Last Day of School

I officially have two high schoolers now.  Oh how sad that makes me when I think about my little girl being a freshman.  The big kids got straight A's on their report cards.  Wish I knew what the twins got, but because of No Child Left Behind (AKA No Child Get Ahead), their school doesn't use letter grades. So I guess I'll wait until they are in middle school to know how they are really doing.

Eric just finished up finals.  Finals only count for 15% of his grade so he didn't have to do well on any of them to maintain his A's.  But his history teacher "egged" him on by saying that he had a student take the whole exam in 20 minutes and still manage to get a 90%.  I guess Eric took that as a challenge and finished the whole exam in 12 minutes and got a 97%.  When we were discussing this last night, Eric was very happy with his grade.  Erin (in typical Erin fashion) asked why he didn't take the whole two hours so he could get a 100%.  We laughed.  Two kids, two totally different approaches to life.

Eric told his history teacher that he might get Erin next year in class.  The teacher asked about Erin.  Eric answered, "She's just like me, but with no ego."  So the teacher took that as Erin was even better than Eric.  Any teacher would be lucky to have Erin in his/her class.  She is such a sweetheart and hard worker.

Oh, I almost forgot, Eric's teacher never did answer his email plea for mercy.  But no matter, someone else must have turned it in for him because Eric saw it graded on the teacher's desk yesterday.  What a relief.  I can't get too mad at the teacher for not responding.  His wife passed away recently from cancer.  So I guess he has a lot on his mind, understandably.

Eric leaves for EFY early tomorrow morning and we leave for Mount Rushmore this evening.  We are sad to be separated from Eric but we are sure that he'd much rather go to EFY than hang with the family at a National Park.

Math Competition

The whole third grade was given a math test.  The top 5 students were chosen to represent the school in a district wide math competition.  I was thrilled when the boys came home and told me they both were selected to compete.  So they spent the entire day doing math individually and as a team.  Their team came in third place out of 14 schools.  I was very proud of them.  That gives me extra incentive to make  let them practice math skills all summer long.  I told them that Erin did that one summer and she jumped two grade levels in math in middle school.  They weren't impressed.

Eric's Plea

A short note written to Eric's biology teacher...

Mr. J,

It turns out, in a series of unfortunate events that involved a ripped folder and a overly ambitious locker partner cleaning, I managed to lose the book we made to do all the dissections and animal kingdom work in. Now, seeing as this booklet had a large amount of work in it, I am assuming it carries quite a few points in the grade book. Being a concerned student with a grade at stake, I was wondering what would be the best course of action at this point in regards to damage control. 

Thank you,

Eric Perez 

Mother's Day from Zach

These are from Zach for Mother's Day.  One he did in school and one in church.  I obviously upset him pretty badly after he did the first one and before he did the second one.  

My Supposed to be Surprise Party

While I was at Time Out for Women, Mario and the kids decided to throw me a surprise birthday party for my 39th birthday.  They went to my favorite party store-The Dollar Tree and bought lots of princess theme party stuff.  The twins were especially excited.  But knowing nothing about the party, I announced to the family that I thought we should go out of town for a couple days and visit an Amana colony and an Amish community in Iowa.  No one seemed to excited to go.  But I persisted since it was my birthday.

Well, Mario was agreeable but then finally told me that they had planned a party for Saturday night.  I was surprised.  Mario has never done anything like that in the past so I had no idea.  I asked if we could move the party to Sunday evening and we could still go out of town.  Mario agreed and we packed our bags and just had to wait for kids to get out of school on Friday to leave.  Mario and I decided to fit in a temple session before the kids got out of school and while sitting in the Celestial room, I felt that we shouldn't go on our trip.  I don't know why, but when the spirit speaks, I try to listen.

So the party went on as planned but one family couldn't make it so I invited a couple other families to come.  So we had close to 30 people Saturday night.  It was a lot of fun to get together with friends.  It was sweet that my family planned it for me and I feel slightly guilty that I almost ruined it by insisting that we go out of town.

The Gift of a Piano by Eric

Eric didn't really want me to put this on my blog.  But it's my birthday and I think it's a perfect gift.  So here it goes.  Hopefully he won't take it down.

Eric Perez
English 10 Honors
Mrs. Roberts
25 April 2013
                                                         The Gift of a Piano
       Making music is more than just a hobby or a way to make money; it is a form of art that has personal meaning. It becomes a part of who you are and helps you develop into something better. For me, the ability to play piano is a gift, given to me first by parents, and later I gave to myself.
My family, from my grandparents, inherited the first piano I ever owned. I was only one-year-old, much too young to even know what a piano was. It was an antique, upright piano with faded wood and chipped keys. It sat against the wall of my house in Florida and went with me to Guam, where it remained an unused instrument, something that should never exist.
       Finally in Hawaii, at the age of seven, I was old enough to learn to play. I envisioned myself playing like people do in movies or on television or in songs. My parents found a teacher, Ms. Solomon, and my lessons began. She was nice enough, came to my house every week and spent half an hour with me, teaching me what fingers to play the dots on lines and how to make them mean something.
      I quickly learned that learning to play an instrument wasn’t an easy or fast journey. Discouraged by the effort required, seven year old me decided that piano was something to be hated, not loved. I would fight my mom every time it was time to practice. I was convinced that she was making me play to make me suffer. Piano was a punishment for some unknown crime. Little did I know that it would be easier for my mom to let me quit playing.
     Teachers changed, skill levels changed, but constant fighting with my mom to practice continued for the next seven years. Finally my parents and I came to an agreement, where I, as the victim of their torture, got the worse side of the compromise. I could quit piano once I became an Eagle Scout. So I became an Eagle Scout, but my parents would bribe me with things I wanted, from paintball guns to new phones, to keep taking lessons for a few more months. Of course, a fourteen-year-old boy can’t resist the temptation of new paintball equipment, so I continued lessons until we moved to Nebraska.
     When I finally left my Arizona teacher, I never found a new one in Nebraska. I decided that I was done with playing music. Somehow, contrary to how I should have felt, I ended up loving piano the second I quit taking lessons. Finally I had the freedom to play the songs I wanted, at the pace I could handle, at the time I wanted to play. I was playing more than ever, moving from song to song as quickly as I could find new music. My parents, noticing my sudden interest in my “new” passion, asked if I wanted to find a new teacher. I immediately shot that idea down; I was my own teacher.
     All those eight years, I had kept the same antique upright piano, with its keys more chipped than before and its legs breaking from so many moves. That year, around my birthday, I got a new piano. It was a shiny black, beautiful baby grand piano. I would like to say that I stayed loyal to my old piano, but I couldn’t resist the sound of the new one. Never since that day have I played my old piano.
Playing piano, though I don’t talk about it often, is not a useless skill. My piano, sitting in the front room of my house, is usually the first thing people notice. This becomes especially useful when I invite girls over and the first thing they ask is if I play. Being a teenager, I don’t feel the least bit bad about showing off the skill I’d worked the last eight years for. Those eight years were a struggle, with me not realizing how valuable the gift of music is, but now playing piano will always be a passion of mine.

FHE

The temperature finally climbed back up to 68 degrees today so we ate dinner on the back porch and then continued our FHE activities at the park. I realized that if we were in Florida and it were 68 degrees, we'd probably be bundled up in blankets. But 68 degrees here (and in Monterey) feels great. It was Eric's idea to come to the park for FHE which surprised me because I don't think I would ever have asked to go hang at the park with my family when I was a teen. But Mario plays tag and all kinds of crazy games with the kids so they love it.

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