Family Update

The new school year has begun and we are off and running.


Today was Andrew's first day of classes at BYU. He said it went well. On M-W-F he is in class for 5 hours (5 different classes--3 English classes, 1 math class, and the American Heritage class). T-Th he only has one class--religion (Doctrine and Covenants).  He is still planning on being an English and math teacher.

He is still job hunting but he has a few leads, so hopefully one will pan out.

His room roommate, Matt, is from Vegas, but the southern end. He says if he crosses the street from his house, he is in Henderson. The other 2 in the apartment, Michael and Brandon, are of unknown origins, but Andrew did say that all his roommates served English-speaking missions, so there will be no secret conversations in front of others. Funny thing-Michael and Brandon are friends and signed up together, but it turns out that Matt and Michael were in the same ward their freshman year, so they know each other.

Eric starts his classes tomorrow. He has 5 classes this semester and only one is on-line (personal finance). Two are late afternoon classes (T-geology & W-computer graphics), and his evening class is on Friday (Anatomy). He has a day class on T & Th (geography) and so tomorrow he gets to ride the CART bus for the first time so he can get to class in the middle of the day and I can still sub. He will also attend the Institute religion class on Thursday evenings and have Young Single Adult activities at church, so he will be plenty busy.

Ryan just entered his senior year which means it's time to order graduation stuff. Wow. And instead of trying out for cross-county this fall like he originally planned, he tried out for tennis and made the team. Tomorrow is his first game and it will be an away game (when the boys have an away game, the girls are at home and vice versa). He will be playing doubles. On Sunday we drove him to Yerington where he received his Patriarchal Blessing from Patriarch Ivey. What a beautiful, sacred experience.

Hannah is on the tennis team for the second year in a row. Her first game is tomorrow and it is a home game for her. She'll be playing a singles game after school. Just might have to go watch for a bit, even though she doesn't want me to. She also is currently auditioning for the fall musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (I thought she wasn't going to, but I was wrong). Last year she didn't take orchestra, but this year did...and switched from the violin to the cello. So now she gets to learn to play the cello. Luckily it only costs $50 to rent (though I don't know if that's per semester or per year, but at least it's not per month).

Alex is enjoying 5th grade. His big news is that he gets to start piano lessons next week. He's been asking and we finally found a teacher, so we're excited for him.

Our new favorite family game is Dominion. "Within two months of its release, Dominion was one of the top ten games according to BVoardGameGeek ratings. In 2009, it won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis awards. It was one of five winning games in American Mensa's 2009 MindGame competition."

My new favorite website (as of yesterday) is grooveshark.com. I never thought I would find something to replace my beloved Pandora.com (where you type in an artist or specific music title and it creates a "station" and plays similar music to what you inputted). In Grooveshark you get to select the exact pieces you want to hear. Fabulous. It's free, too, though you can pay for more features if you want.

I haven't gotten around to posted real notes from my Ed Week classes yet, though I did post gems on my other blog. In case you missed it: Gems 1-18  and  Gems 19-36.

One change I'm implementing from Ed Week is our new meal schedule. I bought a small book called Centsible Meals by Lorae Bowden. She does her meal planning a bit differently. I used to roughly follow a schedule like every Monday was Mexican and Tuesday was chicken, etc. But I like her organization better.

Each day of the week is given one of the following themes: Rice, Potatoes, Pasta, Beans, or Whole Grains. Then weekends are for leftovers. So I've made a list of possible meals for each category (I really need to expand my bean recipes to go past chili, red beans and rice, and bean soup). Some dishes (like red beans and rice or soup) can fit under more than one category. Under whole grains I have put things like pizza, anything with tortillas, breakfast for dinner-ie pancakes or waffles, etc. I think I'm going to really like it.

Glen and I are doing the same old, same old, so I didn't bother posting about us.

Anyway, so that's our update for now. Soon (maybe even tomorrow) I'll be posting some Ed Week notes.