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Penrod Family Reunion

Yesterday was the Penrod family reunion (Julie’s family).  The desired location was Payson Lakes in southern Utah County.   We had five out of six families show up and had a great time.

Highlights

With 26 people it was tough to catch them all on video or camera without making it a dedicated goal, which I didn’t.   I’m not sure even all of my own kids made it on here, so my apologies to anyone who feels like they got shorted or left out.

This was just a one day event at the lake.  We enjoyed the day just relaxing and playing water sports.   The paddle board and kayaks were a great hit and even the little kids loved the water.  I think all but three people got in and got wet.

Three of the families actually decided to do some camping the night before, and so they all got together for a pre-reunion campout.   The other two families (including us) arrived around 11 am and stayed until approximately 5pm.  It was about as much sun as I could take.

The sun burns were surprisingly mild and I was only worried about one child getting heat stroke/exhaustion (mostly because of the ride home with grandparents when the AC stopped working).

Lots of water, lots of fun, and lots of laughter.  It was a fantastic way to spend the day.   I hope that everyone else felt the same way.  We’ll look forward to the Penrod family reunion again next year.

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Running Log 6/12/17

Running Log 6/12/17

Location: PG Rec Center

Participants: Family minus Josh (Scout Camp) plus cousins Jake and Caly

Task: Caterpillars for 25 minutes.

Gold Star for the day undoubtedly goes to Andrew.  He needed some encouragement but he ran the entire thing.  He has never gone that far or that long non-stop before.  I was very impressed with him.  It was good to not see him quit, which is normally the problem.  He gives up on hard things, but not today!

Every else did just fine.  It was a nice slow pace so they didn’t quite run 2 miles.  They all ran well and I didn’t hear any complaining.

This is the first time we’ve done Caterpillars without a baton to pass back.  Instead, that last person would simply wait until they saw the person ahead of them finish their sprint, and then they would sprint to the front themselves.  This adds more sprinting by eliminating the time for the baton to be passed back.  They all handled it quite well.  The added runner helped mitigate the extra running.

Overall a very good run.  This is the first running log in a few weeks because we’ve been doing other things, so it was good to get back “on track.”  I was able to walk almost a full lap with JR at a VERY slow pace.  The time spent standing though took its toll and I was in quite a bit of pain at the end.  Lifting Steven to get a drink near the end was excruciating.

I have video for you today… Enjoy!

UPDATE: new video without the music that got blocked!

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School Registrations

Anticipating a move from Pleasant Grove to Bluffdale this summer, we went ahead and registered the kids for school up in the Jordan School District.   They are still registered for PG next year too in case we don’t get moved like we have planned on.

Caitlin

Caitlin completed 9th grade this year, which in Utah is at the middle school.  So she is now ready to move onto the higher education I suppose.

PGJH had a fairly well run routine for getting kids registered.  Caitlin wasn’t thrilled with her registration at PG High however.  There were a number of classes she wanted to get into that were unavailable by the time she was allowed to register.   She got into the core classes she needed, but the electives she wanted were filled.

I went over to Riverton High School a few weeks before the year ended to get her registered.  After handling the paperwork they gave me the login info to get her into classes for next year.

Surprisingly Riverton had all of her desired classes available except for photography.  She got into Physics, Digital Media, and Sign Language as well as her core classes.   I’m not sure if Riverton just has more teachers for those electives and that is why they were open, or if she lucked out that not as many people at RHS wanted those classes.

I think she is looking forward to the new year and moving into High School.   She turns 15 this summer, so personally I’m not ready for her to be a High School student.

Joshua

Joshua had an interesting year.   He started the year in 8th grade in MO and ended it in 7th grade at PGJH.   At his request, he’ll be going through 7th grade again next year.

His birthday is in late July.  That means that by Utah deadlines next year he should be one of the youngest 8th graders.  He doesn’t particularly like being one of the youngest, and so holding him back a year would make him one of the oldest 7th graders.  But because his birthday is so close to the deadline he the age gap isn’t any different.  By that I mean he is just as close to the 7th graders in age as he is to the 8th graders.   So socially it isn’t a big deal.

Academically he is plenty smart enough to have stayed in 8th grade all last year and move into 9th this year.   But because of the homeschooling time, and the time lost to fires, he does have some gaps in his knowledge.  He’s smart enough to move ahead, but he’d rather not.

So next year Josh will be in 7th grade, again, at South Hills Middle.  Because it is 7th grade there isn’t a lot of variability in his schedule like there is in Caitlin’s.  He’ll be where ever the 7th grade puts him.

Sports

A portion of his decision making in that regard was athletics.  He loves sports.  And while he is intelligent enough to move ahead, physically he knows he couldn’t compete athletically that way.  Being smart doesn’t make your body mature or grow any faster than anybody else.   That takes time, and he’s willing to spend that time (an additional school year) letting his body mature so that he has a chance to compete and play on sports teams.

Julie and I were torn on this.  We both value academic education very highly.  If he’d stayed ahead he could have graduated High School at 16.  If he moved up with this class he’d finish at 17.  By moving back he’ll finish at 18.   But that isn’t HIS goal.  And it is HIS life, so we will support his decision on how he wants to spend it and what goals he wants to chase after, even if it isn’t what we would choose.

We’ll compensate by getting him into concurrent enrollment, summer college courses, or other alternate education options.  There is no reason that he can’t excel at both academics and athletics as so many others have done.

Elementary School

All of the other kids are moving up a year as expected.  We’ll even be having a new one enter the system.  One of them did express some hope of doing homeschooling again.  So it is possible that we’ll have at least one at home with us.

I’d love to keep them all of the elementary kids home as I really, really don’t like public schooling.  At all!   But that might need to wait until we are more settled in.  As soon as we are I’d love to keep the kids at home around us.

 

And so that is what we have planned for next year’s schooling.  With 6 of 8 going to school the house will feel very empty I’m afraid.  Wish us luck!

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School is Out!

Not a moment too soon, school is out for the kids here in PG.

How It All Began!

 

I hope the kids don’t expect us to make each day as great as this one was.   Their Aunt Jenni had a huge hand in making the day great.  School ended at 10:30, and by 11:00 they were all soaking wet from water balloons, slip ‘n slide, kiddie pool, and eventually entire 5 gallon buckets of mayhem.   It was awesome.   The video didn’t do justice to that part of the day simply because my recording was so poor.

The pool was fun, but the wind made it a bit on the cool side.  Only Caitlin and Joshua were there with their cousin.   I got a LOT of video from that.  Some of it good, much of it boring.

This summer will offer lots of time at the pool, and lots of time working.  I’ll do what I can to give video whenever I have time or energy to do so.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!