Benches Matter

 Yikes, I missed the entire month of August!  I do try to post at least a monthly update to my blog, but August raced right past me.  It was a busy month-- but now we are fairly well settled into our new school year.  B is driving herself to school (she is a junior this year) and she also picks up the K and S from school three days a week, so my days opened up quite a bit more.  I've celebrated my new found time by attending the temple more frequently, working on Sheralie book #5, and painting bedrooms.  It's quite the change in pace from this time last year.

J is working-- he decided not to go straight to college or on a mission so the current game plan is to work and save money for a mission and gain some much needed social skills.  (Online high school was great for him in many ways but helping him progress socially was not one of them.) It's been a joy to watch him take some big jumps forward in independence and maturity though.  (I about died of shock the first time I got a phone call from him out of the blue-- he had stopped at the store on the way home from work and wanted to know if I needed anything. Trust me, that was highly unusual-- both the phone call and the question.)

K started eighth grade and he is still in the middle of a growth spurt.  He's quickly catching up to B in height, but we'll see if he matches J. (I suspect he won't pass J, though K would be thrilled if he did.) The school year started off a little rocky, with emails about how he was falling asleep in class and not finishing his classwork.  This is almost a yearly tradition-- I explained (for the hundredth time, it seems) that K is a natural night owl and he is not being disrespectful, he just doesn't get enough sleep.  At least this year his ELA teacher (brand new to the school) talked to some of the other teachers who had K last year as well, and then asked me if she could feed him candy or mints to keep him awake.  Hey, whatever works-- a few days later I got an email entitled "sleepy genius"-- apparently K scored the highest in the school on his ELA benchmark testing, with a college level reading ability.  Now no one is concerned if he's struggling to stay awake, and instead wondering if he's bored and how they can challenge him.  Go figure.

S is now in fifth grade and things are changing for her.  Every year she has just LOVED school-- and each teacher each year was the best teacher ever. Well, this year she has three teachers and her class rotates, and the enthusiasm is dying a bit.  She's still sunny and usually happy enough to go to school, but the bloom is gone.  It's kind of sad to watch, but I also realize it comes with the territory.  It's a rare kid who continues to love school as they get older.

M had a two month summer break-- she's been hanging around the house and occasionally pitching in when needed, but mostly just entertaining herself on her computer.  She goes back to college this week for the start of her senior year.  The big question of course is still the internship-- she has to find one for winter semester to graduate on time, and most companies we've looked at only offer them during the summer.  Well, fingers crossed that she is able to line one up...I want her to launch!!  We are celebrating her birthday today since her actual birthday will be after she returns to school.  I cannot believe my oldest baby is going to be 21. (I cannot believe I am old enough to have a 21 year old child!)

Terence was recently released from the bishopric so now we have him home more-- but that turned out to cause rather unexpected drama last week at church.  He didn't want to sit in our bench! Our congregation doesn't have assigned seating, of course, but for most of the last five years (excepting the covid hiatus) the kids and I have sat in the same general area on the side of the chapel, in the short benches.  With all of us we are too many people to fit on one short bench so generally we've used two-- lets both J and B lean against the wall, and I don't feel like I'm crammed together with a gazillion people (sometimes I struggle with claustrophobia at church).  But Terence insisted we all sit together in a long bench in the center of the chapel-- and that caused a mutiny in the family.  M and S flatly refused to sit with us at all, choosing to sit in our traditional area.  I sat next to Terence (geez, of course I am going to want to sit next to my husband after all this time) but then proceeded to spend all of Sacrament meeting suffering from severe anxiety. It was crazy.

I suspect we are going to return to the side benches today. 😅