Avery's Big Day

Some of you know this but most of you probably don't. We have been interested in a charter school that is 5 minutes away from our house for the past 2 years. Jeff found out about this school while looking at schools on the internet before he was in CRNA school!! (to us that seems like an eternity ago if it's before he began school) It had these great ratings on the website he was looking at, but so did the neighborhood school that we are zoned for. Then wouldn't you know that a patient of mine had her children there and they loved it. They had previously had their girls in the private, catholic school system and enjoyed it but didn't enjoy the check they paid for it so much.

So, you are probably like Jeff and I were when we first started looking into this. What the heck is a charter school? I remembered Laura Bush bringing them about....at least that's who I think it was. Basically they are public, private schools. Meaning you don't have to pay for the education there and they get more freedom to choose their curriculum. In other words, they don't center their curriculum around the TAKS test!!! Our school is called Arlington Classics Academy. Their vision and mission statement is on their website.

Once you are interested in going to one of these you have to fill out an application. The way that they determine the students that get in is by a lottery. So they had over 200 applicants just for kindergarten alone. See, once you're in you are always in and siblings get in also. So out of the 80 possible seats for kindergarten only 21 of them were available after the siblings got counted in. Yeah, you can see that the odds were stacked against us. But I just kept saying, "Someone has to fill those seats. Why not Avery?" So they did the lottery back in April and we found out that we were #18 on the list. WOO HOO!!! I was ecstatic with that. It's amazing how many people change their minds about this too...not that I'm complaining about it or anything. ;) But they do testing before the child starts to give the parents a good idea what the child is struggling with before they start. They are only on kindergarten-level material for the first 6 weeks and then move onto first grade for the rest of the year. So, you can see that it isn't for everybody. They don't fail the test, like at magnet schools where you take a test and have to make a certain grade to get into the school. They do the testing during the summer so I decided to call and check in every now and then to see if we had moved up the list. In the beginning of July I called and found out that we had moved to 11. They were beginning to test later that week so she told me to call back at the end of the month to see if we moved up more. So last week I called on Thursday and found out that we were #5! Yes, I was jumping up and down and screamed in the lady's ear. Then on Monday I found out we were #2. When I called yesterday morning I found out we moved to #1 and then an hour later they were calling me to let me know that we were in!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD!! The next thing we had to do is get her tested. We asked for anytime yesterday since we were both at home.

Let me preface this with ~ Avery has been so excited to start kindergarten. She has been counting the months down since May. She's been telling everybody how long she has. It's been so great to watch her fervor. So I'm quite elated when I tell her that she has to go to her new school to meet a teacher and have a test. She begins laughing with excitement and then I see her eyes start to change then her demeanor. I physically saw her get overwhelmed and feel anxiety. She started bawling in less than 2 minutes. She was saying that she was shy and scared to meet the teacher, she didn't want us to drop her off and leave her there. Jeff and I were picking our jaws up off the floor. Is this the same child that I was just describing to you?? Again, God is good. Praise the Lord that we got in just in the nick of time so we could do the testing. Otherwise, I think we would have dealt with this and had more trauma the first day of school. So of course we resorted to bribery...a sucker to start off with and frozen yogurt from Pure Bliss at the end if she got it together. Guys, that didn't even stop her crying ~ which is shocking since that is a HUGE treat for us since we rarely eat that. My poor baby.

We asked the teacher if we could just walk back with her. We got a first grade teacher since none of the K teachers were there that day. She showed Avery a K room then her room and was just wonderful. Avery finally settled down and went in the room with the teacher by herself. Jeff and I entertained Kendall who kept going down the hall asking, "This my room?" She has never gone to a different "school" than Avery. After they were done, she asked us to leave the girls in the office while she went over the results with us. Apparently the principal usually does this, but he had a meeting. She said that Avery did great and had no problems. They did numbers, shapes, reading sight words, reading comprehension, letters, counting and a few things more. There wasn't a single concept that didn't have a check beside it to show that she got it. We were so excited with that news...and a little proud too. As we were leaving she told us that she didn't want to go and wanted to start kindergarten then. WOO HOO. We had our daughter back.

So now we're on to buying the uniforms. We start school on the 19th. So it's going to be here quicker than I'm ready for. I know the first day is going to be bad when I started crying in the parking lot of Target as we left from buying her school supplies! Yes, I did. That morning of the first day they have a Boo Hoo/Woo Hoo breakfast for all the new parents at the school where they provide the food ~ and Kleenex for those who need it.

I'm Back!!

My goodeness...has it seriously been over a month since I last blogged?!? I have missed this so much...funny that I miss it when I feel like I'm not that good at it. Apparently it's more therapeutic for me than I knew. ;) But since it's been over a month, I have quite a few things to blog about to catch up on...so bare with me. (That word "bare" is bothering me but "bear" doesn't look that great either!...is it bothering you too??) And some of the reason why I haven't blogged in so long is because someone moved our USB that I need to download pictures. Forget that, I'm just going to come back and fill them in later!! Don't know why I didn't think of that before! ;)
Praise God, we all made it through the month of June!! I pray that we never have to be separated like that again!! I know, there are couples that have to spend time apart all of the time for whatever reason. But Jeff and I aren't good at that.
Jeff returned on Friday, June 26, and had the next week off completely. That was SO nice. Especially since we swapped houses with his parents that week....in the 100 degree weather!! Poor Jeff. Yes, you read correctly...we SWAPPED houses with my in-laws. For those of you that don't know already, they decided to move to Many, La, which is pretty much where they are from. But to keep from paying the state income tax in Louisiana, he has to have a house here that he pays property taxes on. Initially, they planned on getting an apartment. However, when they started looking they realized 2 things: #1 They are wasting their money with paying rent #2 Our mortgage was the same, if not less, than most of the apartments they were looking at. They needed us to stay in their house after they moved for a little while anyways to see if the market got better in a few months so they wouldn't lose money with the sale. So we got to double in size while they halved in size over here. The house in Many is quite large. We still aren't at 100% but we're at 90%. It's been nice. Pretty confusing for my Kendall but she's got it now. :) The houses are only 0.4 miles apart so that helped. But moving into a house that is not empty is quite the challenge....one room at a time.
While we were moving I had an exchange with Kendall that I wanted to blog about so bad. I'm so thankful that the Lord let me remember it! ;) So the girls and I were driving over to our old house for something. I turned on the street to enter the neighborhood and yelled, "HOLY COW!!"
K: What hattened Mommy?
Me: Oh nothing honey, that truck just scared me...a truck gunned behind me after I turned and it was really loud and about gave me a heart attack
K: Oh! No, no cow!!
Oh, I just love kids and what they say. I cracked up! I just said, that's right and kept going. I mean really, was there any reason to argue with her that there wasn't a cow??
It was so great to get to go back to our church finally. I can't remember the last time I missed going to church for an entire month!! I don't think I ever have since I was in the hospital with cancer as a child....so i can't say I haven't ever missed that much before. Don't get me wrong, we went to mass with his family while in Many. But you know that it's not the same when you go to another church than yours...especially one that worships quite different. So we were so glad to be back. Fortunately, I'm friends with many of the people that we see up there and got to fill them in on why we weren't there at all.
Here's Avery's little tidbit. Here was a conversation we had on the phone yesterday.
A: Mommy, can I give my horse to Melanie?
M: The stuffed one? (that she actually likes...she isn't a big stuffed animal person even though she has so many of them)
A: Yes ma'am
M: Well of course, you can. It's yours to either give away or keep. That's so very sweet of you to give it to Melanie.
A: Thank you, Mommy!!
My sweet, Avery. She is SO giving!! I will say that she's gotten that honestly from both sides. For those of you that don't know them well, my in-laws are the most giving people that I know. They give almost to a fault! I have learned so much from them. Then there's my sister who is the same way. I don't care how little or how much she has, she will give it to anyone in a heartbeat. She has always been that way....even when we were kids. It just tugged at my heart to have that conversation with her. That isn't the first thing she's given away, but that exchange was so precious to me.
Avery has a big shiner on her right cheek now. Last weekend Leah and Brenden took her to Hawaiian Falls in The Colony. That's a water park that is pretty big and is owned by Christians. This was her first experience at a water park. So she was pumped. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that she started swimming in 2 hours. She went from not knowing how (she knew the basics from lessons last year but had never swam outside of them) to swimming, jumping in and going down a big slide in about 2 hours time!!! Leah was meeting my brother, Robby, and his family over there and begged to take her too. We let her know that she would be in so much trouble if she didn't stay right by everyone in the pools over there. There have been so many drownings in DFW already. She did great. But you guys know my children. We have dramas occur to us quite often. So when Leah called on the way home saying that she bumped her cheek I was thrilled that was all. Jeff was a little upset like he always is when anything happens to one of his girls...whether he's there or not. But I reminded him that her coming home with a shiner was much better than a broken bone or going unconscious from partly drowning. ;) I'll post the pic later.
This is going to be a big weekend for me though. I'm leaving, and brining my mom, for Shreveport tonight. I've had a reunion with my sorority sisters from Louisiana planned for Saturday for a few months now. I'm SO excited!! There's going to be over 30 of us there...if everyone that said they were coming shows up. You know how that goes. ;) But facebook has connected me with so many people that I haven't seen in years. This is one of the products because of that. We're all meeting at Superior...which is like Joe T Garcia's over here in FW. I'm going to see my cousin that I haven't seen in over 9 years too. I will post the pics when I get back. I'm going to bite the bullet and buy another cable...no telling how long it will take for me to find!
So this weekend is going to be a big weekend.