Landshark Tag

When we left Greenville our smarty-smart girl was doing the final testing for the Gifted and Talented classes. The teacher told us it was more of a formality and that she would be accepted. She did not get to participate because we moved. Fast forward to the end of this last school year. She had been accepted to Gifted and Talented in Littleton. They were working on her IEP (Individual Education Plan) when we made the decision to move to the Springs.

The other night at the back-to-school event for her new school we sought out the Gifted and Talented teacher. We spoke to Ms. R and asked her what we needed to get our girl in the class. She asked us to bring her the paperwork from Littleton and she would make some phone calls. The next day I dropped the paperwork off to her. The day after that she called to inform us that our girl was indeed accepted to Gifted and Talented (TAG) for reading. Now while the rest of her class does their regular reading she leaves to go to her advanced reading. To make us even more proud, there are only 6 fourth graders in her school who qualified for Gifted and Talented in either reading or math. She is one of those six.

Now on to the Landshark. Yesterday, Campbell had her first practice for the cross-country team. That's right, the elementary school has a cross-country team. They meet once per week for seven weeks for practice. They also have 3 meets. She is very excited to start this activity. In the spring they also run track.

Fourth Grade Math

Tonight Campbell brought us her math homework. She was having a difficult time with one particular question. Aaron and I both struggled with this particular quesiton. We thought we knew the correct answer but didn't want to lead our child astray.

Living in the day and age we do, our first step was to Google the question. We had to laugh at the results. There were no fewer than ten blog posts regarding this particular 4th grade math question. Apparently we are not the only college graduate parents who can't do 4th grade math.

Also, how funny is it that we can find this information on blogs using Google? When we were in 4th grade none of this existed. Our parents just had to struggle through these questions.

Freedom!

For the past 5 weeks we have had people staying in our house. First it was Aaron's mom then my mom and nephew. During their stays we had other visitors scattered in as well. We LOVE having visitors. We are always happy when the grandparents can spend time with the kids. We just didn't schedule very well this time. We didn't even have one day of a break between visitors. Yesterday, the last of the visitors left.


To celebrate, we stayed the night up in Denver on Saturday. That wasn't the plan but that's what happened. Aaron had reserve duty this weekend. Since moving to the Springs he now spends Reserve weekends in Denver. Because the Navy pays for the room, usually he has to share a room with some other sailor. For some reason this weekend he got a room to himself. So we made a family night of it.


The kids and I headed up for the evening. On the way we stopped to get Caleb some new shoes. The kids is constantly growing out of his shoes. Hopefully, one day his height will catch up to his feet. Lucky for him we found shoes with spaceshuttles and planets on them. He still loves anything space related, so was thrilled with the shoes. He even wanted to sleep with them that night.


We ended up doing dinner with a bunch of people from Aaron's new unit. When he was commissioned he was moved to a new unit. This was the first weekend with the new unit so they had an afterhours get together. It was nice to meet the people from the new unit. The kids don't get to see a whole lot of Navy so it was good to have them around a bunch of people in uniform for a couple of hours.


After dinner we headed downtown to walk around. If you've been living under a rock then you probably don't know that the DNC is in Denver this year. The convention actually starts this week. We didn't notice anything really different about Denver except the police presence. There were more police than non-police...on foot, on motorcycles, on bicycles, in cars. We even ran into a group of about six at the coffee shop in full riot gear. I guess they were prepared. About the only action we saw them get was turning on their lights for the kiddos. It was a nice walk through downtown, though.


Give us a week filled with more family nights like this and then we will be ready to start planning for more visitors.

Meeting Great Grandma

While we were in Montana getting my mom and my nephew, I took the kids to see my grandmother. This was the first time Caleb had met her. Campbell has met her before but doesn't remember as it was about 6 years ago.

Grandma Ruby is now 85 years old. She is suffering from the effects of hearing loss and alzheimer's (sp?). She may not remember this visit but at least I got that picture of the kids with her.

She seemed very happy to see me and the kids. She even proudly showed us her picture wall where the kids pictures were. Grandma has had this wall for as long as I can remember. She is not the type of person to have nick nacks. She does not have pictures in frames sitting around her house at all. But the wall in the hallway between the kitchen and the bedrooms has always had pictures haning on it. Each of her 4 children has a framed picture on the wall. Below each of the framed pictures are pictures of the grandkids and great grandkids. She may not remember where she parked her car or even if she has one, but she can name each child in those pictures.

Living the Dream

This morning Caleb was sitting in the living room playing with something. Aaron walked in and asked him what he was doing. Caleb's response? "I just living the dream." I don't know where that came from, but apparently life as a 2 1/2 year old is good.

In other Caleb funnies...He has been into singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". This farm rarely has animals, though. Caleb likes to add other things like cookies, cars, rain, etc. to the farm. Today he added "a na*ked". (He calls his boy parts his "nak*ed".)

I have a feeling that once this one starts school we may be getting some calls from the teachers. He has an imagination and likes to be a clown. This may not be the best mix. Lucky for him he's cute!

Speaking of School

My first day of school was actually in the first grade. I did not go to kindergarten. We lived out in the middle of Nowhereville, MT. The school where kindergarten was offered was twenty miles from where we lived. For this reason, our parents could decide whether we attended kindergarten or not. My parents chose not to send me.

The school I attended when I did go to school was also out in the middle of nowhere. It was about a half mile from our house and yes, I did have to walk in the snow. I even had to walk, or hop) when I broke my leg. It was December when that happened so there was definitely snow on the ground. Not a fun time.

Anyway, that wasn't suppose to be the story. The school I attended from first through sixth grade was very small. When I say very small, I mean very small. The school had two class rooms, an entryway, and two bathrooms. All grades were taught in the same classroom. There was also an apartment out back for the teacher to live in.

Out front, there were three large pine trees that formed a semi-circle in front of the flagpole. These trees provided a great windbreak from the cold, Montana winters. We were required to go outside for recess no matter what the weather was like so we used this shield a lot.

Campbell loves my story about the moose, so here's the story. One day when I was in 5th grade we were all sitting in class when the teacher excitedly told us to look out the window. To our surprise a bull moose was looking in the window at us. Yes the story is real. That's my very own "Northern Exposure" story.

Two weeks ago I had to go up to Montana to get my mom and my nephew. While there I took Campbell over to the school I had attended. The school is no longer open. It closed the year I went to seventh grade. I was able to get pictures of her standing in front of it, though. The swingset (which was red) is now gone. Also, the monkey bars that were installed when I was in second grade are gone. The building is still standing though and brings back oh so many memories (good and bad) of my childhood.

Pictures in Time

What a 4th Grader Looks Like

Feeding the History Junkie

Campbell loves anything to do with history. It's her favorite subject in school. We like to take every opportunity we can to feed this addiction of hers.

The first weekend in August I had to go up Montana to get my mom and my nephew. They are staying with us for about three weeks. Having grown up in MT and studied MT history I knew that there would surely be something that I could take her to see. I thought about going through the Lewis and Clark Caverns. Caleb is not a huge fan of tight, dark spaces though so that was out. I decided instead to take her to the Battle of the Little Big Horn Monument and Park. Some of you may know this better as Custer's Last Stand Battlefield.

I gave Campbell a brief history on our way to the Park. Once there, we first looked at the National Cemetary that is located there. We also looked through the museum (which seemed much smaller than I remembered). We then took the driving tour around the battlefield.

The battlefield is marked with headstones in each location where a body was found. The stone is marked to indicate whether it was a Cavalry Soldier or an American Indian who had died in that location. It was a really interesting tour. The last time I had gone when I was younger than Campbell there was no driving tour. Campbell really enjoyed our 2 hour visit to this park.

4th Grade

Tomorrow is the day that Campbell starts 4th grade. I have no idea how she became old enough to be in the 4th grade. A friend and I were talking the other night. We both remember the day Campbell started Kindergarten. It was such a big day for her. She could not have been more excited to begin her school career. There were no tears from parents or child when she started Kindergarten.

This year might be different. It seems as though she is just growing up so fast. She only has two years (this and next) left in elementary school. Next year will be a year of preparing her for middle school. I can not even believe that this child of mine is nearing middle school. We're just
going to ignore that fact.

Campbell is thrilled that summer break is over. She is the type of child who starts counting down to the first day of school on the last day of school. She would be a perfect candidate for year round school.

Yesterday we went to the back-to-school event. We got to meet her new teacher, Mrs. K. Mrs. K is actually shorter than I am. This is good for Campbell. She has yet to catch up with her peers in size. I fear that will never happen. It's good for her to see that other people are short as well. Mrs. K also seems to be very strict, not mean, just strict. This year is about teaching these kids responsiblity.

The school is terrific! The staff really believes in their motto "Reach for the Stars". Each student is given a punch card. When the student is seen doing something positive they are sent to the office to get a punch on their card. Once they reach 25 punches they get to choose a prize. Talk about your positive reinforcement.

Tomorrow morning we make that walk to the first day. Campbell has her first day breakfast menu planned. She also has her first day out fit picked out and ready to go. She is ready to start the year as a 4th grader!

14 Years

Yesterday, Aaron and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. I don't know how we have survived each other for all those years, but we have.