MCO: Sorting all the Things
Evelyn and Josie had another week of music lessons (back to back). Josie was very excited to show Emma her memorized music. She even plunked out the melody to Edelweiss on the piano from memory (in a different key signature!). Now she has her assignment to polish her music to perfection before April 12th.
I was very sad to hear that Andrew Henderson passed away Wednesday night. He is Miekka's youngest brother. Andrew spent his life dealing with serious health issues that I can only imagine were uncomfortable and made him dependant. I pray his family will find peace as they mourn, and joy as they celebrate Andrew's life.
The students at Reagan worked very hard for about a month on grade-level projects they would display for a school-wide showcase event. The 3rd graders worked on animal reports, 4th grade worked on shadow boxes and reports on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the 5th graders worked on City of Ember book reports and shadow boxes. Evelyn was very stressed out about her project because she had to write a descriptive story report writing herself into a scene/chapter of the book. She ended up writing EIGHT paragraphs. You have no idea how miraculous this is! She even ended her report with a cliff-hanger. The last 2 weeks students worked on shadow boxes for a few minutes each day. Evelyn brought hers home because she wanted to use supplies we had and the glue gun. I was so sad Mrs Camarda did not attend the showcase, her students were very sad she was at home with her sick child. I visited the girl’s classes to see their reports and listen to their explanations on Friday. We went home a bit early! Then right back to the school for a PTA hosted movie night. The girls really wanted to see the movie and play with friends, eat candy, and pizza while watching Gnomeo and Juliet. That was a fun little experience! I had 2 cute kinders pop over to visit with me every other minute to ask questions, give me a treat, or tell me a joke. Justin and Amelia went to look at a 1997 Honda Accord someone is selling. Amelia reported the car is in very good condition. We are going to make an offer on the car.
Saturday was a very busy day. Amelia and I started off the day at NNU for her State Solo and Ensemble competition. She entered as a soprano soloist singing Gia il sole dal Gange by Scarlatti with RaShel accompanying on piano. She felt much more prepared this year than last year. The female judge critiqued her performance and gave Amelia some items to work on like bringing her sound forward to make it fuller and using the music to guide dynamics. She was amazing! We ran home to get the older 3 kids for a youth temple trip. Evelyn really wanted me to attend so I got to help out for her second trip to the temple. The kids busted out all the names I had printed from last time we went, but forgot the names at home. I needed some new garments, we stopped for a bit at Deseret Book. Then off to pick up groceries at Walmart. No rest for the weary. We had 25 minutes to get the groceries unloaded and 29 boxes of fabric loaded into the van. I changed clothes and pounded down a cheese stick and turkey for lunch. Josie accompanied me to the church for the great MCO Idaho Costume Festa. I am grateful to Cara, Sara, Danielle, Kellyn, and various children and teens who helped out. We tried Monday to sort fabric packets but did not have all the fabric, the supplies (bags, envelopes, labels, etc), and the correct lists. I am glad we attempted to sort on Monday because it gave me a better scope of what we needed to get this huge project finished. Liz mailed 13 more boxes which arrived Friday afternoon (phew). We are missing a few more boxes but were able to get 85% of the packets completed. Cara and I had a challenge even filling out the envelopes. Liz provided me with three lists: the current roster, the most recent survey results, and the survey results from Oct with the approved two-piece costumes. We were the kink in the process, never anticipated it would take us that long to write names on envelopes! Justin arrived with Amelia and Evelyn. He created a lovely process that made the work go faster. Dusty brought his kids to help out. I added Dusty and Sara to the envelope fiasco after all the patterns were folded. The process went:
Write family names on envelope
Next person added a number (indicating which pattern and how much fabric)
Envelope went to get filled with correct pattern pieces
Envelope went to a table to get a label and bag
Bag and Envelop went to a teen who filled the bag with the right fabric
Fabric, bag, and envelope bagged up, tied, and placed in a box alphabetically labeled
We were busy bees from 2 pm until 8 pm making the fabric miracle happen. Justin ordered pizza for everyone. He took care of us all, directed me to places where I was needed to speed the process alone. Around 6:45 a lady from another ward stormed into the gym steamed up that we were using the gym without reserving it. Her ward had the gym reserved for pickle ball. In no world did I imagine we would still be at it by 7 pm. She yelled at us to vacate the gym. I smoothed things over in the library with her explaining the situation and why I did not schedule the gym. We did condense our spread to the last 1/4 of the gym, no worries we can share. It was hard to wade through the families because the 3 lists did not match, there was a lot of back and forth determining what and who actually needed what. MCO sent out a second survey last month and instead of the original 50 two-piece costumes over 300 two-piece responded. The two-piece costumes take more fabric and pattern paper, so Liz decided to only allow the original two-piece costumes. That meant we were using the most recent survey but determining which two-pieces actually got the costumes. My roster did not match the survey because some folks dropped out and/or joined up, AND some never filled out a survey. I am grateful we got all that work done. Now to get it distributed this coming Thursday. I am anticipating quite a bit of whining and complaining! Amelia wants to help sew costumes in order to earn money for a trip to Disneyland with Lia and Miekka. I GET to go to! Mr Obert actually approved my leave and sent me off with a smile Thursday morning. Seemed like the kids had a good time. Josie was bored a few times, she quickly rallied and found something to do. Ambree was in a mood, spent a few HOURS sulking in a classroom whining on the phone with her bestie.
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