Bizarre Bazaar and DIII

We had a relatively exciting week, it was sure busy enough! The regular activities like strings lessons, youth activities, MCO, groceries, and Marching Band practices were mixed in with special activities. I had two days of training through Idaho STEM Action in Boise on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was quite fun to participate in professional development. The first day was all about AI in education. We discussed some of the hot topics swirling around AI, were introduced to several fun platforms, and got to make lesson plans using AI. The next day’s training was about CodeHop a coding curriculum the district invested in this school year. I love that the lessons are all planned and can be taught with minimal preparation. The frustrating part is that the educational version does not offer ways to roster classes using Classlink or Clever, that means rostering 560 students one-by-one. 

Wednesday, Everett was working the theater lights for an event. He apparently told me it was for the orchestra concert, my brain heard the theater production (which he was part of on Saturday). Sara took him at 6 because she needed to be at the school for orchestra. I arrived at 6:45 and bought a ticket to see the show “Don’t Drink the Water.”  Everett wondered the entire time why I went to the show. I wondered the entire time where the heck Everett was. After the show I waited 20 minutes for him, I finally called and he was at home. Dude! Talk about crossed wires. That was hilariously annoying. 

Evelyn has a crush on Cyrus Dominguez. Cyrus has a crush on Evelyn. It’s out in the open now! I sat behind Cyrus during the show because his big brother, Oscar, is the main lead. Oscar was amazing. I really admire folks who can memorize piles and piles of lines. Apparently, Cyrus gave Evelyn a side hug at school. Ooooo! 

On Thursday my school had a surprise dress-up day for Teachers only. We were to dress up as a student. It was the perfect place to wear my Halloween costume. I stayed up late Wednesday making a shirt with a large 7 and “sick”. I was a sick seven with under-eye makeup, sweats, and an ice pack for my head. It was also 4th grade’s field trip day and I went as a chaperone. The phrase “6-7” is banned in most classrooms. I quite enjoyed watching students mouth the phrase, do the actions, and the younger students finally get the joke. Made my entire day! We had a lovely day out at Celebration Park learning about fossils, terra formations, local history, and the pictographs. I had a group of 5 students to keep track of. I think the favorite station was the atlatl throwing event. That night Phillip missed his 4th MCO rehearsal, he’s only made the first one so far. It was EVMS first band concert. The Marching Band has their end of marching band party at Mr Mac’s home, they walk over to the middle school and perform their show after the EVMS students perform. It is always a highlight of the year! Evelyn looked so cute and short playing various percussion instruments. I wore my “Sick-7” get up just to annoy previous students. I laughed at the few who shook their heads in embarrassed dismay! Made my year. 

Friday was a blur of taking Evelyn to see Nina, grocery shopping, pushing Phillip and Evelyn to do their late homework assignments, helping Everett finish making 8 crocheted chickens, and guiding him to make peanut butter cookies. I was about to leave at one point and checked on him, he was panicked and asked me to get more baking soda for the cookies. I peeked in the bowl and about died. He somehow converted 2 teaspoons into 2 CUPS, and there were 2 CUPS of baking soda mixed in with the flour. I checked over his other conversions and prevented the addition of 2 cups of baking powder. It was almost bad. Everett wanted to save the flour and rescue the mixture, no way! I left him to his own devices after that, the cookies turned out well. Thank the heavens. He was up late baking 6 batches of cookies. 

Tuesday I send Phillip a text announcing my expectations for the homework he had to get completed by Friday evening. He had an English essay and two History checkpoints due and very little time to get those assignments completed. I felt quite frustrated that he didn’t finish even one assignment by 4:45 on Friday. He had all day on Friday to get his work done. The consequence was that he lost his phone privileges for the weekend except to text me or Justin. I rarely lecture my children like I laid open on Phillip during the drive to band practice. He’s got to figure this out! He’s got to learn how to do the hard things when he has no drive or motivation. I seriously think education these days is broken. The idea and organization of education has basically stayed the same for thousands of year. One expert disseminating their knowledge to an audience, the student is expected to glean the knowledge, write about it and then get tested. Seems archaic that education is using the same model when it only works for a small percentage of humans, including my son. I wonder how many innovations are created by frustrated mothers! 

Saturday Phillip was gone all day for the DIII band competition at Boise State. I dropped off Everett at the same time with his cookies, chickens, stickers, and Amelia’s pile of squishmallows to sell. Let me tell you that was inspiration! The girls and I had fun shopping for stuff to make a Halloween box for Amelia. We mailed that on Saturday morning then headed over to support Everett. We caught the last minutes of a parody between Everett and another theater student over a unicycle. The girls fell in LOVE with some 3-d printed dog figures. The best was watching Everett line dance, he makes me smile. Later in the day we divided duties to cover two big events. Justin took the 3 younger kids to the ward Halloween party while I went to watch Phillip perform. Evelyn chose to be Rosie the Riveter this year, her hair and costume are so adorable. It took a try or two to figure out how to fix her bangs! Josie is an Ewok. Phillip and I worked on making her staff, the hard part was attaching the two rocks she wanted on the top. Everett wore a cape and brought his new light saber. I drove out to watch CHS perform at DIII. It was rainy and very wet. I happened to park right in front of the warm-up area where the band was warming up. I tried to get in with the band as the photographer but was not allowed on to the field. Darn it! I booked it to pay and find a seat before the band took the field. I sat down right as they walked out. Phew. I am so proud of all the hard work these students put in. The rain let up for an hour so they performed in dry conditions. I walked over to hang out with the band after their performance. It started raining again to the point the competition was delayed 90 minutes because of lightening. I sat in Cafe Rio alone with my meal, stayed nice a dry. I wanted to watch BSU perform and awards so headed back after the competition restarted. The line wrapped around the stadium. I went home instead. CHS took 3rd in their division and 10th overall. That was quite disappointing because they performed much better than at least 3 of the bands that I watched and placed higher than CHS.