Ben snuck into the groceries I had left on the countertop and improved the label 🤣

He knows the way to my carat heart ❤️ 💎

Scene - Jack has been complaining and exaggerating about his school schedule since getting home late on his first day of 8th grade. Hyperbole increases on the phone with his grandmother.

Me: "Stop being so dramatic."

Jack: "I'm going to be as dramatic as I want!"

A proper photoset of Jack's first day outfit as an 8th grader, being teased by his father.

They are kings of the schools this year - Jack is 8th grade and Sam is 5th grade. Everything looks set for them to a great final year at their schools.

Jack officially starts tomorrow. Today he went as a WEB Leader - 8th graders who will help 6th graders get started, and support them throughout the year. So he only had a half day as part of the club, while 6th graders had orientation.

Sam had an assignment to write us a letter about the day:

"My first day of 5th grade was awesome! My favorite part was lunch because i saw all my freinds. I'm exited for the classes we skipped to prepare. We learned all the rules of the classroom. We also did a fire drill drill. a drill for a drill. in all, it was really fun."

Summer vacation has officially begun! The kids both got sick the last week of school and had to miss a day. They were glad to recover in time for the last few days.

On the last day they held the 7th Grade Awards. Jack was honored multiple times for music and good grades. I was happy to see so many of his friends recognized as well, and how much they supported each other with applause. He has found a great group of friends.

Sam burst out of class ready for the summer. He went home and immediately made the Kool-aid his teacher gave to her 4th grade students.

Happy Summer Break!

Jack turned 13 this year! He didn't want to do anything special, so we celebrated quietly at home. He had a friend come over to play video games all day Saturday. Ben took them to the mall to wander and get lunch. I made "Butts Pie" by request (butterscotch-cinnamon pie as seen in the Undertale video game).

Sunday the Waterhouses were visiting. We opened presents together, ate lots of food, and caught up on all our adventures. Jack kept his nose in the new Zelda game most of the day. The kid doesn't seem to have a limit for wanting to play Zelda!

I saw a joke about the "meat arrow" combination on Zelda and had to serve it to Jack as a joke.

(Linked here, in case the embedded video doesn't work)

It got a smirk, which I call a win for a 13 year old audience. He was also impressed that I scored a Tears of the Kingdom Link amiibo and the limited edition wood print from GameStop. I painted him a custom hoodie per his specifications (forest green zip-up with a triforce on the front side). He said it was "exactly what I wanted" and that made me so happy to hear. It's hard to impress teenagers!

The cake was a "Monster Cake" as seen in Zelda. Jack requested chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. I also put in a layer of raspberry coulis.

Happy Birthday, Jack! We love you so much.

Since I started taking classes at Alchemy of Movement in Boulder I've been trying to improve my hip hop skills. I never studied the genre before. I'm expanding my vocabulary of steps, learning new transitions, picking up choreo faster, and generally loosening up my muscle carriage.

Today I took a 2 hour workshop aimed at the intermediate/advanced level. It was so fun! Exhausting and super sweaty too, but totally fun. We danced for over 2 hours. The only breaks were for 3 minutes of ab crunches routine on the floor, and another "break" with strutting/posing across the floor to refresh our brains.

We were told to wear baggy pants, a tight/small top, and an oversized jacket/coat/vest. For the small group filmed performances she separated us by jacket type and my vest group was relatively small. So I took the chance (with open doors and fans blowing) to dance without a mask for the first time in forever. Eep!

How fun was this?!?

Here's some other choreo class videos from this spring:

Jack did his first school musical this spring! He was on the "build crew" run by his beloved shop teacher, Ms. Nelson. He built several pieces for the set of Mary Poppins. Then he was picked from the whole pool of stage crew to be on the "running crew" where they do the set changes during the show.

It was a stressful 3 weeks going up to the show. The directors were not very good at communicating, and they brought in the running crew during the most stressful time of a show's rehearsals. Jack put in many long hours after school to fulfill his commitment. After all that hard work he was planning to retire from the stage, and only do build crew again.

But lo, the magic of theater enchanted him. Once they had an audience and rehearsals were done, he had a great time doing the show. He also made some good friends that he's sad will be moving on to other schools next year. I'm glad that he had a good experience in the end, with fond feelings for the experience. We'll see whether he wants to do the running crew again next year. They are changing school hours from 7:20-2:20 to 9:00-4:00. So the club schedules are a mystery for now.