Wow. I just realized tonight that it's been almost 3 months since I've posted anything! Well, a lot has happened.
Band: Carissa's first marching band season has ended. They went to two different competitions (1st place in division, 4th place overall in one and 6th place in division in the other) and district MPA assessments (where they got a superior). There were numerous football games on Friday nights (two of which were accompanied by a downpour - homecoming and senior night. We can analyze the hilarity of the homecoming queen/court and rain at a later date. The other development regarding band is the new boyfriend, Connor. I'll post his picture later, but if you can look at my myspace or facebook, it's on there in the band photos. He seems to be a nice kid, although neither Steve nor I have actually met the kid yet. Steve has appropriately threatened our kid with the fact that if he isn't introduced to Connor the next time we're all in the same vicinity, he will do whatever he can to embarrass her! haha! He's such a good dad!
Cheer: the competition season is just beginning on Dec 6. I'm sure there will be lots of news to post then. However, Carissa is on a team where she's not flying this year. She loves that she isn't and doesn't miss it at all. She's a side base and feels she's much better at that than at flying. She's also still working on the tumbling.
School: With band and cheer occupying most of her time after school, Carissa really had to work this grading period in school to keep her grades up. This is probably the first time in her life that she actually had to work for those straight As. Yes, that's right. Another grading period of straight As and all honors classes. Including Honors Geometry. She clearly does not take after her mother.
Steve: Steve just did a pottery show a few weeks ago. It was kind of in two parts - one part on Saturday at a small church, the other part the following Monday in his classroom. It was quite a successful sale. He has also been selling stuff online in his etsy website. That's pretty exciting. As for teaching, he's hoping this will be his last year at this school. He's pretty tired of this population of kids and is ready for something closer to home, too.
Kim: I am still at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and have been promoted to Senior Editor. I am still working on grade 2 Reading books and right now we're trying to meet deadlines for Texas. We have been told there will be layoffs in the next few weeks. This is very scary as my back-up plan has always been to go back to the classroom if I lost my job here. However, there really aren't any teaching positions that I could just walk back into right now either. Plus we have to buy a house soon. That brings me to . . .
The house update: The Storins are officially coming back this year. They've started looking for a job for Ed back in Florida. We are planning on starting to look for a house in Jan/Feb and hope to move around March. We'll see how that goes. We are planning on staying on the west side of town to keep Carissa in this high school district. Our plan had always been to move back to the east side of town, but that was back when we were thinking we'd only be in this house for 2 years. That wouldn't have been that long away from those school friends. However, we've been here almost 5 years now and she feels she knows these friends over here much better than the friends she had in 5th grade. So we're going to stay over here.
Well, that's it for now. Mom is coming over tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner. My brother and sister-in-law are in NY and Ryan and Casey are spending the day with their mother. I'll post some pictures soon.
