Friday, February 13, 2015

Senior Year - 12 Weeks Left

The Senior
S has had a productive week.  He is now finished with high school science!!!!  He worked diligently on his Low Vision project and completed it early in the week.  In addition to his project, he worked on College Algebra, writing, reading a novel, German IV, and History.


S will be starting his research paper next week.  He was coming up with some really good topic ideas that were also quite in depth.  My husband and I talked about the challenges S has had with research papers and writing.  We told him that his topics are very good, but his research paper skills aren’t quite to the level of the topics he was coming up with.  We told him we wanted to go with a simpler topic, so he can realize that the whole research paper writing process isn’t quite so daunting when he has to put all of these skills together.  We worked with him to create a working outline for his paper, and he will be starting next week.  Fingers crossed! [While we were working on the outline, his ADD was kicking in.  We would be mid-sentence with him, and he would turn to the computer to start looking up information.  Stop! Not there yet!]


S had the opportunity to learn Civics/Government through the best possible means - real life. We have a friend here in Virginia who has been working endlessly, relentlessly, diligently (you pick an adverb) to push for the legalization of cannabis oil to be used with patients who have epilepsy.  We have heard her talk to us about it, watched her on the news, read about the story in the newspapers, and followed her posts on facebook. We contacted our delegate and senator asking for support.  This week the bills passed in their individual houses!  S learned that a small group of people can make a difference.  What an awesome learning experience!


S had another chiropractic appointment this week, so that was a slow school day for him.  He has horseback riding today, and it is going to be chilly.  

The other night we read an article with S about being "Time Blind." It was quite interesting and lines up with our desire to improve S's Executive Function skills. This will be blogged about in the near future. Stay tuned!


He is volunteering 4 hours this weekend.


The Sophomore
J had a relaxing weekend last weekend.  He baked some very yummy chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge frosting.  He also made chocolate Oreo truffles and red velvet Oreo truffles.  I’m not a red velvet fan, but everyone else said they were very good.


J had a full week of school this week which was good because he will have Monday off next week.  His homework load wasn’t too bad this week.  In addition to the usual, he had a take-home math test, AP History questions which he had completed last week, and a Spanish quiz (not thrilled about studying for it).


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J's favorite studying position - whatever works!

J had practice for 17.5 hours this week.  He has new back up grips, so he had to take some practice time to break them in.  He doesn’t like having to do that; however, he knows it is necessary so he has back up grips ready in case of emergency (Last year, his high bar grips broke 2 days before the state meet.).


On the Homefront
We thoroughly enjoyed our relaxing weekend last weekend!  On Sunday, it was in the 60s here, so we spent time outside.  My husband, J, and I went on a 5 mile trail walk (needed to do something after eating cupcakes and truffles).  S stayed home since this trail isn’t an accessible trail.  He hung out, relaxed, and enjoyed having some free time.  After our walk, my husband took some time to clean off his bookshelf and desk area.  It was long overdue. Enough said!  It looks very nice in there now.


Thursday was my husband’s birthday.  We are going out tonight for his birthday/Valentine’s Day. We will drop J off at practice, go eat, and hang out until J is done. We will celebrate as a family on Saturday since everyone will be home.  He got a new Apple TV for his birthday.  We have one upstairs and one downstairs.  He loves technology tools!


We didn't have candles, so we improvised.

My husband had his physical this week (his numbers look good) and a PT follow up appointment (very pleased with my husband's progress).  I had a hair appointment (love hair days!).  We both attended a VBS leader’s meeting at church last night.  


My husband took today off from work, so we could get some things done that we keep saying we are going to do.    


This weekend - we have another relaxing weekend!  Looking forward to that since next weekend we will be on the road for gymnastics.  


What I have written this week?
I will enjoy my free weekend on the couch with chocolate!
Linking up with:

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Weekly Wrap-Up

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a busy, but good week. :)

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  2. I love that you are working with S on his research skills...that will definitely come in handy for college! In fact, I was just gathering research for a 20-30 page research paper that I'm writing for a neuro class. I can definitely empathize with the temptation to start writing right away, but I'm glad you encouraged him to sit down and work on an outline first. Out of curiosity, what topic did he choose to investigate?

    And that is SO cool that he's taking German IV...he must be really good at German! Do you guys ever have plans to go on a trip to Germany? I've heard it's an awesome country to visit...and I'm sure S's German skills would be helpful!

    I LOVE Oreo truffles...so yummy. I've never tried the red velvet kind (I'm not a huge red velvet fan either), but we usually cover ours in white chocolate, and they're heavenly.

    Thanks for sharing...I loved hearing about your week :)

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    1. Thanks for your encouraging words about research. He doesn't really want to believe us about the importance of that. He is going to do his paper on Liechtenstein - keeping it simple. He was coming up with some very good topics that were history related and much more in depth. We can tackle that later.

      He loves foreign language! He took Russian I also last year. He decided not to pursue Russian II this year though.

      We would love to go back to visit Europe some time. We lived in Germany for 3 years. J was born there the last year we lived there.

      Regarding the truffles, a friend who tried them said that the red velvet truffles were good, but her suggestions was stick with the regular ones. Don't change a thing!

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  3. Sounds like a very productive week! I'm so excited about the cannabis oil passing! I'm a huge advocate! Can't wait for NY to start implementing the program for Bethany's sake!

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    1. It was a good week. It was an exciting week for my friend. I remember when she first started talking to me about cannabis oil. It really made me aware of the benefits and how many stories are in the news about it. Is NY going to start implementing it any time soon?

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  4. Just visiting from Weekly Wrap Up. How exciting to learn something first hand, like how our government works!

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