Discerning Direction

Alex had the opportunity to attend Discerning Direction at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. 4 students from SSPP along with one of their religion teachers made the trek to Massachusetts for the 2 day conference. Alex really enjoyed himself and I'm thankful for the opportunity for him to have him attend. Next up on his traveling agenda is a missions club trip to Gallup, NM in June.

Surprise Award

Tonight was the Spring Sports Banquet. Alex likes to attend to show his support for all the sports teams at school. This year was a little tougher for him sportswise because we made him miss the last few games due to not turning in class assignments on time. It was a nice evening with good food. All the spring teams were recognized. It's wonderful to see how many students participate for such a small school. When the baseball team was announced, Alex was totally surprised when his coach awarded him the Most Improved Player award. He went from only playing a handful of innings last year to being their starting 3rd baseman.

Back to School Dance

Alex attended his first after school function for the year in the form of the Back to School Dance. It's more of a get together rather than a dance as they play video games and other stuff while there but there is some dancing that goes on as well. And it's quite loud...you can hear the music as you turn off the highway to go down the road to the school. Seems like he had a good time even if he did go dateless...hung out with a few guys and a ton of girls. The girl he was seeing last year transferred to another school so they are no longer together...although I'm not quite sure either one truly understands the concept of boyfriend/girlfriend since they both seem to think they are still together yet they haven't seen each other since early summer.

Getting Alex to school functions is always a challenge since his school is so far away and there aren't many kids from our area that go there making carpooling a challenge. Andy did drop off duty last night after running by the soccer field to drop Kenzie and Connor off for their soccer practices. That left me with pick up duty. It was my first trip out of the house without Adam and he was a little angel. I was able to feed him and put him to bed before I left and he slept the entire 1 1/2hrs that I was gone. What a sweetie! But I don't want to be doing too many late night trips right now as I'm not getting much sleep yet.

Awards Banquet

Tonight was the Academic & Services Awards Banquet at SSPP. Alex wasn't sure that he was going to go until a teacher called a couple of nights prior to tonight and personally invited him to come. It was held in the gym of the school and the place was packed. I wasn't expecting there to be that many people there. They gave out all kinds of awards thoughout the night, from perfect attendance to participating in the debate team...but I didn't realize they were going to pick one student from each subject (Math, Science, History, Theology, etc) to honor. The very first subject award was for Theology and Alex got the award for Excellence in Freshman Theology. How exciting! And it was such a surprise for him...he had no idea. He got a certificate and The Prayer of Jabez book. In addition the awards, they also served us dinner which was okay but the desserts were delicious and very, very plentiful. LOL

Biscotti anyone?

Italian Double Chocolate Biscotti to be exact. Alex had to make an international dish for school and he chose this one. Having never eaten biscotti before, let alone make it, I'm not entirely sure that it turned out the way it's supposed to but Alex says it tastes good, he nibbled on the crumbs that fell off after slicing the loaves into pieces was done, so I guess that's all that counts. Guess we'll find out on Tuesday once the other kids get a chance to sample it. I think it's really cool that everyone taking a foreign language class at Alex's school has to prepare a dish. I can remember doing this within our own foreign language class...but never something for all the foreign language classes that all the students of the school then get to share in. Will be interesting to hear what other dishes are brought in.

Results Are In

We just received Alex's grades in the mail and here are the results:

Honors Algebra II: 80
English I: 85
Spanish I: 85
Catholic Christianity: 94
Computer Science: 93
Honors World History: 86
Honors Biology: 90

3 A's and 4 B's which enables him to make the 2nd Honors list this quarter.

Way to go, Alex! You worked really hard this marking period and the results show.

Another Busy Day

Started with Sunday school for the kids. I then went to 9am mass by myself as I opted to stay home with Bekah and Kearsyn last night...after being in the car the majority of the day yesterday, I knew there was no way they would be able to make it through mass quietly last night. By the time I got home, Andy had breakfast ready. Alex then headed off to school to help with the open house. While he was there, Andy went shopping for the twins birthday presents. I headed to the fields...first stop was to drop of Connor, Kenzie and Taylor for select soccer tryouts...second was to take Tyler to his last football game. Boy was it chilly by the time we left the field. They ended up losing but Ty had a good time. It was then time to head back to the other field to collect the rest of the kiddos. Now I'm home and tired and not at all ready to start the work week. Blech!

This week is going to be all out of sync cause Bekah's speech class is moved to Wednesday again due to her teacher being at a conference Thursday & Friday. Bekah then has a hearing test in the middle of the day Thursday. Then I'm meeting Alex's math teacher Friday afternoon to discuss what we can do to help improve his math test grades. Guess I'll get some work done in there sometime.

And then the following week is Thanksgiving. How in the world did that happen?

Oh So Close...

Alex received his very first report card for high school today and after a rocky start to the semester, he ended up with 4 A's (Honors World History, Honors Biology, Catholic Christianity and Computer Science), 2 B's (English and Spanish) and 1 C (Honors Algebra II). He just missed being on the Second Honors Honor Roll...he had the overall % needed but he couldn't have any classes with a % lower than 80% and he had a 79% in his Algebra II class. Oh so close and yet so far. I can't even begin to express how proud I am of him. He worked really hard this semester, balancing sports with his schoolwork, and it really shows. Congratulations Alex! Keep up the good work...and we'll get that math grade up yet. ;)

Classes

Looks like our worries about Alex's performance on the standardized placement tests were for naught. Last night was the new students orientation meeting at SSPP where they handed out the class schedules. Alex's 9th grade classes are:

• English I
• Spanish I
• Honors Algebra II
• Honors World History
• Honors Biology
• Religion (1/2 yr)
  
• Hebrew Scriptures (1/2 yr)
  
• Computer Science (1/2 yr)
  
• Phys Ed I (1/2 yr)
  

I think that's all of them. I'm so impressed by the honors placements...especially the math, just knowing where he started from when we started homeschooling...how far he has come. I'm so proud of him! Next year will definitely be challenging for him but he's very excited about it so I'm hoping all goes well.