Lotta Updates

Catching up now. The kids got their grades. Everyone did well,
although Patrick was upset because of an A- in English (the rest
were As). He was much happier after getting the Principal's Award for
highest GPA, plus Student of The Month, plus High Honors.

I did the rest of the Engineering scout achievement for Patrick's den.
The first part was done at one of the other kids' house, where they
are putting in a new garage. The boys got to operate a backhoe, and
use some surveying equipement. I did electrical and structural,
which was not as fun as operating heavy equipment. They did get to
build bridges with paper, strong enough to run Hot Wheels cars over.
Electrical did not go quite as planned, but I hope I got some ideas
across. Four more months and he is done with Cub Scouts. He still
does not want to do Boy Scouts, but that may change.

Patrick fainted in school a week ago. He's been having problems with
headaches and dizziness. The doctor thinks it's hypogylcemia, and
suggested a snack mid-morning. He is still having problems, so he
is off to the doctor again. He did the Olympic Development Program
tryouts. He was not happy about it, but I wanted to see how he
measured up. I thought he did well. I doubt he will get picked but
it was useful.

Thomas, who has been struggling with homework, did get high marks in
in most areas. He is a year away from getting A, B, and the like, but
he should do As when it happens. His SAT scores were a little above
average except for vocabulary, where he scored in the bottom 10%.
I'm not sure why, but he may have misread the instructions, or
simply got into a hurry to finish. It's something to keep an eye
on.

Then there is Rachel. Her grades were good, but she is adopting the
typical teenage 'I don't care' attitude. She spends hours doing
homework, then gets 0 credit because she doesn't turn it in. She has
made both her brothers mad because she didn't turn in the lunch menu
twice, so for the last three months they did not get hot lunch (and
won't until January). I pulled her internet access for a few days
because of the homework. April has handed out other punishments,
but she is still apathetic a lot of the time. We have what, 8 more
years of this? She has another week to come up with a science
project. So far all suggestions are met with 'Lame.'

She did put on a father-daughter dinner as a Girl Scout project
with a friend. It was a fair amount of work for them with minimal
help from adults. I thought it went well. She did not get much feedback
so all I have is my opinion.

April has been doing support for PDAs at work. I warned her that
once begun, she would be stuck with it. So far, it seems that I am
right. The up side is that when her laptop power plug broke the
center pin, she was not against trying to take it apart to see
if we could fix it. We were stymied by one screw that seemed to
have no way of being removed.

End of Entry