Boys and other random things: Jan through March 2017

As we were looking back over my posts from when the boys were babies, we realized how much we have forgotten about it all.  It makes me sad to realize we forget anything.  But it also makes me want to find some time to just hit on some things we might forget.  My accounting brain decided to try quarterly reports.  Hah.

Joel:

He gave up racing his Hot Wheels Nascar cars for Lent.  The afternoon of Ash Wednesday we found him lining up little bouncy rubber balls on his race track to race them instead.  Yesterday he thought of coins, and borrowed all the change from his dad's nightstand.  He now has his own Fantasy Nascar team where he picks five drivers each weekend, and he studies for this more than anything he does for school.

He just came and asked one of his typical, out-of-the-blue DEEP questions:  "Mommy, how does God hear everyone when they are praying?  EVERYONE?  How can he do that?"  I answered carefully, because trying to explain the concept of omniscience is tough with a 7-year-old.  I asked if he hears Father Eric during each Mass say, "The mystery of Faith".  He did.
Me:  "Do you know what mystery means?"
"No."
"It means something that can't be explained, or looked up in a book.  So God being everywhere and being able to hear everything is something we can't explain.  It's sort of like He is the greatest super hero EVER and has some amazing powers."  I am not sure that was a satisfactory answer.  But he walked away.

Joel has found a good friend, Thomas, who is very much like him, loves baseball and video games.  The only difference is Thomas is waaaaayyy into super heroes and J not so much.  But they've been to each others houses for sleepovers and things went pretty well.  I really like his parents, Ana and Pete.  They are older parents like us and seem very level-headed, willing to help at the school, but they're also fun.  We spent New Year's Eve at their house and had a good time.  Definitely a couple we would like to hang out with more - if only we can find time.


Huge news for this boy is his grades.  This quarter is the first quarter ever that he is eligible for Honor Roll, and he made A-B honor roll!   I'm so proud of him.  I can be a little Tiger-mommish when it comes to grades.  Jav is always on me to lighten up and realize if they are trying hard it doesn't matter what grade they get.  But I know how smart they both are so this is difficult for me.  But Joel has a very tough teacher this year and I wasn't expecting much, but he has surprised me with these grades.  He still will say out-of-the-blue, "I don't think I want to go to high school or college.  It's going to be really hard by then".  We remind him that each year you have to learn more and work a little harder, and if you do the next grade won't be that bad.  He grumbles and moves on.   On the other hand we have Gabriel who is already thinking seriously about where he wants to go to college.  He can't wait.  Man are they different.


Gabriel:
Gabriel and I went to see School of Rock at Theatre Arlington.  It was a total youth cast, even the parts of adults.  It was fantastic!   I think Gabriel has the theater bug BAD but unfortunately the camps for that type of thing are really expensive.  ($300+ as opposed to $150-175 we pay for others.)   He already decided to attend Rock Camp at his music school again this summer so he's got to make those tough choices next year.

Gabriel has given up games on the Ipad for Lent.  He wasn't quite ready to give up all video games yet.  I wish he had given up arguing.  Sheesh.

He has grown at least 2 inches since Christmas and his school pants are all of a sudden too short.  We're going to get one new pair for Friday Mass, and the rest of the time he will just have to flood away.  Just when we thought Joel might catch him, he shot up.  But now Joel is following suit and seems determined to pass him.  They will both be taller than Jav's mom any day.

And in the WOW department, Gabriel's good friend Charlotte asked him to go with she and her family on a crazy two-night road trip to Carlsbad Caverns!  They have four kids ranging from Charlotte (4th grade), Emily (7th), Katherine (Senior in HS) and Michael (Junior at University of Dallas).  They each brought someone, so 10 people in 2 vehicles with 2 hotel rooms.  G stayed in his sleeping bag on the floor with Charlotte, her mom, dad and Michael.  All the other girls were in the other room.  They drove out Tuesday morning, stopped for sand dune sledding at Monahans Sandhill State Park, and arrived at Carlsbad at 9 that night.  They spent all day at the Caverns and had a picnic lunch down there.  They were originally supposed to go home through Roswell and see the infamous Hangar 18, but the family voted to head toward the Guadalupe Mountains Nat'l Park to hike and rock-hop.  They didn't head back home until 1:30pm and arrived back at 1 in the morning Friday!   G was a tired boy for the rest of Spring Break, but very happy he got to go.  Pics to come, hopefully.

People who know how control-freaky I can be about my kids were amazed that we let G go on this trip.  It was not easy for me.  But we have gotten to know Charlotte's parents and family pretty well the last couple of years and we both think they are the best parents, very devout and responsible.  The kids are all honor roll students; the younger girls are altar servers and the two older ones are lectors and Eucharistic Ministers at Mass, Charlotte's dad and brother are both Eagle Scouts.  I don't think I would have let him go with anyone else, and I didn't really worry that much about him.  But I sure was happy to hug him at 1 in the morning when he got back!!!

I'm proud of G for finding a good group of friends this year.  A mixture of boys and girls (but mostly girls), they all care about grades and being well-behaved at school, as opposed to the super competitive sports boys he was trying to be friends with before.  He has never seemed happier.



Family/Random:

My dad had surgery for kidney stones and other male issues I won't go into.  He did fine, is still recovering but almost back to normal.

My mom took me to see the FW Symphony play selections from Rogers and Hammerstein movie musicals while the movies played on a huge screen above them!   It was so great.  The music is very moving anyway, with the visual factor added in I welled up quite a few times.

We have been having a blast watching Master Chef Junior.  The boys love all the kids, and I think it will inspire G to help me in the kitchen more.  But J....he is so funny.  He says, "wow that looks really good" about something they're making.  Jav and I then hopefully ask if he would eat it and he always says, "Oh no way."  Shaking my frustrated head.  

The other show they loved was "A Series of Unfortunate Events" on Netflix, based on the Lemony Snicket books that no one in this family had ever read before the show.  Gabriel has almost read all of them now (they had them at the school library), and I'm interested in them too.

We made a huge decision in our TV-watching world.  A few years ago we were told that satellite wasn't an option for us any longer unless we put the dish on the FRONT of our house.  Not on the roof, sticking out from the front porch.  No.  So we went Uverse, but kept having problems with the signal popping in and out, and the cost significantly rising each year.  The signal problem turned out to be squirrels chewing on the line.  My brother had recently rid himself of all satellite/cable for TV, and has the Amazon Firestick with apps on 4 tvs now.  We decided to do the same thing.  We have Netflix and Amazon Prime, Playstation Vue for local TV and sports and our favorite cable channels, and we are thinking of adding Hulu.  We LOVE it!  We also had to add more bandwidth and stronger signal, so we switched to Charter for internet only.  Our bill has dropped over $100 a month!  The only complaint I have is that we still don't have PBS, but Playstation Vue people swear it will be available soon.


And at school/church, Gabriel trained to become an altar server in the Fall and is serving pretty regularly on Saturday nights now.  It's good and bad, we needed to attend more regularly, but sometimes we have family get togethers that we have to do on Saturday nights and if he's scheduled you have to find someone to swap nights with (kind of a pain).  But we are very proud of him for wanting to do it and have fully established ourselves as 5 pm Saturday Mass regulars.

During Catholic schools week in January, the school has students participating in all the weekend Masses.  Our boys had a Mass where G did 1st reading and Prayers of the Faithful, and J did the greeting and 2nd reading.  I was a nervous wreck ( more for Joel because he had some challenging words for a 1st grader), but they both did beautifully.  I would never, ever have been able to get up in front of a sanctuary full of people to do what they do.  The first grade class was scheduled to lead some important Masses this year.  The first was when Bishop Olsen officiated and spent all day at the school.  And the second was for Accreditation Week, when the team to evaluate our school visited the entire week.

Last Day of Preschool!!

Gabriel's last day of preschool was a couple of weeks ago.  I was sad, but didn't get as upset as I thought I was going to.  Probably only because Joel will be returning for at least one more year there next year.  

We have loved every second of Gabriel's preschool experience.  Class sizes have been small, and he has been with many of the same kids all the way through.  The teachers know each kid inside and out.  He has grown SO much each year between his first and last day it's been amazing to see.  Of course, this year he really seemed to mature.  I was a little shocked to find out that around half of his classmates will be there next year.  I've been told that holding your kid back is the newest trend.  But we are forging bravely on ahead with kindergarten.  I feel that he's ready.  Right now he seems excited, but my mom told me he mentioned to her that he was worried about making new friends.  I think that fear will go away pretty quickly once he's there a few weeks.    

Joel and one of his teachers, Ms. Kelly.  His other main teacher, (and the one he immediately bonded with), was Ms. Monica.  She left to have a baby in April and missed the last six weeks.  She returned here and there to sub, but wasn't around for a picture the last day.  :(  

Even though he didn't start until mid-year, Joel loved every minute of school too and was getting along with all of his classmates really well.  I'm excited about his next year, because one of Joel's teachers will be the mom of the triplets that have been in Gabriel's classes since his first year, Ms. Lyndsey.  

In the meantime, we have a fun summer already in full swing.  We've been going to the park every Tuesday morning, something we've never done consistently before.  Both boys started their swim lessons Monday.  They are taking separate classes but at the same end of the pool at the same time.  I wasn't sure how it would work, since I can only watch each boy some of the time.  But the only time it was a problem was at the end of class when the teachers want to tell the parents what needs to be worked on, what they did well, etc..  Hopefully they'll be understanding and know I can't be two places at once!  I was nervous about a Waterbaby class for Joel without me in the water, but he did really well, even though his other classmate SCREAMED the entire 30 minutes of class.  In fact, Joel was so laid back in the water that he doesn't feel he needs to exert the extra energy to kick.  He was content to just let the instructor carry him around the whole time.  We'll be working on that.  

Gabriel's in the middle of his first t-ball season, and seems to be enjoying it more than he did soccer.  We've even been getting him to practice 2 or 3 times a week.  We have great coaches, who both have boys on the team.  The pic below was taken of his first swing in his very first ever game.  And we're about to come up on our year anniversary of weekly drum lessons.  The boy is getting pretty good.  (At least his very biased mother thinks so.)  AND we've signed him up for two camps this summer:  Zoo camp starts next week, and Music and Art Camp at his old school will be in July.

These two are going to have such a fun summer!