We're back!

Well, we took Ky to V Tech today.  It was sad to know that I'll miss her, but it was great to know that she will have such a wonderful opportunity.  She is at STEP, which is Students Transitioning into Engineering Program.  It is a five-week workshop in which students who are entering Engineering at Tech study Chemistry, Engineering, and Mathematics study those subjects with real professors.  They will have tough assignments and lots of work.  They will see how tough it is and how much work they will have to do before it really counts.  They will use computers like those they will use in the Fall.  These are tablet laptops and I would think familiarity with them would be a plus before the semester begins.  

It is possible that Ky will decide she really doesn't want to do this much work for 4-5 more years.  That's fine.  I think she's been doing comparable work for the past year or two (five AP classes this year and two the year before and one during her sophomore year) and will enjoy the challenge.  She is also still somewhat shy, but is learning to deal with that and has become much bolder in the past few years.  She tells us that she plans to meet each of her profs just to meet them and she plans to not be ashamed to ask them for help.  

Today, I was reminded how much I love college towns.  Blacksburg is a cute little town arranged around the campus.  It has a neighboring town called Christiansburg.  I feel the area will suit Ky just fine.  They even have a bus system to use--even if they want to go to the nearby WallyWorld!  Is that great, or what?? 

As smart as she is, and as hard a worker as she has become, I plan to pray for her daily.  I hope you'll join in and pray for her, too.  

I'll miss her a lot, but she really seems to belong there.    

Packing for the next stage

Today is devoted to packing Ky up for her five-week stint at college.  :-(

The frown is for her dad and me. 

She is ready, of that I am sure.  We are not, of that I am also sure.  We'll survive, but it will be hard to change our lives this way.  Other friends who will be packing their kids off to college soon will be able to add, "well, at least we won't have his/her temper tantrums" or "the house will finally be quieter" or something like that.  We don't really have an upside that I can predict because Ky is fairly quiet, respectful and a very peaceful person.  She is the same in public as she is in private.  Just. plain. nice.  

Wish I could say I know the secret to raising a really, really nice child into a great adult, but I don't.  She came that way, pretty much.  We were very tough when she was young (18 months until about 4) because we felt everyone needed to learn discipline and the younger you learn it, the easier and more naturally it comes.  She is the most disciplined person I've ever known.  She learns quickly and remembers everything.  (Too much, sometimes!)

All in all, the only explanation is that God gave us a wonderful child who has grown into a fantastic adult.   He gets all the credit and deserves all the glory.  I'm sure she has only begun her journey and I'm excited to see where she will go.  As long as she goes where He chooses, she'll do well.  

Please pray for her and for us. 

Thanks.  :-)

How Time Flies!!!

Could it really be that Ky has finished high school?  As much as I'd like to deny it, she finished, and she finished well.   This is a shot of her receiving a "Scholar's Medal" which is given to graduates with over a 4.0 average.  There were 28 students who received those, I think.  She worked very hard for 13 years to do that.  I don't think it is something one can just decide to do once one enters high school, but it takes years of dedication and hard work.  I'm very proud of her for her educational accomplishments, but am even more proud of her the quiet, gentle spirit she wears so naturally.  

What a week!

This has been a crazy week!  Monday seemed tame enough, but at work things were chaotic, as usual.  I mean, chaos is standard procedure in my school.  Then, Tuesday morning, a girl in our sixth grade who had been suffering with an inoperable brain tumor died at 8 a.m.   For some reason, the principal waited until about 1:30 p.m. to finish the letter she wanted sent home to all the parents via backpack.  That meant we had to duplicate the letter, manually fold it and stuff it in envelopes, count it out and get it to all the classrooms by 2:30 p.m.  We have over 1000 students, so this was a monumental task.   Chaos, as usual.

We arrived Wednesday, as did about 10 school psychologists and social workers to try to help any children or their parents deal with this tragedy.  Little Amy hadn't been in school since early December, and I remember being very sad at that time.  

Wednesday afternoon, around 2 or so, the wind whipped up and a storm came through.  We lost our electricity and even though it was dismissal time (at 3:15) we sent all the children downstairs as if we were having a tornado drill.  Parents started phoning in asking what we were doing and whether we'd be dismissing the kids into this terrible storm!  Over and over again, we answered that we'd keep the kids in school until we felt it was safe to release them.  Parents started arriving at school to pick up their kids.  Why do they think their little sedan is safer in a tornado or a bad storm than a big, heavy school bus with professional drivers and a staff that had coordinated the routes around the closed roads?  There were many roads closed due to fallen trees.  The traffic lights were mostly out.  Extra cars on the roads help out a lot!  

We got the kids home safely that day and dealt with power outages at home, too.  Our power was out until midnight.  Ugh.  Fortunately, the refrigerator was not very full and we didn't lose too  much in the way of food.  We kept our freezers closed and that food was fine.  

The next day was Thursday.  I arrived at school a little before 7 a.m. and noticed that we still didn't have power.   One of my co-workers called the principal, who told her that we were supposed to have school that day even though we had no power.  There were about 40 schools without power that day.  They had all the children arrive, then let us know (unofficially) that they were going to release us early--around 11.  We only got official word at 10:15 or so!  That means that 1000 kids have to call home to be certain there is an adult to meet them.  Several of our phones weren't working and many of the children didn't know a phone number for their parent.  Some kids got verbal permission to go home with someone else on a bus, but the bus driver wouldn't let them because they didn't have written permission.  Needless to say, that was another hectic dismissal with confused kids and angry parents.  

Today was Friday.  Our school, along with about six others, still had no power.  I got to stay home today.  Sounds good, right?  We'll have to stay in school an extra day since we missed a day today.  Actually, we are still getting out a day early, however, since they already shortened the year by two days just about two weeks ago.  Confused?  Yeah, me too.   All of our deadlines have suddenly changed.  Ugh.

Another chaotic week at Hunters Woods!

Update

I just went outdoors to the gazebo and found that the babies are all out of the nest.  So's the mom.  It could be that she moved them since the nest had become so popular.  They were pretty big already, though.  They have skinny rat tails instead of nice, bushy tails.  Their mom wasn't much larger than they were.  I hope they can survive.  We have a neighbor cat who would love to torment them.  Radar likes to think he will catch a squirrel, too.