Purple People Eaters, Jock Jams Nostalgia, Smart

I have a bunch of family fun stuff to post soon (I hope I can get it up for Thursday or Friday) but I realized I never posted some of the dance pictures I took. Not that I got great ones because seriously- I have an iPhone X and I don't know if I'm stupid or the phone sucks but zooming in? Photos are crap. People moving? Photos are crap. It's great if the people are standing still and near you but good gravy- I'm getting so annoyed.

Anyways.

I think I told you all three girls are in dance again? I'm sure I did. Well, they are. The little girls had a Halloween show which seems dumb, but it gets them used to performing in front of a lot of people since everyone is in the holiday show. Penelope and Lucy were really excited about it because their song was "Purple People Eaters" (kind of.. like a remix/redo of the song... cute either way) and they loved it. They were supposed to wear purple, which I thought would be super easy because they both LOVE purple and I thought for sure we own purple stuff.

We do not own purple anything.

Guess which stores are selling nothing purple?

ALL OF THEM.

I checked Target three times, and all three times NOTHING. I went to the mall, I went to Kohls, I went to both Walmarts in my area, I went to TJ Maxx, I went to every consignment store in the area, I went to Sams Club.

Nobody had purple anything.

I decide I have to order online. I found cute dresses online with Target and I thought, OK- I can get these, $12, and use them for Easter. Perfect.

It says they are in stock in the store.

I had JUST BEEN THERE and no, these were not anywhere in that store. So I ordered them, chose in store pick up. Go there and BAM! There they were waiting for me. I tell the people that these were NOT out there and I'm telling her this story and she could care less, so I went home.

Never mind I go back like two weeks later and these son of a bitch dresses are on clearance for $8. I tried to price match but nope, I'm over the time frame they do that for.

Of course I am.

Anyways. They looked cute.

I'm not super sure what Lucy was doing but she was consistently two to three beats behind everyone but it was adorable. Penelope loved it, told me everyone was obviously watching her. Ha! 

Do you think I could get a good picture of them after? Not so much, but this was the best of the bunch.

Meanwhile, Olivia got to perform the half time show at a local high school football game. She was super excited because it's a fun routine that they did and it was a LOT of dancers, and she got to use poms. I can't blame her- poms are cool. 

Olivia is the one closest to that zero, front row. Which is nice because I always have a hard time finding her and my phone sucks with zooming, and I hate that because her faces were on point. 

She had the best time. I froze my butt in the stands with other moms and Matt's parents who were able to come. I felt like a total traitor because I'm sitting there with my Spartans mittens (go Spartans!) and this was very much not that team. At least I didn't bring my gigantic Spartan blanket. Ha! But their song was a Jock Jams song and I'm here for that. Why they don't do those albums anymore I don't know because they were the BEST.

Also, last week we had conferences! Always exciting, and I've decided conferences at the middle school level are kind of the worst. The last two years I was able to meet with all of Olivia's teachers and while that sucks for the teachers, I feel like it's nice for parents to get an idea how each class is going. English might be awesome and math might be a hell hole, you never know. This year we were only able to meet with two of Olivia's teachers and only Jackson's homeroom teacher (which is also a teacher for one of his other classes). They said they would have information from all of the classes in case we had questions.

They didn't.

In fact, Jackson's homeroom teacher didn't know about his other classes and just told me information that was on PowerSchool. Which.. .that's great and I already saw that because I check every day, but I want to know how he is in class. Does he participate? Does he get along with kids in the class? Does he seem overwhelmed? Stressed out? Does the teacher see room for improvement? Just because a student gets all A's doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Everyone could do more somehow. At least with Olivia she was told by her social studies teacher to speak up more in class, that she's incredibly smart and the teacher wants her peers to know that. She said Olivia hides how smart she is and she has "sophisticated" thoughts that the rest of the class could benefit from. So overall, I was disappointed. I guess I wasn't so worried about Olivia because she's in 8th grade, this isn't new to her, but for Jackson it would have been nice. It's nice to get information from teachers with how they think he's adjusting. 

Penelope has conferences this week, and then Lucy will have some closer to January maybe? It's more like mid-year if I remember right. I'm sure those are going to be just fine. Penelope's teacher actually sent home a sheet asking us what questions we had ahead of the conference and I thought that was really great because sometimes I can't think of anything right then, so this was nice to be able to write things down as I thought of it.

Last week was kind of crazy busy. Even this week is crazy busy but with all different stuff. I always think summer is "just as bad" but no. I have zero life in the summer, the school year is just a LOT all of the time. A bunch of us have doctor appointments and I'm trying to make notes for each of those. Olivia and I are going to a meeting on Monday, kids have activities and field trips, it's just crazy. I really have to invest in some correction tape though because I'm crossing things off and moving them like crazy. Scribbles everywhere. Yikes.