Life

It's been a busy week again.  I'm afraid it's just going to get busier as each week passes until Christmas is over.  And I've found that getting gift ideas out of a teenager is like pulling teeth- it's not easy, nor fun.  She and I sat down at the computer tonight and did come up with a few ideas, so if you've been emailing me all week wanting ideas, they're coming (slowly but surely).

Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the year- the Methodist Men's fish fry!  Not only is it near and dear to my heart since Pa was the one to start it over 25 years ago and it helps SO many needy children in our area, but it also gets me out of cooking for a night!  Now, I'm not a fish eater- I won't touch anything that comes out of the water, but I love the corn bread, beans and slaw, so I trade Christopher my fish for his slaw.  It works out well!  This year, Preston tried the fish and liked it!  We told Pa today and it made him smile.  He's pretty well known for his fish!

Today Kate came home and I could tell she was bothered.  The guidance counselor pulled her out of P.E. to tell her that she was failing science.  Now, Kate has never gotten grades like that, and has always been an honor roll student, so this was a little confusing.  I came home and checked the school's site which keeps an up-to-date report on all the student's grades and it showed she was getting a 97%.  I contacted the teacher and she said that there had been an assignment that she'd forgotten to put her name on, and until she figured out who it belonged to, she didn't put a grade in for her.  Well, this was the same time that the GC pulled everyone's bi-weekly grades and it showed she was failing.  But the teacher did figure out that it was Kate's paper, and posted her grade, but the report had already been pulled.  So the good news is, she's definitely far from failing!  Phew!  But it embarrassed her, and really worried her as well.  Common sense would tell me to double-check something like that, especially with a child that has always had exceptional grades, but that's something people tend to be lacking these days. 

Luckily for Kate, they got out at 11:30 today, so she didn't have to stew long before we figured the whole grade thing out.  Since it was nearly 70 degrees, we decided to get out and take Christmas card photos before it got cold again.  We headed up to Ramsey this time and found Pa up there fishing, so we got to see him for a while.  I'm not sharing our photos yet, but here's a few from our afternoon.

 Preston discovered that cattails literally explode once they dry up and spew millions of little dandelion puff type seeds everywhere. 

 The water looked like it had snow on it from the seeds.

And you know picture-taking is done when your teenager starts looking like this...