book worms, meal worms & daytime TV

January 22nd marked the girls school midterm and they did very well on their report cards as well as their Iowa Test result. Maria scored in the 99th percentile in some areas including reading and reading comprehension. She is an avid reader who loves a good book.
Maria had another basketball game, this time against Ann Arbor Christian which proved to be a very close game. They were again winning at halftime, although they ultimately lost 18 to 14 but you could see just how much all the girls had improved in a week. They lost coach Mike and so the 8th grade teacher, Mr Miller will be coaching them for the remainder of the season. In the area of science, the kids in Maria's class each brought home some meal worms to raise for 6 weeks until they hatch into beetles. Later this month they have a field trip planned for the Cranbrook Science Center.
Next week is Catholic Schools Week and there are all sorts of activities planned at school including an egg drop competition which all the girls entered. Each one had a unique idea for a container to hold a raw egg to be drop from the school roof to see if it would protect the egg. At lunch duty I could tell that some of the kids had looked up ideas on the Internet but we made sure that each of the girls thought up something on their own. Isabel's, for example, is called The Cherry Bomb and is a small coffee container filled with marshmallows and cherry jello. It was certainly tricky getting the egg in the middle! The girls each also wrote essays on the virtues of patience, kindness and prayerfulness and how their school helps them practice these virtues.
Friday we went to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox at the PENN theater. A claymation/animation movie based on the book by Roald Dahl. What a neat little movie and I highly recommend it. Although much of the humor went over the heads of the girls they still enjoyed it. Saturday Leigh worked a bit then took the girls to a women's basketball game at EMU.
We just found out today that a film crew will be tapping at our school tomorrow for the Oprah Winfrey Show. The Sister Of Mary, the order that teaches at SSA, have been asked to be on the show to do a segment of religious life. The show will be tapped this Thursday and broadcast at some later date.

celebrate good times

Grandma has been threatening for years that when those 2 damaged front teeth of Isabel's finally fell out that we would celebrate. Well they never did fall out. We had them pulled and Isabel did great so after some money from the tooth fairy we celebrated with a chocolate cheese cake.On Saturday morning we celebrated with the Ekblad's after Clare's baptism at Our Lady of Good Council.Carmen trying out Aunt Erin's old laptop that she gave us.The boys and I checked out the library and ice scultures downtown. They were covered unfortunately to keep them from melting. Not a good weekend this year. They all melted today with the warm weather and rain.After mass we checked out the Cranbrook Science MuseumA sample from Michigan's oldest rock formation, almost 4 billion years old, and also the oldest in the USA. It can been found in the western part of the UP.

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

Maria's first game was against Emerson School in Ann Arbor and Grandpa Bob & Grandma Rose were able to attend!
I have to say, they played much better than we expected and were winning until half time but ultimately lost 14 to 8.

Warming up before the game.

A trip to Pizza Hut after the game.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Today at mass, Monsignor Easton gave a wonderful homily on the wedding feast at Cana in which he expressed a beautiful sentiment on how children will stand before the throne of God for all eternity as an testament of husband and wife's love for each other. Wow!Today we took Mikey to the Troy Train Show at Athens High School in Troy. It is billed as the largest in the state and filled all 3 gymnasiums as well as virtually every hall way in the school.
Grandma Paula gave the hippi a haircut.

B Ball

Maria's friends Lauren and Marissa spent the night on Friday and on Saturday attended a women's basketball game at EMU where they were able to learn some techniques as well as get all of the teams signatures. Hopefully they learned some aspects of the games since they themselves are playing their first game on Tuesday after only 2 one hour practices, which mostly consisted of drills.

hot chocholate on a winters day

Almost half way through another school year. The girls are doing well and back to getting up at 6AM. They were certainly happy to have the snow day off on Friday though. Maria is doing Junior Varsity Basketball at SSA this year. It will be a busy time for sure with all the practices and games. The other girls are content to just do school work, watch I love Lucy, and play games. Mikey spent the last day of Christmas by getting another present, just in the "nick" of time. Fina gave Mikey a toy train at church today. How did she know he likes trains?
As you can see from the photos above all the girls grew about 3 inches over the past year.

Snow Day