things up with their hand / make modifications to the design if they could not.

Next year, there will definitely be a lot of things I do differently. Also, the principal at our school was told by the principal of the main feeder school that the group that just came through was a rough group; the principal promised that next year's rising 6th graders were much much better. I sure hope so. It was a tough school year all around for a number of teachers, not just for newbies.

There will be quite a bit more that I plan to implement that I learned over the course of the year for my science and STEM classes. I pray I pray I pray that next year will be a better year !!!

OK: here's the END-OF-YEAR stuff (most of the end-of-year activities were for Mercer).
Wow. It was just so, SO much!

5th grade students from Mercer's school went over to a mini field-day at the new 6th Grade Academy. 5th grade students from all of the Marietta Elementary Schools went to participate / mingle / play games / get to know each other. Mercer knows some kids from other schools already from sports, camps, and church, so he was happy to see some familiar faces outside of his school group.

Marietta City reports that this is the largest 6th grade class to date. Pictured here are between 730 - 750 kids. Do you see him?!

There was another 6th-grade wide event where kids from all schools were invited to at a nearby park with water games and shaved ice, but... Mercer did not go to that. He already had another social commitment.

The next time he went to the school was to try out an instrument for his 6th grade band class. He only wanted to try out brass instruments. He tried the trombone and the trumpet. He settled on trumpet. We may need to invest in ear plugs next year. Ha ha!!

So - between a student/parent orientation that we went to, the field-day sort of event for students only, and for instrument fitting... he's been there 3 times now. He's really excited to go into 6th grade!!

Mercer's school held a 5th grade dance. We asked Mercer if he danced... he said no. His response to - you didn't even dance with any girls? He had a resounding NO. :)

It seemed like - from what we heard - all he did was eat junk food and run around. He actually came home with a belly ache! (he ate tons of Chick-fil-a, candy, sprite and shaved ice. ugh......) One of the moms volunteered - so she sent us a photo. (Above is a picture with Mercer and a couple of guys he was in Cub Scouts with getting their frozen sugar-water. The other photo - at left - is of all of the boys that went to the dance.)

Mercer went to a pool party for the 5th graders at a nearby neighborhood pool. This was organized by several moms... an un-sanctioned school event. There was pizza and shaved ice for dessert.

One of his friend's moms took him and sent me some photos 'til I got there close to the end. (He's in the light blue swim shirt.)

The end-of-year assemblies for Kindergarten and 5th grade were both held off-site -- at the Stand Theater up on the square. The kids rode the school bus up there and rode back to school unless you prearranged your student be "checked out" from the theater. What a lot of work, but had to have been special for those kids to be up on that stage in such a beautiful facility!!

For Kindergarten, most of their program was signing songs. The performances cycled through all of Kindergarten to an individual song with just one class. There are 5 classes, so there were 11-12 songs in total. It was a lot of singing that those kids had to practice and learn!

There were some awards given out as well. The students also got a certificate of completion.

Isabella hit a few bumps in Kindergarten. We knew with her strong personality that she may. She did have to go to the AP's office once, but for the most part, she had a pretty good experience. We are grateful that she had a wonderful teacher who was also strong. This helped immensely.

She did quite well academically. She tested (in the fall) at 3rd grade math AND 3rd grade reading. They retested all students in the spring... and this is where she was again, so I suppose it wasn't a fluke the 1st time. (kidding!) Because of these scores, she was invited to go to the gifted program. She went some, but each year it will pick up with more and more time with the gifted teacher. This will be good for her... keeping her challenged and out of trouble. ha!

Here is some of her artwork from the year. Plus a little graduation handprint.

For the 5th graders, the Mayor of Marietta spoke, the school superintendent spoke, there was a "commencement" address by another local business person - who I believe was also a dad of one of the kids - AND there was a PowerPoint of photos of the kids K-5th grade. It was fun to see the kids through the years. (We had been sending photos of each stage to the librarian throughout the year when she asked for them so that she could work on pulling the whole thing together.) What got me, though, was when they did the "before and after" photos with a baby photo + a current 5th grade photo.... tears were shed!

They also presented students with awards + a certificate of completion. There were lots of merit awards and club awards. There was another special award: one for those students who had spent their entire elementary school experience at West Side. They received a blue and gold tassel for that. Pretty cool! The kids also sang a song and broke out into some free-dance.

My last day of school - with students was on the day of their assemblies (a Wednesday). Luckily, I was able to get a substitute teacher for the last day and was able to attend these milestone assemblies. whew!

My official last day of school (after meetings and cleaning the room) was a couple of days later... it was their official last day, so I'm glad I had a little more flexibility here at the end!

Mercer's school had an official end-of-the year party only for 5th graders complete with inflatables, music, shaved ice and lunch from Zaxby's. (The shaved ice is at ALL of these events! maybe there's a parent hook-up?)

Parents weren't invited to the end-of-school party, but we were invited to come see the "final" walk. They were to pass out candy and flowers to other students and to teachers.  Todd and I went to watch his "final walk" down the halls. sniff-sniff.

(BTW: Mercer came home with most of his candy, of course, not passing it out. ha!) We had the option of taking the kids home, but he wanted to stay... he wanted to stay to the end. Overall, he had a great time there! There seemed to be some hiccups early in his career there, but in the end, West Side was a special place for him!