Elser Family Blog

More pictures from St Croix

Kathi walking on the beach.

Rockwell making Melinda eat sand. I am sure he will pay for this.

Another non picture of Melinda. Whats up with that? Good picture of Rockwell though.

Melinda makes the Honor Roll

Melinda Made the Honor Roll the first semester. She had a tough time in Spanish, as she had to catch up to kids that have been taking Spanish for years…. but she did it! Congratulations Melinda! You make us proud! Melinda works so hard at school. If she keeps her effort up, nothing is going to stop her.

Hannah and School.

<parental boasting>

Hannah started tutoring this last week. She said it was interesting. She was tutoring another student in Algebra  Geometry.

Hannah is also taking two classes outside of school, online. She is taking an English class and Math class extracurricularly. I brag about this to mention that, while she claims that the work is not difficult, she spends a lot of time on homework. She spends at least three hours a night, often more, working on schoolwork. I do not have to push her at all. She is pushing herself harder than I would. Impressive that a freshman takes school this seriously.

On a related note, she is starting to get letters from schools/colleges and summer programs inviting her to attend. The school must have added her name to a list somewhere.
A freshman getting invitations letters to check out campuses? That just seems weird to me.

</parental boasting>

I was asked to help judge the school science fair last week. A note for kids doing science fairs: Make sure you work extra hard on your hypothesis, mentioning WHY you think what you do (use science, avoid opinion) and have a good summary and conclusion.. Just being honest here, as a judge I have a lot of science projects to get through.. I read those first, and if they don’t catch my attention, I don’t go much farther…..

Melinda School Project

Melinda and a friend had to create a web page at school. They wrote about the tundra, it’s animals and features.

You can see it here: www.treelessplain.com

We registered this domain (99 cents at godaddy, what a deal) and forwarded it to the page the kids made in school. I gave the teacher this info so she could share it as part of the lesson plan if she wanted to.

(Future reference:  When this page is gone, the forwarded URL was http://tundrarussellmelinda.webs.com and the whole site has been archived in a file called melindawebtundraproject with today’s date)

We also found out that Melinda was chosen to be in a small group that is going to be doing a special activity at the hospital tomorrow. I’ll let you know more when I fond out myself! It sounds like it might be special though.

Grade Time.

I visited Hannah’s school to talk to her teachers and pick up her report card. She did really well with all A’s this semester. Excellent Job Hannah!

I walked in to her Math (Honors Geometry) teachers classroom, and she says “Hello Mr. Elser!”  Before I got a chance to finish asking how Hannah is doing in her class, she replies “Oh, don’t worry about Hannah, she could teach this class”.  Alright then! I guess we are done here!

🙂

Actually, after a little conversation, The teacher offered Hannah the opportunity to be a tutor. She said they usually only offer that to NHS members (sophomore-seniors), but that Hannah is more than qualified, and it would look good on her resume. I like this teacher more and more!

Melinda and Rockwell are doing fine in the VI. I got to visit with their teachers while I was down there. Melinda submitted a Story about horses to be judged in the state fair they have down there. I will let you know how that turns out.

I’m so proud of my kids, and how seriously they are taking school. I am thankful for that!

Observations.

I read an article that said that Facebook was losing as many 12-15 YO’s as they were gaining +40 YO’s. As it turns out, Hannah is one of them. She deleted her FB account about a month ago. I asked her why, and she said that since high school, she had little association with the people that she had “friend-ed” during middle school, and she simply did not use it. She communicates with her current stable of friends directly at school.

Another observation is her texting habits. She does text, but she is not an avid text-er. And she does not take her phone to school. (“you get in trouble for having phone activity during school, why bring it and take the chance?”)  And she HATES texting shorthand.. Don’t BFF or L8R her, or she will delete you. Use proper English. “Handhelds have keyboards now, there is no excuse”… (if you want to text her, her number is 803 439 four five five two. ) She also does not spend much time communicating with her School friends outside of school. There are other behaviors that I wont dwell on (static clothing style, insistence on grammar…)

Our daughter seems like a bit of an anomaly when it comes to stereotypical teenage behaviors.

But that is OK with me.

Imagine that.

Blast from the past.

While organizing I found a good picture of Hannah and Mom…
Thinking of you Mom.

More St Croix

I swiped these from Kathi’s facebook.

It turns out horses like to roll in sand. Who knew??

Here is Melinda on xxx in the water. Evidently the horses like to swim too. The girls will hold on to their tails when they swim. how that works I’m not sure.

Does this mean that when Melinda comes back she is going to have a horse “habit”? I think I should be worried.

Adios VI

We are leaving in an hour or two. It was a nice visit. Went to a dinner (sort of) party last night and met some interesting people. I wish there were more people like that where I lived. Hannah and I went Scuba diving yesterday while Melinda and Rockwell went on a “TAN TAN tour” Basically a offroad tour of the island… They were guests at a birthday party and that was the “party”.. pretty amazing too..  We all visited the horses Saturday. That’s a story I need to elaborate on. We saw the art installation that Hannah had a hand in making at a park on the east side of the island. Pictures of all of this to come. But lets see if this one really nice one of Melinda loads.

Christmas (and school) in the VI.

Merry Christmas from the VI!

Rockwell’s Teacher shared this one with me. It’s good to see him.

Here is Rockwell’s class picture this year. Class of 2021!

And Melinda’s Class picture this year. Class of 2019!