Leadership Conference

Sarah received an invitation to attend a leadership youth conference. As a requirement, she has to write an essay on what it means to be a leader. She is a little freaked out by it, mainly because she doesn’t like to write essays. Kris and I told her that we would give her a hand if she wanted.

The conference is being sponsored by the Menomonee Falls Police Dept and the keynote speaker will be the MF Chief of Police. This is going to be the third time in a year the Sarah is going to have met the chief. Last year when her troop received their silver awards for girl scouts the chief was the main speaker, and then she got to meet her again when Sarah was named student of the month by the Menomonee Falls Rotary Club. Maybe she’ll remember Sarah? Probably not, but all in all, this will look good on college applications, and with the way I hear admissions are going now, any advantage she can get will only help.

Honors Breakfast

Friday I had breakfast with Sarah at school. Apparently for the past three years the principal has held a breakfast for the 6th 7th and 8th graders who made the honor roll. Boy, what a big deal that was. Sarah finished her first semester with a 4.0 so she got invited, but so did about another 200 kids, and then there was at least one parent with everyone. I was the only one who could go because someone had to stay home and get Alison on the bus for school, so unfortunately, Kris chose to do that.


The Superintendent of the district gave a short speech and there was also a short talk by a couple of members of the Milwaukee Wave encouraging the students to always strive to do their best, comparing schoolwork to playing soccer. Hey, what else are they going to do. Sarah will get to go to a Wave game on St. Patricks Day as a reward for being an honor student too.


On the down side, I was able to see what kind of food they have to deal with in the school cafeteria... YUCK!

Riverside Talent Show

Last Thursday was the annual Riverside talent show and Alison had been dead set on doing something in it. Sarah had done it since 2nd grade and since Ali had never performed, and it is her last year at Riverside, she really wanted to do it. Well the day of the show, I got home early to help get ready and Ali was crying saying she didn’t want to do it anymore. She was getting scared and complaining that her stomach hurt. Well it was a bad case of stage fright. After about an hour of coaxing we settled her down and we left for the show. As soon as we got there, Ali was fine. She sat with a couple of friends and waited her turn patiently watching the other acts. Finally it was her turn and she was perfect. She had no missteps and made all her marks. It was nice to see her so happy when it was all done.
The next day they held the same show in an assembly at school. Kris was Ali’s class’s mystery reader for Friday and she was there for the show. Again, Alison did a great job. The kids were all clapping during her routine and she was apparently having a hard time hearing the music but she stuck with it and finished. We are very proud of her for being brave enough to go in front of such a large audience all by herself. Hopefully this will help with her anxiety.

Planetarium

Ali's Brownie troop had an outing to the UWM planetarium on Friday. They had a half a day of school so they got out about 11:45. Then they all left from Riverside to UWM. Kris was worried about parking since anyone who knows the east side and the UWM area knows that parking is a premium. They got totally lucky when they got there since it must have been class change time. Kris and the other leader managed to get parking spots right as someone else was pulling out in a public lot right next to the physics building.

From what I heard it sounded like the activities were very fun. However, there were some behavior issues with a couple of the girls and the professor who was running the program decided to cut things short. It was really too bad, because it sounded like a fun time. The good thing is that at least Alison wasn't the one being disruptive.

Fun Fair

We had our last Riverside Fun Fair last weekend. As usual I helped out. Sarah helped as well, which was nice of her I think. She could have spent the day at home, with a friend, or watching TV, but she decided to volunteer her time to help out her old school. Alison had fun at all the games. Both Sarah and Ali got a bunch of prizes playing games, and Ali got a tummy-ache from eating all kinds of candy. It’ll be sad not to go there next year, but then again who knows. Maybe we’ll show up to partake in the fun again and see some old friends.

Talent Show

The annual Riverside talent (variety) show is coming up in a week or so and Alison is hard at work honing her act. Since this is her last year at Riverside and she has never done it before she was determined to come up with something to do in the show. She wanted to do a dance with some friends, but after we heard about what it was, we put the kibosh on it. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it was totally unrealistic for a couple of 2nd graders. So Ali decided she would try and do a dance routine by herself. She has been working on some basic moves in her Rec Department dance class so she thought she would expand on it a little. Her routine is about 1:20 long and pretty basic. She is working hard at making sure she knows her steps and adding a few things here and there. Hopefully come showtime everything will go off OK.

Honor Roll

I came home from work yesterday and found out the Sarah made the honor roll at North for the first semester with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Kris and I got invited to a breakfast later this month to celebrate. Unfortunately, if we both go, there will be no one to get Ali off to school in the morning. We’re not quite sure how we’ll work that out yet. Regardless, we are very proud of Sarah and the hard work she has been putting in to get her grades as high as they are. Way to go Sarah!

Sunday Drive

Last Sunday, Kris and I decided to take a drive down to the east side. She is taking her scout troop to the UWM planetarium Friday afternoon for a program and badge, and had no idea where it actually was. Since we had nothing better to do, I decided to show her where it was and go over the best route to get there. It took me back to my college days. I had astronomy 101 there my freshman year and if my memory serves right, I got a B+ for the class. I probably should have gotten an A, I remember it being a piece of cake class to pad my GPA at the time. Anyway, after I pointed out to her where it was, where to go into the building, and where to look for parking (for those not familiar, east side parking around UWM totally sucks, and with winter parking rules it is even worse!) I decided to drive the girls around the east side a bit pointing out some of the huge mansions on Newberry Ave. And around Lake Park. Then we thought we’d take a drive past the Pizza Man rubble. That was a big deal to them since they had seen all the stories on the news about the fire and the building engulfed in flames. We drove down North Ave. And I pointed out where Kris and I met, Judges Irish Pub. Boy, what a dump that place is! But back in the day, I wasn’t picky, they had cheap beer, plus I knew all the bartenders and bouncers so I often got free beer. We then went down St. Marys Hill by the North Avenue water tower. I was telling the girls about how that was where I used to go sledding in college when we got a big snowstorm since I had just taken them girls sledding for the first time in Germantown. There is also a picture of my dad as a little kid, I would guess maybe 2 or 3 years old, sitting on a hill that I learned a couple of years ago was on St. Marys hill. I told the girls that was where grandpa’s picture was taken and Ali especially thought that was pretty cool. After an hour or so we headed back home, but it was a nice trip down memory lane. Maybe we’ll drive back this summer when we can go by Bradford Beach. Hopefully the MMSD won’t have dumped any raw sewage into the lake yet, but I am not going to count on it.