December 10, 2008 GED Results, Preschool

We recieved Emily's scores in the mail yesterday afternoon. This is how they break down. Keep in mind she needed to score at least 410 in each of the 5 areas. 200 being the lowest, 800 the highest.
Language Arts-Reading- 670
Language Arts-Writing- 450
Mathematics - 440 -
Science - 560
Social Studies - 500
for a total of 2620 which averages out to 524. She had to have at least a 450 average.

Since, after finding out she'd passed, I didn't feel I could deny her anything we took a trip into Hyannis to the mall, to wander. Emily bought a couple of necklaces. Dan and I bought a couple of new pairs of pants and a new shirt for the first day of school. Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, he loves it. On our way home Dan asked if we could stop at Cape Maid Farms our local pet store. They have all kinds of cool animals including hairless hampsters, all kinds of snakes, lizards, spiders, and rodents, and this time we found a very nice feeder who brought out one of the ferrets for us to hold. Danny had a good time playing with them by putting a brush into their cage. Since they're were six young ferrets in there it didn't take much encouraging for their cage to turn into tumbling and nipping chaos. They had a great time, as did the kids and I. We might have to make visiting there an event we do more often. Em, Dan and I went home long enough to get our books together and head out to the Sandwich Library, where we returned and checked out more books and movies before meeting Mike at the British Beer Company http://www.britishbeer.com/local/sandwich/ for a celebratory dinner honoring Emily for her GED achievement. Em ordered Buffalo chicken tenders for an appetizer, Dan had Pizza, Mike had the French Dip, and I had a Greek Salad, one of the best I've ever had. It was a great night...

This morning Daddy woke Danny up a little after 7am and said Danny, you have to get up for school. That made Danny smile. Em and I will take him to school then go over to the Superintendents office to submit her GED results so she can be taken out of the their system. At 10am I have an appointment with Dr. Mann, my ENT then I have the rest of the morning for some Christmas shopping. I'm not sure I remember how to do that by myself !

Update: Unfortunately I forgot my wallet at home and since it was a 30 minute ride home to get it ran out of time for shopping before it was time to pick up Danny. He saw me, yelled "Mom" and ran into my arms. I'll take this over the clingy, whiny little boy I've spend so much time with lately. The teachers said he had a good day, and told him they looked forward to seeing him Friday....then a funny thing happened. As we walked to the van I asked Dan how his morning was and he said "not good" surprised I asked him why not. He said he couldn't do anything, they didn't play, they didn't go outside, nothing...in a very somber mood. I asked him if he was going to go back Friday and he said yes....now I'm confused. I asked him if he wanted to call Daddy and he said "not yet" Weird I thought. the teachers had mentioned that it was science day today so I prodded him further about what science he learned, at which time he got very animated. Told me all about the planets and how the "orbit" the sun. He said he had a great day, they played outside, he made lots of friends. Apparently he learned how to fool his mother in that very short 3 hour seperation! I'm glad he had a good day.

Emily's exit from the Mashpee School system was uneventful. We met Ellen Bankston at the door, she congratulated both of us, made a photocopy of Em's results and wished her good luck in whatever she chooses to do. Since she's being laid off just after Christmas I think she's scheming a ride down to Virginia with Mom and Mo to visit Vavo and Kathy for a while. From there who knows, maybe fly to Florida, and wait for us there, or fly home and make the trip with us. Whatever she chooses I think taking a semester off to do some traveling is the right choice for her. Carpe Diem honey!

December 9, 2008 Big News!!!

Within 24 hours I have one child newly emerging from the public school system, and one entering.

Emily passed her GED. Not only passed it but averaged a score of 525, when she needed 450. I am so pleased, and feel completely justified in the decision I made to take her out of school. It was absolutely the right decision. She recieved her diploma today and will walk the stage at Cape Cod Community College on June 9th.
We haven't recieved the scores yet, but I did call the school to make sure, and the Director said she really did very well, I'll post the scores when I get them.

Danny and I checked out a couple of preschools on Monday and found one we liked. I brought home to paper work, filled it out and returned it this morning. Danny can be very charming when he wants to be and asked the secretary very nicely if he could start school tomorrow. She said Yes. Danny will be attending the Kids Klub in Mashpee on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9am-12pm starting tomorrow. He's thrilled and was so excited to pick pretzels as his snack.


It's been quite a day!

November 25, 2008 Hiking, Emily's GED

Already the end of November and as I browse through my blog that I haven't looked at in a week I notice that my SIL isn't updating hers as often either. I wonder if it's something about the time of year. Things here have been mostly quiet. The weather has been unseasonably cold and for a few days we were going through1 to 2 bags of pellets a day. Dan has lots of energy these days, is no longer napping on a regular basis and seems to have a never ending supply of energy. We've found that if we don't make a concerted effort to get him out running around for an extended period of time every day he's unbearable, so we've started hiking alot. Thankfully, we have lots of great hiking trails around. He can comfortably hike for about 2 miles without stopping. Mike, the dogs and I are all benefiting as well. I'm down to 148 lbs and still losing. My goal weight is 136 so I'm just 12lbs shy. Redoubling my efforts in light of the upcoming holidays.
Emily took her GED last week, which seemed to go well. She wasn't optimistic that math or writing went very well, but she seemed comfortable that she passed the other subjects. It'll be a couple of weeks before we find out her scores.

October 29, 2008 Emmy's car, GED, and Sociology

It's Wednesday and we were supposed to pick up Em's car today. Emily is still not feeling well but has to work. We're planning to pick it up after work, but on the way in she said " Will it make it easier if I don't go to pick up the car with you" at which time I said "absolutely!" She gave me permission to pick it up without her. Although this will make life significantly easier for me, I worry that I've pushed her over the edge and she's completely overwhelmed with all that happened in the last few weeks. Dan and I dropped her off at work and immediately went to the registry in Falmouth for what I expected to be a long wait. I was pleasantly surprised when my number was called before I'd even removed it from the machine. To my surprise I had all the necessary paperwork and marveled how the registry has changed since my youth when 3 hour waits and missing paperwork were the norm. Five minutes later we left with Em's registration and headed home to wait for the phone to ring. At 1:30 Dan and I went to pick up Emmy from work and since we still hadn't heard took her directly to 4C's to fill out the GED application that they only take on Wednesdays. Orientation will be Thursday November 13th from 4:00 - 5:30 and the test will be on Tuesday November 18th and Thursday November 20th from 4:00-8:30. Since hopefully she'll be driving herself around by then I showed her where to park and where the classroom for the test was. We left there a little after 3pm and since we still hadn't heard anything about the car decided to call. Russ answered and said they'd found that the alternator was bad and expected the part to come in mid-morning Thursday. We went home and enjoyed a quiet afternoon before it was time to go to school. By the comments my professor has made I've concluded he's a democrat and since Obama's 30 minute info-mercial was due to air at 8pm I wasn't surprised when he let those of us who had already taken test 2, go at 7:30. On the way out he gave us our scores. I smuggly waited for my name to be called sure I had scored no less then an A+ on this exam. I was sadly mistaken and scored only a B. I could find only a couple of things he considered errors and am beginning to question his grading policy. I intend to talk to him next week.

October 22, 2008 Walking and more grown up things for Emily

We awoke on Sunday morning to a beautiful cool fall day. We had breakfast and since nobody had to be anywhere until 2:30 I asked Mike and the kids to join me on a walk. They all agreed and we decided we'd check out the trail of tears off of Rt 149 in Barnstable, a 10 minute drive from our house. It was a nice path through the woods, Dan placed his arrows when we came to a new path. Marley found a ball and had Emily throw it for the duration of the walk. We were in the woods for nearly an hour before making our way back to the van. The ride home was filled with the sounds of "I found another tick" and we promptly frontlined Sampson who made it through the entire summer without needing it. In all we removed over 50 ticks between the 4 of us! Dan and I worked on wrapping his friend Justin's birthday present and making him a card for his 2:30 party, at which Dan had a great time. I went to work and enjoyed the quiet but efficient company of my Assistant Manager, as predicted we were done with hours to spare.
Monday morning we took Emily to work, then did some grocery shopping for the week, and came home and did laundry. It was a perfect fall day, with a brisk north wind. I dried our sheets on the line in 30 minutes and happily dried 4 loads in one day. I think that's a record! Dan, Marley and i took a walk down Cove Rd, to Shore Drive then through the woods home. It's a 40 minute walk and Dan really enjoys it. Monday night I worked as well, and again were done with only minor things left to do at 7:30. My Assitant Manager and I are now fighting for customers just to keep busy! My how the pendulum has swung!
Tuesday Dan and I took Em to work again and since it was another nice day and all the laundry was done we decided we'd spend some time at the playground. We pulled in and found the Harmon's there. Buzz and I had a chance to catch up while the kids played. We had lunch at the playground then since Dan's been nagging me to go we went over to the Cape Cod Children's museum http://www.capecodchildrensmuseum.org/to play for a little while before having to pick Emmy up at work at 2pm. I spoke to James at Citizen's bank when I was there on Monday about opening a checking account for Emily so she'll have a debit card. I've gone back and forth about whether I wanted her to have one and ultimately decided I'd rather help her navigate money management and banking under my supervision before she's old enough to do it on her own. So after work we went down to talk to James who set Emily up with her own Checking account under our account. The stipulations are that she will have $50 direct deposited into her checking account every week and all the rest will be direct deposited into her savings account. As it stands Mike and I are the only ones with access to online banking on all the accounts so I'm pretty confident it's a good way to start. She excitedly ordered In the Wild checks until she saw the price. Hey kid....this is real life now!
Wednesday was another busy day, Dan, Em and I all went to the Sandwich Library for Mr. Parson's storytime, then headed to Wareham to follow up with a recommendation from one of the Saturn dealership salesmen about Spirit Auto in Buzzards Bay. We pulled into the parking lot. The man Russ, who we were told to speak with, promptly met us in the parking lot. We told him what we were looking for and he directed us to a 1998 Ford Contour 84K miles, $2900. And somehow it felt right.....He said he hadn't looked at it yet, but was due to go in tomorrow and would give us a call. Em's calling it hers, hopefully we'll all go check it out Friday afternoon after she gets off work. On the way home, we decided we'd go take a ride to 4C's. I had to schedule another math assessment test to try and bring up my grade by 12 points to avoid a remedial math course, and since we were there I thought we'd check with the GED office about scheduling Emily's test. Everybody was very nice, and it was amazing how anti public, pro home school everybody was. Em will take the GED test next month and if she passes it could start college as early as this coming spring. I'm so excited for her, and wished that college had been an option for me at her age. I think I could have done well in the community college live at home setting.
I'm excited to report that I'm confident that I aced my Sociology test tonight. I was confident about the first test too, but completely studied the wrong information and came away with only a C+ (I cried) this time I'm confident I gave him what he was looking for....I'll find out in a week.