willing away migraines

Health

Well Nathan seems to be good at willing away his migraines.  Before the start of the year, we were going over planning and the need to stay ahead, plan for migraines.  I told him your starting hockey, your going to get migraines.  He told me he is going to will away his migraines, explained about pain pathways and explained that pain is just in your head and your head malfunctioning.  He said he can learn and train his brain to ignore these pain pathways.  I told him that was meditation and neurofeedback.  His paediatrician and I have been trying to get him in on doing this for a while now, even though the paediatrician supplied him with studies on neurofeedback and how it can change your epigenetics, he was still thinking it was pseudoscience.  

Well into our third week and Nathan hasn't had 1 migraine!!!  How is this possible?  There was one school day where he wasn't quite feeling well, he submitted a science assignment and received 70%, you could definitely see that was not up to his usual standard, he has received 100% on everything else he has submitted so far.  You can really see he feels great.  He has had some really great hockey days.  He even got a cold, and was down for 1-2 days, but was able to recover and get going on his studies.  Maybe this is the year we have all been waiting for.  I am not sure, but I can say that these 3 weeks have been the easiest 3 weeks of his life!  You can see how much stronger his body is getting and how much easier it is for him.  Now I do know that he will probably end up getting some migraines this year, but I do really hope that it lessons for him.  I know it has been one of Jeff and our's greatest worry in what he will be able to do for work because of the impact of his migraines.  We both say to others when we are asked, he will be fine, there are lots of jobs that have flexibility, but I know both of us worry about it.  Jeff had a co-worker say to him well what are you going to do, you dont want your son to be like so and so(another employee), who is always chronically ill.  Jeff was a little annoyed and was like well there isn't much we can do it is a genetic condition that has no cure, of course I would love for him not to be chronically sick.  Some people just have no clue!

School work

Math

Nathan - we didn't do any math over the summer or very little so he is still working on algebra.  He will be finished this book in about 9-10 weeks.  So 2-3 months behind the schedule I had originally had for him.   We are totally okay with this as he is still working far ahead.  His plan is still to write a Math 10 challenge exam in the spring time.  I think he can easily be ready, and he will gain practice studying and writing tests this year.

Nathan was finding his math work a little annoying working with quadratic equations.  He could not see how he would ever use this in real life.  Thankfully today there was a real life question using a quadratic equation!  I love life of Fred for this.  The question was about chairs being set up in rows and columns.  Totally not really something that you would typically use quadratic equation for typically, but it was easy to understand and to see how you could use a quadratic equation.  he could then see that it can be used for physics.  I think he was happier after, it think he thought it was just a way to get you to use factoring!

what Nathan is working on Quadradic equations,

this was his work today solving easy quadratic equations.

Genevieve - we didn't do any math this summer either, so she is still about 6 weeks from finishing her grade 7 math.  She would have done math over the summer but her computer died, and of course her math is on the computer.  We have purchased her a Macbook air, which she loves.  I am thinking I will get her to answer only every other question again as she keeps on getting 100% of the answers correct.   I think giving her a break over the summer actually increased her confidence in math and she is feeling pretty good about it.  She has always felt not as confident in math, I think because she compares herself to Nathan, but she always understands concepts.  I will get her to answer every question on the tests this year though so there is more to show.  I have her keeping a better journal of her questions as well, it isn't great but I will work on it with her this year.  I would like her getting used to writing out her answers so someone else can understand them lol

PE

I signed Nathan up for PE 10 at estreams.  I figured this way he can just get it checked off this year, even though it is very little work, it is just one less thing for him to worry about next year.  I decided to cross enroll him to get around the funding issue, as I know there is some kind of funding thing in that the school of record can not receive funding for grade 9 and grade 10, because they are two different funding systems.   And Nathan is already doing some grade 10 classes.  I figured this would be the easiest way to go about this as getting French and science organized was a bit of a pain.

Language Arts

For both of them their LA curriculum is not in yet, but they both have been doing some writing.  Nathan in his science has had to do a fair amount of writing.  For this writing assignment he had to read a current science news article and write a summary and his own opinions on the subject.  I thought he did a pretty good job of summarizing and then writing his own thoughts.  

Genevieve has been writing a novel from the 1st person viewpoint.  Her novel is geared towards a teenage audience, and I think it is well thought out.   I really hope that she gives permission to share her work this time.  So many times she doesn't keep her writing and does not share it.  She is working on the 5th chapter now.  She is mostly working on this late at night.  She is finding it hard to go to sleep lately and has been working on this novel.  I know her brain just doesn't want to shut down.  I think we will have to work on some sleep hygiene for her this year though as I know it is not great for her to be up so late and have a hard time shutting off.  Thankfully Nathan does not have this problem and when he is tired (9:30) he goes to bed.

Science 

Nathan- Nathan is completing science 10 this year.  So far I think he is really enjoying it.  I ended up printing out the semester timeline for him and he is completing it with ease.  He says wow Science 10 doesn't have much to it, only 15 weeks worth of work lol.  He doesn't know there was a full year option.  I wanted to get him used to the faster pace of a semester system.  I also thought since not everything is in full swing yet, we still need to add LA to our day that he can be doing extra.  So far he has not had any difficulties keeping this pace.  He is going to write his first proctored exam (besides me doing the proctoring) on Friday.  We have been talking about how to study and the need to study.  He really hasn't studied before, except if you count the 2 hours he did before his science 9 final.  The only thing that worries me is that he doesn't tend to memorize the little details, with studying I know these details would come to him, but he thinks he only has to read something or watch something once to know the material.  I have been slowly trying to teach him the art of retention and re-reading for information.  It is definitely a skill he needs to learn.  So far he has done quite well with 100% on all assignments except 1.  

Genevieve -   I am excited I bought Real Science odyssey Biology level 2.  This program is stupid crazy expensive $180 US dollars!!!!  But I found it used for $50 Canadian so I bought it!  The student book would have cost me that much anyway and it would have come out of funding so this way I can just resell it afterwards and hopefully get 3/4 of my money back!  But what I am really excited about is the quality of this curriculum, I wish I would have bought it for Nathan when he was younger.  I am excited to start this with Genevieve though, I think we can have a fun time going through this together and hopefully she can build up more of a love for science as well.  At the moment I think her dislike for math/science is because Nathan loves math/science!  I am thinking we will start on this next week.  

Social studies

I have not started this yet either and will need to start soonish, I ordered in Genevieve something, Nathan I am not even sure what we are doing, have I planned anything lol.  We must have planned something?  I better go check my learning plan and get on it!!!

Genevieve- she has been doing some of her history of music.  I need to write up a schedule for her and I so that we can see what she should be doing each day.  she doesn't need to do this curriculum each day, so I am thinking of alternating with science, maybe 3 days science 2 days history of music. I have to check our times and see when and where we will do all of the stuff we have organized!  It is always a challenge fitting everything in.

Schedule

Nathan is doing quite well sticking to a schedule, and getting things done.  He does not have his full schedule going yet but hopefully in the next few weeks more things will fall into place.  Nathan will have art class and cooking soon so that will take up a big chunk of time, 4 hours a week with that!  We also have to add in his social studies and Language Arts.

Just worked on a schedule for Genevieve, she had done one up herself earlier, I just added the subjects that she should complete each day.  She is busy, but she has nothing scheduled on the weekends.  This year she has Wednesday and Friday nights open as well.  If she does get into band she that will be only 1 or 2 days a week, so she will have to miss some school time with that.  It seems like so much time but it really is hard to get all of her school work done.  

New School Year 2018-19

Summer 2018

As we were heading into summer I realised that this may be our last summer without having Nathan working.  We had plans of doing more schoolwork this summer, but I soon dumped most of the school work in favour of having a last hurrah of fun.  I made lists of things that I wanted to do with the kids this summer.  We managed to hit some of them.  I think we had a great summer of fun.

Canada Day 

We went to the Aldergrove Parade, where Genevieve's cheer team performed.

Nathan's kava plank creation

Ginger the Infinity Cheer Elite Mascot

Genevieve basing on the right

Genevieve helped design Ginger's cheer uniform to match her own uniform

Exchange Students

We started by having 2 Japanese students stay with us only for 4 days.  We took them on a slow food bike tour of Agassiz.  We got to eat lots of food while biking around, thankfully Agassiz is pretty flat.  I think it was a bit much for our exchange students, but they still enjoyed it.   We then headed to Hope for dinner and a visit to Othello tunnels.  The next day Genevieve was doing a cheer demo at Aldergrove fair.  She loved spending time at the fair.  We then took off to go to White Rock for a few hours, we learnt that white rock is not dog friendly at all!

Genevieve basing on right

Jade and Genevieve and a dog from a movie!

Nathan

Nathan enjoyed some down hill mountain biking and we set him up with some proper gear to hopefully protect him as he barrels down mountains, in an adrenalin rush.  Lots of street hockey happening this summer.  Nathan has discovered video editing and has been having fun creating movies of his summer.  He has spent hours learning how to do this.  I am glad that we have MacBooks as it is just so much easier to do this.

Nathan also started writing quotes, here are a few of them that I enjoyed.

Genevieve

Genevieve has continued cheer about 3 days a week but decreased her hours, in the gym.  She had the last 2-3 weeks of summer completely off cheer, I think this little break has been great for her body.  This summer she has had the opportunity to fly on her level 1 cheer team and she has enjoyed learning these new skills.  Genevieve landed her back tuck by herself!  Yeah such hard work she has done this year to get here!  She has also continued to be very artistic.  She wrote and composed her own song in a few days this summer and it was a totally different method.  Typically she writes lyrics first and then she is able to play the piano to match.  This time she wrote the piano music first, she then said I like the piano part, but I dont think I can sing to this.  Over the next few days, she had lyrics written for then song.  I will try and get her to record this song soon, so I can post it.  I think it is her best song yet!  

Happy Birthday GIGI

Genevieve turned 12!  We celebrated by going to Giggle Ridge for the day with our good friends and had grandma and grandpa and dad join us for a BBQ in the evening.

August Long Weekend

We had another Japanese student arrive for the August long weekend.  We have gone to the lantern festival at Manning Park for the last 4 summers.  The kids were not as excited about the lanterns this year, so we may not go next year.  The end of an era, fun while it lasted.  Maybe we will be back one day and they will want to build some crazy lanterns

family picture

the lanterns

a small hike in the sub-alpine meadows

lightning lake, it was the first year, I let the kids jump off of rainbow bridge. 

Weaver Lake

We went up to Weaver lake with Tyler and Cody, and Simonne and had a blast!  We brought our kayaks and BBQ, the day started out with rain and all of us telling Nathan it was not a good idea to start the day off with the rope swing, as he didn't have a change of clothing.  Ended with Nathan swimming 1/2 way across a lake fully clothed, and us gathering a flotilla of kayaks together to pull him back on to his kayak, and apparently everyone learnt a new word... flotilla.

boys will be umm crazy!

thank-fully we convinced Nathan to wait until on the way back

the pack

PNE

We have always lived here and yet we have never taken the kids to the PNE before!  Well I was brave this year and decided to take the kids.  Of course to the kids the PNE is play land... I was thoroughly bored, kids had a good time, I left them while I went and wandered around.  I thought kids would want to stay right to the bitter end, but the gravatron ride ended their fun and they both wanted to leave after that ride!  I took a bunch of video's of them riding the rides, I have to get Nathan to make a video from our time there.

the hellavator

Nathan's just a little bit taller then me now!

There were so many other trips and events that happened over the summer, I think we had some pretty good adventures even if we just stayed close to home most of the time.  I wonder what next year will bring!

February 2018

sorry not to much to update.

sickness, I have a kidney infection - good thing is that kids are pretty independent

nathan- has been battling pretty bad migraines for a few weeks now

Genevieve woke up today with a cold

Besides all that everything is going well. 

Nathan school work some samples of nathan for you

Mr worm, Nathan had to identify the sex, he could only find small worms, so he had to use the microscope to look at them.  Then one worm crawled into the microscope, thankfully we were able to get him out.

Ginger is tired from a day of school work

Genevieve has completed her own composition, she struggled with it in the last few months and was having a hard time with the song.  I thought maybe she was nervous about competing this year, as there is about 4 times the entrants, and she has heard 3 others and they were amazing.  But as it turns out, the song she wrote always made her feel sad when she sang it, so she scrapped the ending last minute, changed it and she loves it again.  She ended the song feeling more positive and that is what she wanted I guess.  She finished the song the day before the score was due, I will include a copy for you.

Genevieve the last few weeks I could see was feeling an immense amount of pressure from all directions.  Cheer, the team is relying on her getting her skills and performing them, she has cheerfest this weekend which is the venue that her old cheer team puts on.  She will be seeing all of her friends and her old coach this weekend.  Voice and Piano, her teacher talked with her and wanted her to be practicing more and putting in more time before the festivals.  Genevieve was trying to figure out when she could posiibly get it all accomplished as she has school/cheer/choir/practices, and not enough time in the day.  It did not help that I had outlined a pretty ambitious academic schedule for her as well, so she has pressures coming at her from every direction.  I could see she was distressed trying to figure out when she could possibly add more practice time.  So we have agreed to go lighter on academics for the next 6 weeks, concentrating on math/German.  You could just see all of the pressure and stress leave her.  Fo the past week she has been practicing piano and voice for at least 1 1/2 hours a day, and this is what is required of her, she is sounding so much more at ease with her pieces and I think part of it is she is more relaxed.  We are going to have to keep on working at this with her trying to find her optimal times to get everything accomplished.

some pictures of cheer

practicing back tuck off of the tumble track, perfect form

always a smile, two long days in Seattle 

Her new uniform, she is getting used to showing a midriff, and how "small" the uniforms are, she things maybe part of her skirt is missing

School, Genevieve is plugging away at everything, I think she will take a break from doing the Afghanistan unit until after lions festival.

Genevieve has been baking and cooking a lot the last little while. here are a few of her things

Genevieve is fulfilling cinnamon bun orders from her cheer friends

so yummy

Making blueberry filling for doughnuts

frying her doughnuts, they were soooo yummy

Nathan, he keeps on having some rough games at hockey, and that is pretty hard on his body.  He has been having more frequent migraines it seems.  He has been exhausted and finding it difficult to concentrate on school.  He has been trying hard to get as much as he can done, but I think he has not been able to do as much science in the last few weeks. Hopefully he can complete the unit he is on by next week.

Game MVP for Nathan in Osoyoos!

Coaches said he does everything they ask of him, he listens so well to instructions, and reads the play

Nathan has been working on building a structure track for his RC car.  He woke up not feeling well with a migraine one day but decided he needed to be doing something so he was determined to build something.  he was really determined, so we let him have at er

Here is a copy of Genevieve's song she submitted to the adjudicator.

The End of Valley Cheer Athletics

It has been a bit of a crazy month around here for October.  A lot of stressful events in a short amount of time, but we have survived them all, and I think we are all in a better place.

Valley stars Cheer athletics

Genevieve has cheered with Valley for the last 6 years, she loves cheer, everything about it!  But I got her fired from her team, yes me!   I had some questions for the owner Judy James, about a few expenses we had paid and why we were paying them.  She decided instead of addressing most of my concerns she would just fire Genevieve instead.  I think this is about the worst business decision that someone could possible make and it just shows why she continues to have lower enrolments and girls leaving for other clubs by the flock.  I hadn't really understood this until I tried to have a conversation with the woman about her business practices, instead of answering questions and remaining calm, she threated to kick a chair out from under me, for daring to question her ability.  Thankfully I was able to calm her down and get her to listen to my concerns, but in the end this did not accomplish much.

We had paid a huge amount for summer choreography each athlete paid close to $40 an hour to be there in the summer, with the promise of a fancy choreographer coming up from the US to teach the choreography.  When she did not have the proper work visa for the American to come up and work organized he was unable to come up and teach choreography.  Instead of passing along the refund thought we as parents were given nothing but having Judy by herself choreograph and teach the girls their routine.  She managed to hire another choreographer to come in and teach her other team Junior 3 but did not get anyone else in for youth 2 or Junior 2 even though they paid the same fees.  She even brought in her 3 month old and 2 year old grandchildren on one of the days, no other adult present in the building, but claimed that her grandchildren did not affect her ability to choreograph the routine.

We were paying an extra $22 a month for a strength and conditioning class that we were not recieving.  After I brought this to her attention, she did manage to change this so that the girls would be receiving this, but did not refund parents for the month and a half they were paying for a service they were not receiving.  

Once I was looking at all of this I noticed that Genevieve teams she was on was paying almost $2 an hour more for being in the gym then any other team.  She could not explain why, as they had the least amount of time in the gym alone, they had fewer coaches, they pay more then both level 1 and level 3 teams.  She decided it would be a good idea to blame this on the office manager.  Why she could not take personal responsibility of her own management and ownership of her own gym is beyond me.  As an owner you should be aware how much you are charging and why you are charging these fees.

Finally she had a team meeting and she decided that we should all by a $300 hairpiece for all of the athletes as this would help them look professional.  Now we can afford $300 for a hairpiece, but why on earth would anyone buy a $300 hairpiece!  And would that money not be better spent on some expertise coming to the gym, an expert tumbling coach, dance instructor, stunting instructor.  Man $300 each could sure be spent on something more benificial then hair.

After she had the team meeting with Genevieve team, she had a team meeting with the Junior 3 parents.  In this meeting she requested another $25 a month from each of the parents because a parent had come in demanding she make the teams even in what they are paying ha ha ha.  How she can add additional costs onto parents after they already signed a contract is beyond me.  Again super bad decision making on her part, the parents may pay it this year, as they do not want to loose out on all the money they have pain into the season, but I can guarantee they will be looking around next year.

After she kicked Genevieve out she had to combine the two teams Genevieve was on into one team, again poor decisions are costing her a huge amount of money.  But now she is expecting the parents of the junior 2 team who were not going to as many competitions to have to come up with an extra $2000 for the year to go to a competition in Portland and tacoma that they were not budgeting for, not to mention the $300 hair!  

Genevieve wrote a letter to Judy and did not get response.  I wrote a letter to every single cheer parent on valley, and had a huge response, I can tell you that I think Judy has sunk her gym by doing this,

Hi Judy 

This is Genevieve,

I don't think you realize what you did does not only effect my mom, it effects me too. I know how much you love coaching, I really do. You told me for the six years I have been on Valley, that we are a happy family, I honestly believed you. You have betrayed me and I can't think of you the same anymore. I looked up to you and compared myself to you, you have failed, betrayed and hurt me so much I can't tell you my pain.  I had a hard time believing that you could do this to me. You may think that it's not my concern and I shouldn't be writing this letter, that I'm not involved, well you got me involved the moment you kicked me off the cheer team. It's the bitter truth that you shouldn't ignore cause what you did, you can't change.  

(why I liked you)

You always made the funniest jokes and everyone laughed. You made cheer fun, there was a bond of love between coaches and kids. We weren't a team, we were a family, no one liked one more than another and you made that happen, you love all your kids at valley.

(what did I do? )

you know I was looking at everything and trying to figure out what I did to deserve this, and then it came to me... I didn't do anything wrong... You did though, you thought that everyone would just hand you their wallet and you could take what you wanted and no one would notice, well people did, you need to realize that my family can pay for that kind of stuff, but some families can't.  I wish that you could have figured this out with my mom, instead of acting so rashly.  I assure you these are all my words, they came from my head and heart.

please think about how you have hurt so badly an eleven year old

from, Genevieve Reimer 

We ended up finding a new cheer gym that we are thrilled with!  Genevieve is having so much fun, and learning exponentially.  A funny thing that happened is that before I told Gigi about what judy did, she said to me, mom I think I am ready to change cheer gyms.  I panicked a little and she said, no mom its okay nothing too bad has happened, but I can just see that there is a huge difference in the quality of coaching I am receiving at my private tumbling at Wayland and my coaches at valley.  I am ready to leave and get better coaching.  It was so hard to keep it from her but we were driving to her recital for her concert with Roy and Rosemary where she was performing in front of 600 people, not the time to tell her the news

So this is Genevieve doing her first spotted tuck on the floor.  She is doing amazing!  she is loving the extra coaching she is getting, and the confidence they put into her.  This one was pretty messy, but she went for it!  She just got back from tumbling today and she was doing some pretty amazing tumbling!  She is definitely going to kick some but this year.

Advise to any prospective parents wanting to try Valley Stars, now called Valley Cheer Athletics, run as fast as you can.  She has refused to refund me any of the $2000 she has collected from me for this season.  If you are in the gym, do not pay for anything in advance, you will never get it back.

Opera fun

Norma Met Opera

Genevieve ad I went on Saturday morning to cineplex theatre to see the met opera live.  We went last year to a few, we hope to be able to attend more this year.  

The first in this years production list was Norma.  We both didn't have great expectations, as we have never heard of Norma before.  We were thankful that there is a program they give you, that has a summary.  It is nice to read these before you so you can become a little more familiar with the piece, so you can appreciate it a little more.  

Genevieve and I both appreciate that the live in HD versions you get subtitles.  Definitely helps us understand a little better.  We also really liked the intermission as they have interviews and behind the scenes descriptions.  You would not get these if you were in New York watching.   

Genevieve's voice teacher usually goes to the concerts as well, she said next one she would like to sit beside Genevieve so she can give Genevieve tips as it is happening.  I am the youngest one in attendance everytime, besides Genevieve... Everyone has a full head of white hair, compared to my 1/4 head.  There is one this weekend but we will have to miss it even though we would really like to see this one as Genevieve has her youth choir performance.  

http://www.metopera.org/Season/In-Cinemas/

Thanksgiving

We went up to my parents house in Hope to make thankgiving dinner for them, and stay the night.  Man I was so tired this weekend.  And I think I may know why now, in that everyone else is sick.

Sickness

Genevieve has a cold.  She woke up Monday and still did her school work and all the dishes before I even woke up.  I went downstairs and was surprised to see the dishes done.  I had to think to myself if I had actually done them and forgot.  I went to go thank Genevieve and she was doing her school work.  I didn't tell her it was a holiday.

Nathan woke up Monday feeling like death.  He had nausea on Sunday.  He reports that it is different from a migraine.  But he has been pretty useless, laying around for a few days.  No school out of Nathan, but you know he is probably sick when I told him fine if your too sick for school your too sick for electronics, and he gladly gave up his electronics.  He is feeling a little better now and reading a book.  

So I am guessing Nathan will have to wait until later in the week for his chemistry test.    He also has hockey Wednesday and Saturday, so I am not sure how that will go when he is under the weather.  I am guessing that the hockey may be all he can handle this week.    

As for me, I am exceptionally tired, but so far do not have any other symptoms, mothers always get sick last though, after our systems are beat and bombarded by the sickies we are taking care of.

October is here...

Week 5 midway

New car

Lots of excitement this week with a purchase of a new car.  Nathan and Genevieve went with us when we were looking at cars most of the time and I think this was a good experience for them.  I think it showed them not to get too involved with the car and to make sure you look around.  We had a list of things we were looking for and explained to the kids we may not get everything on our list.  We also talked about a budget.  What we could afford and what we were comfortable paying were two seperate things.  And finally the negotiations process, and we bought with a Jim Patterson dealership, that was a little tricky.  We ended up buying a Volvo S60 T6.  Nathan had all the electronics figured out in about the 1 hour drive home and was able to adjust things for jeff as he was driving.   We all love the car, but at 302 horsepower, I don't think Nathan will be driving it when he is 16, we have him down for a fiesta.  The car does have lots of safety features and does park itself, but control freak that I am, I am not sure I will use it much, I tried it out, and it pretty much freaked me out.  But parking in Vancouver in tight spots, it may come in handy! But I think it will just be way easier to park then the truck or the SUV.

VSO

Vancouver symphony came to Chilliwack and we went to the concert.  It was amazing! The program started with William tell overture, Ancestral voices, and then second half was Tchaikovsky symphony no 5. Genevieve and I both really loved a piece that Bramwell Tovey created called ancestral voices.  Nathan I am sure would have enjoyed it more during the day.  His eyes were tired and he wanted to just close them and listen to the orchestra, he did not enjoy the singing part.  

Bramwell, started off by explaining why he created the piece and what each song was about and how and why he did it.  He talked for at least 4-10 minutes about this.  The first song he used text from Keats to create the song, he chose this because it was about the same time as colonization, the poem is not about Canada, but describes a pastoral paradise.

The second song is from a poem by Charles Mair, who was the son of Scottish imigrants.  this one talks about the loss of the buffalo. (this was Genevieve favourite)

Next song was about residential schools, based off a letter of a beuracrat at the time, signed respectfully yours, even though nothing in the letter was respectful.  I had tears in my eyes with this song.

The last song was made using text from both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.  I loved that he used both prime ministers in this.  And this last song was about reconciliation.

I loved how Bromwell was able to create moments of pause and reflection in his conducting.

Tea date

Genevieve had music lessons, and Nathan wanted to go to the book store.  So we checked out both used book stores and walked past decades so decided to go in for tea.  We were sitting eating our deserts and Nathan drink was ready so he went up to go get it.  well, Nathan forgot he has giraffe legs, and well the whole table tipped over onto me spilling my entire drink on to me.  I didn't think there was that much sticky liquid in my drink.  It was hot and sticky and soaked front and back.  Nathan got his drink to go, and the very nice worker made me a new chai latte as well!  But then I had to drive in my sticky pants in my brand new car uggg.  I went home and then cleaned my seat after lol

we look so happy here.

you can't see how sticky and wet I am, trust me from top to bottom I am soaked

Nathan

Intro to online learning

Nathan finished his intro to online learning course last week.  He finished the course with 95% grade. I think he was happy to be finished.  I believe it was a great course though as he definitely learned some skills he needs for his other classes.  I am glad that he started 1 week early on this course and tried to blow through it, so that he had the information before he needed it for his other classes.  But I am happy he has 1 less course to be concerned about.

French

Nathan did a little bit of grammar work and I think this helped him with his questions and understanding a little bit more.  I think the combination of him asking me (only high school French here, but I still do remember some) and asking his teacher for clarification will help.  I think what he needs to do is take screen shots if he has grammar questions and just send them to his teacher.  He did this once last week and it seemed to help greatly.  I know he is just someone who has to completely understand something before he can move on.  He was able to verbalize to his teacher more about why he wasn't liking Rosetta Stone, so that was good.  He doesn't like that they don't explain things, especially the grammar, so he doesn't fully understand the rules why you do things.  I think with his teachers help he can figure this out.

Math

started pre-algebra with biology.  So far it has been pretty easy.  He just completed chapter 5 on Thursday.

Science

I think he is doing quite well, and is ahead of where he is supposed to be.  His grades have remained above 90% for every assignment or quiz.  He does have a unit test coming up, so it will be interesting to see how he does on that.  I think I will try and help him figure out how to study for a "test" as he really hasn't had tests like this because I have always figured it was better to get him to understand and show his understanding and I know tests don't  always do that.  I am thinking he will probably finish the module this week and write the test at the beginning of next.

Language arts and socials

He needs to do more of this, he won't have time today or tomorrow, I am guessing he will do some on Friday.

Genevieve

Genevieve has been carrying on with all her subjects, I need to take some pictures for you for LA and socials.  

Every day she has been doing  

1 lesson LA

1 lesson Socials

German - she has been starting new units about every 3 days, she is doing lots of review to try and make sure it sticks for her.  I am hopeful that our conversation group wills start soon, but I am worried that it won't be quite enough for her.

Math

Music

She is still working on her new song, but we found out the she needed to submit a written score, by next week.  There is no way she can submit a written score by then, that is very difficult for her to get all the timing correct.  She knows what notes they are but it takes a lot of time to go through each note and make sure it is correct.  So we decided that the best idea would be for her to sing Finally I see because she is very familiar with this song now and she will have more confidence singing it.  She will submit her other song for festival.

Genevieve and Anna performed at the cultural centre over the weekend.  It was a arts program they had at the cultural centre of all the arts going on in Chilliwack, they perfomed a few songs for the people who were checking out all of the booths.  

Choir - she is still enjoying choir, although they do not have enough girls for choir, and she is the only soprano 1, this is a challenge as she is not used to harmonizing and will be a pretty big challenge for her.  The choir director believes she can do it, but hopes to find another soprano 1 to help her out. There first concert is next weekend, so excited to watch this concert, not just to see Genevieve, but I think its going to be an excellent concert.

start of week 4 September 26, 2017

Well I feel a little bit more relaxed now.  I think I needed last week to destress from my mom's surgery and then my car dying on me.  I find it interesting that I did not feel any stress about my moms surgery until after I came home and she was home safe and sound.  I knew that I was probably feeling some stress, but I know my body and mind is a little strange and I deal with it on my own time.  I was just extra cranky for my kids last week, but I am feeling much more like myself this week.  I may also be because Jeff is coming home today.  I know he often feels like I am pretty independent and I don't need him for much, but I certainly do rely on him, he just doesn't know it!  Even if he was away during my moms surgery, being married for 18 years, he knew exactly what I needed.  When I called him upset that he had booked the truck in to get winter tires and that he also wanted to take the truck in for brakes, I think I lost it a little on him.  UMMM we have no car, how can we manage without any vehicle.  But I know jeff, he wanted to make sure if we only had the one vehicle, it had to be safe.  He knew exactly how to "deal" with me lol.   And the even funnier thing he could "feel" my stress in my text message.  Looking forward to him coming home for the week.  Maybe not looking forward to possibly buying a new car, I hate car shopping, I hate making a deal.  I hate spending money.

Had a surprise delivery this morning of scones from my good friend down the road, always sooooo good.

Nathan

Well today he got up he seemed to be feeling pretty good, I didn't notice much in him.  But I noticed he was yawning a lot, and he was looking really pale about 11:30.  I asked him if he would like to take an Advil because he was looking so pale, I asked him if he had a migraine, he deflected me.  Finally when I went to get the Advil, he said, I already took a Tylenol this morning because I had a headache.  ahhh ok well you can take an Advil too as well as the Tylenol.  I instructed him to take his migraine meds as soon as he feels any nausea.  He wasn't too keen on this but I think he will do it.  

French

Nathan isn't too keen on the Rosetta Stone way of learning French so far.  I think I am going to have to start reviewing his lessons that he has completed and then, maybe come up with some alternate learning activities, I am not sure, or maybe sit with him and then maybe go over some things.  I think today it did help, he found that his teacher had a lesson on grammar.  He watched some of it, until, I noticed his headache was too much.  I am going to have to help him figure out how he can learn another language successfully.  I think he needs to understand that the more he hears it he will just pick it up and learn it.  He was speaking full sentences at about 12 -18 months, I am sure he can pick up a second language easy.  He says maybe he is too old and his brain is already set.  Oddly enough I thought the immersiveness of Rosetta Stone would be what would work for him, but I think that he finds that part the most frustrating.  He can get the answers, but he is frustrated that he doesn't 100 percent understand.  I think he maybe needs some kind of text book to look at as well.  Or maybe we will try again tomorrow without a headache and do more of the teachers grammar lesson.  As soon as he did it, I could see that it did help with him understanding some of the conjugations.  He seemed to be able to understand what the conjugations were.  I think it took me about 6 years of conjugating in class as rote memorization before I actually understood what we were doing.  I could conjugate verbs, but I had no idea what I was doing or what it meant.  

Science

No science yesterday but he did complete science today.  I talked with him about what he learned today, and said maybe tomorrow I could go over things with him and just make sure he really understands what he is doing and the concept involved.  Although he did do an assignment and received 95% so I am thinking he does understand what he is doing.  I think spending an extra day reviewing it will maybe help him in the long run though.  After his reading today, he did have one question for me and man so a Nathan question.  I knew he would ask it because the book told him what to do but now why he was doing it.  Glad he was able to ask me.  And I hope that when he does go to school, he also has the confidence to ask the questions in class as well.

LA/Socials

nathan completed a unit of each yesterday, but not today, due to migraine

Math

really have to get Nathan back on track for math.  He has not done math in almost 2 weeks.  He was going to start on his new book today, but migraines and math do not get along, he said if his head is feeling better this afternoon he would do a lesson.

Into to online learning 

Yeah almost finished, Nathan is on the last chapter of this course.  I think he will be glad when he is finished so he has more time to think about his other courses.  I do feel it was an absolutely valuable courses and he has learned so much from it

Genevieve

Genevieve has continued on with her studies.  I think she is doing quite well with her German.  I need to check on her math, although she says she has completed 7 extra lessons in math.  She is working on her book today.  She is working on her drawing program trying to get some ideas going for pages.

Yesterday grandpa called her up and asked her if she could cut his hair as Grandma is out of commission.  I think she had fun with that.

Here is a link to an article in the Hope standard of my dad and his seniors swim team at the BC seniors games.  Too bad my dad could not compete as it was the same time as my moms surgery, but he has been training hard for it, and having fun at the same time.

Hope Standard, write up on my dads swim team!