Braces

Surprisingly on time for what we had scheduled, braces arrived on number one. 

Number two is scheduled for September. 

And we're crossing our fingers that 3 and 4 remain beautiful without. 

Next up, drivers education classes.  I have mixed emotions about the fact that those are still closed due to COVID. 

Fish

Here lies "Fish"

Won at the Elementary Fall Festival, and buried the next day. 

He was a good fish, with us not long enough to earn a name.

Replacement fish: doing well in his de-chlorinated water...

Camping

Grandma and Grandpa airplane came down to do a little Stuber camping with the boy scouts a couple weekends ago.

As my frosty hand reached out to check the weather the first morning, I may have cursed their intelligence a bit and their decision to go back to our house to sleep at night.  Maybe a big curse when I saw it was 40 degrees the first morning.  The yahoos didn't even mention that we nearly froze them to death though.

Back in the sunshine, grandma and grandpa rolled in during the day to enjoy the more recreational parts of the trip.

Two Wheels

For two boys.

Well, that's four wheels.

They took all of no teaching to take off without the training wheels.

Of course, they've been riding so hard on the training wheels, they were nearly bent off anyway.

This slowed them down for an afternoon.

Benjamin Goes to Kindergarten

And my little guys took off for Kindergarten a short 9 weeks ago.

And immediately, like the first day, they were bringing home warning notes--yellow, red, "W" on the calendar.  We became quickly acquainted.

 But Ben's didn't relent. 

And the notes said things like, "Ben is twirling in line."

And after about the third, baddest of the bad red notes saying Ben twirled in line, I started to ignore them. 

But then they started to say that Ben twirled in line AND he put the teacher's aide in danger with his twirling and it was "witnessed".

When that happened, well, then it got interesting.

 I responded in the daily note home, or was it the "Behavior Documentation Chart," or maybe it was straight on the red note, perhaps the weekly report, that Ben would now have strict consequences at home for these notes, so please help us know what is being done to help him stop the blasted twirling in line.

So the teacher called the principal.
And I started meetings with the principal.
And the principal seemed quite normal.

And then the neighbor girl started giving us daily reports on how awful Benjamin was.

And so we had parent/teacher conferences, which were really parent/teacher/principal conferences.
And I expressed that I hoped the smiles Ben had that week on his daily report didn't have to do with this conference coming.
And we expressed that we didn't appreciate getting reports on Ben from the other students.
And we expressed that the whole note system made no sense, and was over the top.
And we expressed that until she gave us an indication that there was anything said to help Ben get better, I would continue to tell him how to get better, and I would continue to write her a note every day telling her my expectations for Ben since none were being provided that we could back up.
And we expressed that the "Behavior Documentation Chart" that she didn't tell Patric about in orientation should have been explained to Ben's father when he asked about it.  That was just a lie.
And as the egg timer beat down its 15 minutes, we got in our last words.
And we expressed all sorts of things in a very calm way.

And he seems to be coming to an understanding with the teacher, which is good, becauseI don't think putting him a different class would be an option.

And yesterday, Ben brought home his very first report card.
He is failing 5 of  7 categories.

But, I feel encouraged because it turns out that the neighbor girl is failing all the same things.

And so I remain convinced that this is not all a Ben problem.
Maybe Ben and neighbor girl and our girls will all go to Kindergarten together next year.

Oddly enough, I have every intention of siding with the teachers throughout my children's education.  But I also learned quickly that sometimes the quivering chin and the huge tears over twirling in line are worth taking a stand for.

Lessons Learned

Adults are not allowed to go down the frog slide.

Alas.

Still had fun.

And by the end of the afternoon, I think three of my kids were actually swimming in the big pool.

We kept marveling at how we basically had the pool to ourselves with four life guards watching over.

Nice.

The USS Texas: Lessons for the Stuber Home

We visited the USS Texas a couple of weekends ago.

Lesson 1: We don't belong anywhere without air-conditioning in Texas in July. We look forward to visiting again in the Fall.

Lesson 2: Don't let harsh conditions cramp your princess style.


Lesson3: Even in rough conditions, everyone can sit down and have a civilized meal together.

Lesson 4: Stock up on the things you need.

Lesson 5: Stack 'em

Lesson 6: Cage the things you don't want messed up.

Lesson 7: Defense

Lesson 8: Even in harsh environments, you can find beauty every time.

We Will Laugh, Some Day

As I tried to figure out how to use our printer/scanner to sign and send a new house document last night, Benjamin stood close dismantling my every effort by pushing every button on the thing. Elaine was in her room crying crocodile tears, naked because she couldn't figure out how to put on the Tinker Bell dress. Downstairs, and thankfully mostly out of earshot, I heard the wails of Alida as she fought with Nicholas. They would have to wait.

I called Patric, cell phone in one hand, beating Ben back from the computer with the other. In the middle of my fussing, I noticed out the window that two police cars with lights were racing down our street. No. They were stopping in front of our house. I was relaying this all to Patric when I realized that they were very seriously assessing our yard. No. They were very seriously approaching our front door.

Bother.

I hung up and went downstairs. Nicholas beat me to the front door from out of nowhere, and I shoved him behind me to see one officer standing back and ready. Then this exchange.

"There was a 911 call from this house with screaming in the background."
Another officer made his presence known by coming out from behind a tree.
I looked down, "Nicho.."
Nicholas had already hid his face in my leg and started clinging.
"Please come in."
"Who's in the house, ma'am?"
"Me and four children." (What great grammar lady, way to impress them.)
Then two more officers appeared. I opened the door wide.
One disappeared to the back of the downstairs immediately. The most gigantic, seven-foot one stood and took up our entire living room.
It crossed my mind very briefly to ask if he was in the market to buy a house, and then another asked me who was upstairs.
"My girl and my boy."
Up he went.
Officer four went to the garage.
"Nicholas? Did you call 911?"
"Yes." Barely audible.
"I'm so sorry. They have been learning about 911 at school..."

And so that is how my non-actress Alida set to screaming at Nicholas for not letting her have the phone at just the moment that he hit send on his 9-1-1 call.

Overslept

For the first time since who knows, we overslept this morning.

Racing out of bed at 6:30 in the morning with a 7:00 deadline for six people, four of whom need severe prodding to get going, is not fun. I'm pretty sure I'll check the alarm about 50 times before bed tonight.

But I keep reminding myself that we got an extra hour plus of sleep out of the deal.

You Can Please Some of the People

Veggie Tales Live!

The girls had a blast, sang, danced, made friends with our neighbors.
The boys were enraptured, for about 5 minutes. Then they started to ask to go home.
New rule: take two cars to all events.