School Registrations
Anticipating a move from Pleasant Grove to Bluffdale this summer, we went ahead and registered the kids for school up in the Jordan School District. They are still registered for PG next year too in case we don’t get moved like we have planned on.
Caitlin
Caitlin completed 9th grade this year, which in Utah is at the middle school. So she is now ready to move onto the higher education I suppose.
PGJH had a fairly well run routine for getting kids registered. Caitlin wasn’t thrilled with her registration at PG High however. There were a number of classes she wanted to get into that were unavailable by the time she was allowed to register. She got into the core classes she needed, but the electives she wanted were filled.
I went over to Riverton High School a few weeks before the year ended to get her registered. After handling the paperwork they gave me the login info to get her into classes for next year.
Surprisingly Riverton had all of her desired classes available except for photography. She got into Physics, Digital Media, and Sign Language as well as her core classes. I’m not sure if Riverton just has more teachers for those electives and that is why they were open, or if she lucked out that not as many people at RHS wanted those classes.
I think she is looking forward to the new year and moving into High School. She turns 15 this summer, so personally I’m not ready for her to be a High School student.
Joshua
Joshua had an interesting year. He started the year in 8th grade in MO and ended it in 7th grade at PGJH. At his request, he’ll be going through 7th grade again next year.
His birthday is in late July. That means that by Utah deadlines next year he should be one of the youngest 8th graders. He doesn’t particularly like being one of the youngest, and so holding him back a year would make him one of the oldest 7th graders. But because his birthday is so close to the deadline he the age gap isn’t any different. By that I mean he is just as close to the 7th graders in age as he is to the 8th graders. So socially it isn’t a big deal.
Academically he is plenty smart enough to have stayed in 8th grade all last year and move into 9th this year. But because of the homeschooling time, and the time lost to fires, he does have some gaps in his knowledge. He’s smart enough to move ahead, but he’d rather not.
So next year Josh will be in 7th grade, again, at South Hills Middle. Because it is 7th grade there isn’t a lot of variability in his schedule like there is in Caitlin’s. He’ll be where ever the 7th grade puts him.
Sports
A portion of his decision making in that regard was athletics. He loves sports. And while he is intelligent enough to move ahead, physically he knows he couldn’t compete athletically that way. Being smart doesn’t make your body mature or grow any faster than anybody else. That takes time, and he’s willing to spend that time (an additional school year) letting his body mature so that he has a chance to compete and play on sports teams.
Julie and I were torn on this. We both value academic education very highly. If he’d stayed ahead he could have graduated High School at 16. If he moved up with this class he’d finish at 17. By moving back he’ll finish at 18. But that isn’t HIS goal. And it is HIS life, so we will support his decision on how he wants to spend it and what goals he wants to chase after, even if it isn’t what we would choose.
We’ll compensate by getting him into concurrent enrollment, summer college courses, or other alternate education options. There is no reason that he can’t excel at both academics and athletics as so many others have done.
Elementary School
All of the other kids are moving up a year as expected. We’ll even be having a new one enter the system. One of them did express some hope of doing homeschooling again. So it is possible that we’ll have at least one at home with us.
I’d love to keep them all of the elementary kids home as I really, really don’t like public schooling. At all! But that might need to wait until we are more settled in. As soon as we are I’d love to keep the kids at home around us.
And so that is what we have planned for next year’s schooling. With 6 of 8 going to school the house will feel very empty I’m afraid. Wish us luck!
School is Out!
Not a moment too soon, school is out for the kids here in PG.
How It All Began!
I hope the kids don’t expect us to make each day as great as this one was. Their Aunt Jenni had a huge hand in making the day great. School ended at 10:30, and by 11:00 they were all soaking wet from water balloons, slip ‘n slide, kiddie pool, and eventually entire 5 gallon buckets of mayhem. It was awesome. The video didn’t do justice to that part of the day simply because my recording was so poor.
The pool was fun, but the wind made it a bit on the cool side. Only Caitlin and Joshua were there with their cousin. I got a LOT of video from that. Some of it good, much of it boring.
This summer will offer lots of time at the pool, and lots of time working. I’ll do what I can to give video whenever I have time or energy to do so.
Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
Kids Earning Money
Caitlin and Joshua are earning money beginning a summer campaign to raise some dough. If you haven’t heard about it, please check out the link!
Good for them!
The kids, with a bit of encouragement, have decided to start earning their own money for the summer. They are only 14 (Caitlin) and 12 (Joshua) but have a pretty good understanding of where things come from. They realize we can’t just go into a store and get things without offering up something of value in return (money). And because Julie and I have never operated on debt, the kids know that they need to have that money in advance.
They know that if they want go to movies, buy games, etc, that it takes money, and that that money must be earned in some way; either by themselves or somebody else on their behalf. They don’t think that money magically appears or that the world owes them anything.
Thankfully they are willing to get out, do some work, and provide services of value in order to earn the money they want to spend. I think they are admirable.
Kicking them out of the nest?
At some point in time every parent must decide when their kids must start earning money for themselves, instead of that parent continuing to earn money on the child’s behalf. We are not at that point yet. I know that my parents took care of me long past the ages of Caitlin and Joshua. Julie and I will keep doing the same for ours.
We are still providing for all of their necessities. We buy them school clothes, food, and other necessities. They haven’t been cut off financially. But due to our recent losses we aren’t in a position to provide many perks. They are at an age where those perks seem like necessities and they would like more than just enough to keep them alive. So they have chosen to earn more.
Now there are obviously things that they can’t afford in advance that we are willing help them with. For example, we signed up all of the kids for swimming lessons this summer. We also bought a full season pass for the pool. For a family of our size you might imagine those cost a fair amount of money.
Caitlin and Josh both agreed they wanted to do those things and they were willing to pay their share of the cost. Rather than make them miss some of the summer trying to earn the money first, we covered the cost, they will pay us back, and they will get to enjoy the full summer’s worth of activities.
Drawbacks
I hope that none manifest themselves, but I have some concerns about kids earning money.
- I’d hate for the kids to view all of our/their acquaintances as potential customers. I want the kids to be kind and friendly with people because they are good people (which they are!), and not because they see them as somebody they can earn a few dollars from. Being good people needs to be first and foremost.
- I don’t want them to “learn” that life is all about money. It isn’t! It never has been for Julie and I and I don’t want the kids to think so. Money is a useful tool for providing things in life, but it isn’t the goal of life. You don’t get a gold star for dying with the most money or having the most toys. I want them to do this as a means to an end, rather than seeing money as the end itself.
- I don’t want friends/neighbors/relatives to have a bad experience. They are kids, and if they mess something up I don’t want to have any bad feelings develop amongst people we know. I don’t expect this to happen and that problem could be handled with some customer service skills.
- I don’t want people to feel obligated to support them. I don’t want them to resent being asked. If you want bread, please order it. If not, please don’t do so because of guilt. They need to learn to accept rejection as well.
- I don’t want them to think that Mom and I aren’t willing to take care of them. Sure, we are expecting some financial hardship, but I don’t want the kids to think that they are a burden on us, or are the cause of the issues.
- I don’t want them to ruin their childhood. They only have a few short years of youth. I don’t want this to take up so much of their time that they don’t have time to play with friends, enjoy the pool, go to movies, etc. I am still willing to let them be kids.
Your experiences
What have you seen or experienced? I would love to hear some stories about when your children first started earning money. How did it go? Did it change them? For good or for ill? How could YOU have done better? How did you talk to them or teach them?
Widgets… Not My Best Friends
Widgets
What’s a widget you ask? It sounds like something that Wonka makes in his chocolate factory, doesn’t it? Well it is not. Not as far as I know anyway.
The widgets I do know are interface components used to help people navigate the webpages. If you look to the right side of this blog you’ll see several of them. Though you don’t really see the widget, you see what it does.
So one widget you see off to the right is titled RECENT POSTS. The one below that is PAGES. And so forth. When managing the website I can drag and drop widgets where I want them, title them, and tell them what I want them to do. I am not proficient at this, but I’m trying to learn.
This is the Widgets page that I see when editing the blog.
Learning about our webpage
Up until today this blog only had widgets with text. If you’ve visited the blog before you might have noticed that there is now a picture over there. That picture is the cause of some exultation on my part, I’ll admit.
My purpose for it was that I wanted people to have a visual reminder that my kids Caitlin and Joshua are selling bread to raise money this summer. I didn’t just want the post I wrote about it to disappear. I wanted to find someway to add an image to the sidebar that would link people to the post and to the form to order bread.
Just about every blog I’ve ever been on has such images and links, so I assumed it wouldn’t be hard to do. I assumed that because I’m an idiot. It was hard. The actual adding of the picture wasn’t hard, but finding out how to do it was!
HTML and I aren’t the best of friends either.
I considered using several profanity laced sentences to define what a widget is, but I refrained. The reason for my feelings though was that I couldn’t make it work.
A simple Google search of “How to add a linked picture to my wordpress sidebar” turned up multiple articles trying to teach me. I selected the first one on the list and started to read. They claimed the process was easy and gave step by step instructions. Which I followed. To no avail.
They wanted me to upload the picture I wanted to use, edit the pic to add a link, then select the HTML coding and paste it into a text widget. I did that and got a big blank space where my picture and link were supposed to be. So I watched the attached video to see what I did wrong. I again followed along as they now showed me the process. I paused the video and took my time and got…. a big blank space where my picture was supposed to be.
So I went back to my Google search and chose a different article. It listed the same steps and told me again how easy it was to do.
Third article? Same story. By this time I’m getting mad though. At myself! How could these 2 minute videos do it so easily and then I get nothing?
Success!
Well, article number 4 didn’t have a video. But it had something better. After explaining the HTML process to me again (which I tried again and didn’t work!) it continued the article by saying “if you don’t want to use the HTML option you can always install the Image Widget plugin which will make this process easier.
I read that twice and thought, “Why the H*** didn’t the other sites tell me this?!?” When I was done using my “army words” under my breath, it took me about 20 seconds to find and install the plugin, about 30 seconds to copy the picture URL and link the website into the new widget, and maybe 20 seconds of review to make sure I had it done right before I clicked “Save”
Refresh the webpage and VOILA’ I now have a linked image on the sidebar of the blog. It took about 1 minute of time to make it happen. It took about 4 hours to figure out HOW to make it happen. Now that I’ve succeeded I’m feeling a bit of exultation at having accomplished the task.
I so wish I knew why the HTML method didn’t work. Honestly, sometimes being a idiot is painful and time consuming. I highly recommend against it.
