Playing catch-up: Wade joins the Murray Robotics Club!

In the fall Wade joined the middle school robotics team.  He's attended weekly meetings on Fridays after school and has joined the team on several meets out of town.  He says his job on the team has primarily been the "builder," helping to create and build the team's robot, and he felt the meets were kind of boring until he got more responsibilities--then it definitely became more interesting and fun.  

I don't know if he'll continue this in high school, but we are glad he tried it this year and know it's been a great learning experience for him!

The meets are intense!  30-40 teams compete in robot "battles," working through obstacle courses.  I've been impressed by the work and concentration involved, and I'm grateful to Kate Champeny, Wade's robotics club teacher, who has done a great job, too.

Here's a video from the first meet to give you an idea of what it's like!

Back to school (already!)

This was taken very early on August 9th, the first day of 11th grade for Rhiannon and 7th for Wade!  We were all out the door by 6:15!

Jason takes Wade most days to zero period PE (which starts at 6:25), and Rhiannon has symphonic band early, too, which starts at 6:30.  She started a 5:25 am seminary class last week. 

Both kids are doing well and we are very proud of them!

Rhiannon's class schedule:

(early morning seminary, followed by:)

Symphonic Band

AP Biology

Honors English 11th grade

Spanish II

Anatomy/Zoology

Pre-Calculus

US History

Wade's class schedule:

zero period PE

World History

Honors Math

Life Science

Concert Band

Gateway to Technology class (ask him about this one!  challenging, but he loves it!)

English

Last Day of 10th and 6th grade!

There is a lot of blog catch-up to do from the last few weeks!  First, the kids finished up school on May 26th, their last day of 10th and 6th grade!

We are very proud of them!  Rhiannon tried some new things this year--especially drumline--and did very well with a full, busy class schedule, on top of early morning seminary, honor society service hours, time with friends and church activities.  Wade killed it in band and excelled in his classes.  He wasn't kidding around when he set a goal to keep a "higher-than-4.0" average for the year.  We're proud of his efforts to keep and make good friends, too.

Way to go, Cushing kids!  Enjoy the all-too-short summer so you're ready to get back on August 9th!

Fun on a Friday night, plus fun random pictures from the last week

Hard to believe that 3 months have already gone by in 2016!!!

It's been a fun April Fool's Day!  Rhiannon has been the champion--she put stuff in Wade's shoes, colored the milk in the fridge blue, put salt in our water glasses, and faked injuries at school.  She has enjoyed every minute of it, haha!  Wade hid some of Rhiannon's books.  Jason tried to trick me into thinking he was drunk, hanging out with co-workers after work today, and I tricked Wade pretty great at 5:50 am when I told him that his teacher had emailed me and said he didn't have to do a large class project because his grade was so high...I felt a little guilty about that one!

Right now both kids have friends over.  Wade is playing video games with Tucker in one room, and Rhiannon and Sierra are watching Napoleon Dynamite in another.  It's fun to listen to them all laughing!

Tomorrow Rhiannon will be gone most of the day to a drum line competition, and the rest of us don't have much going on besides watching General Conference (which I am really looking forward to!).

Here are some other random pictures of goings-on the last couple weeks:

Rhiannon took a bunch of funny pictures on my phone--loved it!

Easter Sunday!

  

On Tuesday (after a VERY windy Monday) I joined friend Megan Hall and her son Daniel up at the new walking path up to the college.  We had a blast and got over 4 miles in!

Wade had a local band festival on Wednesday night.  He did a great job and had fun with it!

Rhiannon had SOOO much fun with the high school's Spirit Days this week.  Her favorite was the Comic-Con day!  Here she is with her friend Katie Johnson, who was a Dr. Who weeping angel!

We love The Flash!

  

Without pre-planning, Rhiannon and one of her really good buddies (friends since kindergarten!) Jacob Kelley both represented Flash that day.  Too funny!

The Insectasaurus hat is still around.  She wore this and a bunch of other crazy stuff for "What in the World?" Day!



Finally, here are some videos from Wade's band festival!  He's in the back, towards the right, playing on the mallets.

Wade's first Beginner Band concert

Jason and I went to Murray Middle School on Friday afternoon to see an informal first concert in his beginner band class.  Wade says this class is a little crazy (um, cough, only one girl in the class?  Yes, that's a daily practice of patience.), but he enjoys it.  He is having fun in the percussion section (back row, in the middle).  Two of his best friends are in the class with him--Nick is in the front row, blue shirt, playing trumpet, and Jordan is off to the right playing electric guitar.

I came away with a lot of respect for their band teacher, Mr. Peterson, and what the kids have learned in just a few weeks.  As soon as the concert ended, the kids took off for the refreshments and then chose the loudest percussion instruments they could find around the room and played around, haha!

Enjoy the videos!

Silly boys!  Wade with two of his best friends, Jordan and Nick.

First day of 10th and 6th grade!

The next school year has begun after a super-fast-and-fun summer!  10th and 6th grade, here we come!  Both Rhiannon and Wade did a great job getting up and were ready for the day by 6:00 am!  We rushed out to the backyard to take our traditional pictures before I took Rhiannon to the high school for her band class (which starts at 6:35 every day).

Cuties!

She loves that "Hello" shirt--super soft and comfy!

And if you're an Avengers fan, you can imagine how Wade felt about his Jarvis t-shirt!

Rhiannon and I saw the most beautiful sunrise on the drive.  As soon as I dropped her off, I zipped into a parking lot so I could capture it!  

After I got home from that, Wade and I killed a few minutes before we had to leave to get him on base to Murray Middle School.  Most days he will catch a ride with our neighbors, but I told him I wanted to take him on the first day!  Wade was so excited that we left 5 minutes earlier than we planned and got to the school so early we had to sit for a few minutes.  (Classes start at 7:20; students are allowed on campus at 7:00).

The rest of the day flew by while I waited for their school day to end.  I messed around on Facebook, got groceries, and went to a disaster preparedness class offered on the base.

Wade walked in the door happy and content at 2:30 pm; then I left to pick up Rhiannon and some friends at 2:40.  

Rhiannon already had Spanish, chemistry and history homework.  Wade's only homework was to get his mom to fill out school paperwork.  They both said it was a good, fast day, with no problems.   YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Just for fun, here is something I made yesterday when I found myself with a bunch of extra time in the morning.  It was fun to see how much the kids have grown each year!  11 years of first-day-of-school photos! :)  We love these kids and know they will be successful and happy if they try their best, work hard, and show kindness!

8th Grade Promotion Ceremony

Rhiannon is an official Survivor of Middle School!  She did it with such grace and ease and very few speedbumps the entire 3 years--we are very lucky parents of this wonderful girl!

Happy parents, super-excited daughter!

So glad Sandi could make it to help us celebrate!

Rhiannon and her buddy Ethan

Rhiannon with Emily--those two friends had EVERY SINGLE class together this year!

Sandi gave Rhiannon this cute bag with graduation goodies in it.  Every item had a cute saying on it about graduating and moving on to high school--so thoughtful!

  

One of Rhiannon's coolest accomplishment was keeping a perfect 4.0 grade point average the entire time she was in middle school.  She was in good company, too--26 other kids were awarded with that, the largest group ever in the history of Murray Middle School to do that.  AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!