Math Problems

Here is the problem with math. At least for those who stink at doing it. The material is covered too fast and most math teachers, while being very good at doing math, are not very good at explaining math. So you go through class, barely comprehending from week to week. Then you either bomb the class and have to retake it or you scrape by and are not adequately prepared for the next class and the whole thing starts over again. There is rarely a set up for success in these situations. Unless you are blessed with one of those rare teachers who are good at math and good at explaining math to the mathily challenged. I miss you Patty Hayes! (quite possibly one of those rare teachers)

Another First Day Of School

The new school year has come again. Isabella had her first day of Jr. High-7th grade. Zoe is now in 5th and Noah is in 2nd. They're growing up too fast, dang it! They all had a good first week and no one cried or had any horror stories. Success!

Done!

School ended for me last week. I've completed my first semester back in school. Hooray! Two weeks into the semester I was sure I would have to be a quitter. I was stressed out and my mind and body always resist change like crazy. I kept plodding along and thanks to my not super difficult first semester back course selections I did well. This is significant because I have confirmations I am not an idiot. I for one am glad to have this confirmation because I really needed that confidence booster. It's funny, you're out of school for so many years and you're sure your brain is going to mush and then you see that you are actually capable of more logical thinking than you were back then because of life experience. I think. That and because raising kids is like daily solving the worlds most confusing puzzles and riddles. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely aware that come January something I could be curled up in a ball crying in a corner out of stress and stupidity. I'm just so happy my first venture back into the world of formal education went well. And right now, I have to say, I kind of Love school! Hear that kids? School is fun! Learning is awesome!!

And now to get that Christmas tree up and that house back in order after three months of semi neglect.

Ramble Ramble

First of all, I'm sitting here on my computer typing while listening to my blog music on the laptop. Pernice Brother's, I like you, even if I first heard of you by watching a Sherwin Williams commercial. It's just more fun to use two computers at once, and the sound quality on the laptop is oh so superior. Gives a nice a.m. radio vibe. I've done pretty much nothing constructive all day because I've gone brain dead from studying for 3 hours for a five question online math quiz this morning. Five questions? Really? So my brain is all fried because I'm not used to counting so much and I'm not sure I can even always identify the associative property of addition at all times and places. I've also been thinking and reading way too much political junk lately. I know I shouldn't do that. Another reason to get off facebook. Would someone just give Glenn Beck a bunker already? So I have to go to the store, to buy chocolate, of course, to combat the buzz in my head from the math and the politics. I'm driving down the highway and a slow truck ends up in front of me carrying a load of wood board things from the Home Depot. Probably finishing his basement. He's driving way slow and next to him, driving slow, is an old man on a motorcycle with a baseball cap on. We all stop at a light and he pulls on his goggles. The kind you use as protective eye wear for power tools and in high school chemistry labs. No real point here except I thought you might enjoy picturing the old man in the baseball cap and protective goggles on his motorcycle. He did pick up some speed and totally beat the guy with the wood board things in the back of his truck. Anyway, I got my chocolate and felt better so I could do the dishes. So there you go, something productive done.

You may ask, how is school going anyway? Well, let me tell you. The first week we had a lecture in my computer class, the professor taught us how to format our computers, even though if we followed her advice being the clueless computer people some of us are (okay, just me) it could have had catastrophic results. Okay, catastrophic may be a bit dramatic, and she did say, "Do Not Do This!" Then why did you show me how too? I'll just stick with the more important information, how to name my C drive after myself. What else? The other day I got to school a few minutes early and was hanging out in what can only be described as the student union of a one building college campus. I was there maybe six minutes and two people asked me if I had an appointment. I never had that kind of service just sitting around between classes at BYU. But then I was usually asleep on a couch in a bathroom or at the library, drooling on my homework. Hey, you try staying up 'til midnight with your super fun roommates, going to work at 3:30 am on campus as a janitor, and going to your 7:30 am class without falling asleep in a puddle of your own drool on your homework. The good news is I can now remember how to add 3/5+79/8 and get the right denominator and all that. So I'm getting used to everything. It helps that the kids' first week of school is done and my blood pressure has gone back down from my brain being yanked around in twenty nine different directions. And I no longer feel like I'm ruining my kids' lives because I'm thinking about algebra at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon instead of my kids and how maybe I should go spy on them on the playground at recess because Noah is in first grade now and I'm lonely. The good thing about being alone so much now? My mind wanders off into lots of bloggable rambling. Okay, it's probably not very bloggable, but entertains me anyway. And that's the real purpose of having a blog, right?

Back To School Pics

Some cute back to school pics, even though they've already been seen by pretty much everyone on facebook. Worlds colliding again! Maybe they are right that facebook is a waste of time. Hmm.

They are definitely growing up way too fast!

School Supplies!

I was starting to feel anxious about going back to school next month. But then I realized, I get to shop for my own school supplies this year. It helps, a little. Brent suggested I get a Trapper Keeper, however, they didn't have them at Wal Mart and I'd need the nerdy 1980s variety anyway.

My baby's growing up!

Today I took Noah to his kindergarten checkup. He turned five in January so it was only three months late. He passed with flying colors so I guess it's off to kindergarten in the Fall. He was almost 4 feet tall which put him in about the 125th percentile on height. According to the chart that will make him about 6'4" as an adult. He's a little giant. I swear he's about a head taller than all the kids in his preschool. And, because he's the baby of the family he's the only kid I've carried around at this age (just downstairs to bed at night and up the stairs in the morning.) That's how I get my strength training in. He had to get four shots at the doctor's. I felt so bad for him, I always start to tear up when they get shots. I HATE shots so I know how they feel. But he was a brave little man and only whimpered a little bit. Then they gave him a book and a sucker and two stickers and I took him to McDonald's. Lucky boy! When I was a kid and I got shots all I got was to be reinstated in school from my suspension. Okay, I got to go out for pancakes once, and they had all those disgusting fruity syrups and I got to put them on my pancakes all at once.