Adventures in La La Land

 1. Welp, Lucy officially turned 16 on Monday.  Her main gift was the long-awaited cell phone. I have always said my kids would have to wait until they turned 16 to get a phone, and reading The Anxious Generation only confirmed that, so we actually stuck to our guns and made her wait. That said, I did immediately install the Bark app on the device, so I still have some insight into what she's using it for. I can track her location, and Bark will alert me if she sends, receives, or searches for any questionable content. But I can't read every text or email. I did a lot of research and liked that this one let her keep some privacy while still keeping me in the loop. I'm also able to block social media apps, because the second rule in our house is no social media until 18. Oh, and I made her read The Amazing Generation (the Anxious Generation for kids) so she could see for herself some of the statistics about how phones, and social media in particular, can be so incredibly d...

 Bullet point entry, because it's already 10:22, but I hate skipping weeks. On Monday and Tuesday this week, we drove over an hour away for a night of soccer games (Lena's + Justin's varsity girls), grabbed fast food, and got home after 9.  Lena scored her first ever goal at her game on Friday - when, of course, I was the only one from our family in attendance. I got it on video, though! I borrowed a bunch of audiobooks from Libby (online library) when we went on our road trip at the beginning of April. I just got around to starting one of them on Monday when we had our long drive to Lena's game . . . and it expired that night. Of course, someone else had a hold on it, so I couldn't check it back out and it's killing me not to finish it immediately! #libraryproblems Justin ran the Riverbank run today - it's a 25k (so just over 15 miles), and he was disappointed that it took him over 2 hours to finish (2:05:19) and his mile pace was over 8 minutes. He's 4...

1. Soccer is life lately. This week, Justin had four games and Lena had three. Levi had two practices and a game. I had an event at school on Friday, plus I had to make 122 root beer floats for students on Thursday. Oh, and we had a garage sale this weekend. I'm just so tired. And gas is $5 a gallon, and most of Justin and Lena's soccer games are 30 minutes to an hour away.  You can't even imagine how excited he was when he took his jersey out of the package. Lol. I actually got quite sunburned at that game.  And then a few days later, they played in the pouring rain. I watched from the van. Levi tried to get out and use my umbrella, but it was a wee bit windy. 2. Last weekend, Lucy went to Celebravo - which is basically Christian prom for teens of any age, and not associated with any one school. Lucy wears a lot of baggy jeans and oversized sweatshirts, so it's always so drastic to see her dressed up! I hate how grown up it makes her look!! With her friend Sophia 3. Wh...

1. Exciting news: I was able to move my school library into a bigger space! A few years ago, we got downsized to make room for more classrooms, and I've been cramming 24-26 kids into this space for every library period: That's not a great picture, but you get the idea. However, we just hired a new Head of School and he thought it would be a better fit for him to take this room and me to take the former Head of School area. Check out all this space! I had my first library classes in the new room this week and it was such  an improvement! 2. An update on the floor saga: we paid to have the crack in Levi's wall repaired and were assured that it would prevent further water leakage . . . only for more water to cover his floor a month later. A technician came out and told me that it was a new problem that the warranty wouldn't fix. I pushed back a little and then Justin called and left an strongly worded voicemail. Eventually they sent out another technician who had much bett...