As always, life is a series of schedule conflicts. This weekend is the Swim Championship. But this weekend is also the Model UN Conference. Zoë talked with her swim coach and the Model UN sponsor, and among them determined that Model UN won out ( Read more... )

Since Zoë decided to do the musical this year and try out for swim, she's spent the past months staying at school until 8 and going on weekends. Then she decided to try out for the swim team which meant a week with me dropping her off at practice at 5:30am and then her not getting finished with musical stuff until 10pm and then not getting home ( Read more... )

This school year, Zoë's taking Honors English, Honors Latin 3, Honors Math, Honors Physics, French 4, World History, and Drawing. After last year, she'd decided she did not like history and didn't want to do AP History. She'd also decided she didn't want to do honors english again. We got her schedule, and she learned she was put in honors english ( Read more... )

The Crew season ended this past weekend with Stotesbury, so now it's just the final couple weeks. There had been a chance the kids would need to spend this week cleaning the boats and prepping everything for storage, but they were on top of things when they got back from Stotes so no more late pickups. Zoë's ready for me at the regular 3:45 time, ( Read more... )

This has been an interesting season for our introduction to crew. Zoë's school races in about 5 regattas per season. Looking back at previous calendars, it's pretty consistently 2 home, 2 away, and then Stotesbury which I'm told is like the HS crew championships. This is significantly different from lacrosse, where they have 25 games scheduled. So ( Read more... )

Zoë submitted her course request for her sophomore year today. She informed me of this by saying she'd signed our names because she knew we'd tell her to do what she wanted to do anyway and she wanted to hand it in today. I'm glad she told us, and for the most part I think she chose well. The part that I'm a bit "what?" about is not a big deal and ( Read more... )

This morning the lacrosse gear stayed home, and this afternoon Zoë officially went to crew try outs. The decision is made. She'll play rec lacrosse for her last year in the program and row for school. Hopefully by the end of the season she'll have figured out which she enjoys more since it's one or the other after this year ( Read more... )

I dodged a bullet; the camping trip was cancelled because the highs were in the teens, and neither of us adults was interested in a freezing camping trip. I ran the Journey at my house, and it's done. Our Service Unit does Gold and Silver workshops where they walk the kids through getting started, and unfortunately the soonest I was able to sign ( Read more... )

The Girl Scout Journeys are a required piece of Girl-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Big Girl Scout Awards, much like camping is a required piece of Boy-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Eagle ( Read more... )

I was raised Presbyterian. But when I was little I decided that I was going to become Jewish and grow up to be a Rabbi. My aunt even sent me a newspaper clipping about a female Rabbi, since the only Rabbi we knew was a guy, and in retrospect he must have been from the Conservative tradition. (At the time I wasn't even particularly clear on the ( Read more... )