On Monday, Andrew's class participated in Battle of the Books (for those of you not familiar, the kids are put into teams and assigned to read 20 or so books. The "battle" consists of questions about the content of the book and they get points for knowing the title and author's name). Andrew's team won last year, and he was determined to do that again. He's spent the last couple weeks memorizing author names and titles, and he read most of the books on the list (even though other people on his team were assigned them).
I got to help out and ran a couple of the battles with another teacher aide--I got to see Andrew's team in action, where they got a perfect score (70) for their part, and the other team got 20 something? Turns out that was pretty typical of their rounds--three perfect scores qualified them for the final round, and the reading specialist told me she'd never seen anything like that.
In the final round, teams could "steal" questions (that is, get points if the other team answered wrong). Andrew's team choked a little--Andrew was team captain and thought the answer was one thing; his team thought it was something else. He gave his team's answer (as the captain is supposed to do) and they got it wrong (Andrew was right), the other team stole it, and they lost by 7 points. (I can be honest here, right? I understand the tournament system. But the scores going into the tournament round were 210 v. 154, so it's clear to me which team actually knew the books better.) This has occasioned no small amount of angst over the last week, as Andrew goes over what could have happened if he'd answered differently (they'd have won).
At this point, I was super proud of Andrew. He was watching as the points were being added, and as soon as it was clear that the other team won, he was the first to congratulate them. And he continued to try and be positive, though he did ask to use the restroom. I followed him out b/c I could tell he was upset and disappointed but trying so hard not to be. I ended up taking him to lunch, both because I was proud of how hard he'd worked (I'm pretty sure he read more of the books than any other kid there) and because I wanted to give him time to compose himself before going back to class.
Tuesday was Evelyn's birthday. She started the day with pancakes for breakfast, and then I took *her* out to lunch (Oliver got to go twice, because Oliver) at Panda Express. She opened presents after dinner (pasta and meatballs), then went to the park because the weather has finally gone gorgeous.
We rounded off the day with angel food cake, berries, and whipped cream.
Speed forward to the weekend: our ward had their annual Fathers and Sons campout near Antimony. This year, Dan took Oliver too. (Oliver was apparently pretty good; he slept better than anyone else in their tent did!) As usual, per his over-achieving chef self, Dan attempted to make cheesecake in a Dutch oven. It turned out well, but I guess it took longer than expected. Andrew was upset that Dan let his fishing license expire and didn't bring a fishing pole. Oliver liked sleeping in a sleeping bag and a tent, though he told me, "I missed you too much." (Personally, I think it's good for him to not have all mom all the time).
Evelyn and I had a girl's night out. Sans car, we walked to a local restaurant and had a nice dinner and then watched some funny video clips on the computer. (Oh yes, and Oliver and I have been spending lots of time at the library park this week).
Saturday was Evelyn's birthday party, so I spent the morning cleaning before the boys came home. We had a little big of a hiccup the day of, when we discovered that half of her invited list couldn't come b/c they were sick (what happens when you invite a set of triplets), but I think she had fun anyway.
She wanted a "sleep under" party, so we started with dinner (waffles), then the girls played games outside and I painted faces. While I was expecting more girly requests--fairies, butterflies, etc.--the girls went much darker than I expected. Most of them wanted "gargoyles" (one of the girls is obsessed with Ghostbusters--I don't think her idea of gargoyles is exactly the same as mine, but they seemed pleased enough with the generally monstrous appearance). Funny girls.
When they came in, we had a sundae bar and then they watched part of Labyrinth (Evelyn's request), but they were more interested in playing Playmobils so we turned the movie off after a while. All told, I think my girlie had a pretty good week.
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