High School Class Registration

Yesterday Ben brought home a 9th grade course registration schedule and last night I attended a meeting with the principal of Providence High outlining the ins and outs of course registration. It's a bit confusing. And not anything like when I was in high school. For one thing, all the "core" courses seem to be something called "4x4"s, which means they meet an hour and a half every day for 1 semester and then are done. So at any given time, he will only have two core courses at a time, and two electives. Most of the electives are "A/B" which means they meet every other day for the whole year. So you can't have an odd number of either type on your schedule,  because a 4x4 needs to be paired with another 4x4 for the following semester and a A/B needs to be paired with another A/B for the every other day thing.

So some things about this strike me as odd, like you could have Math I as a Freshman first semester and not have Math II until second semester Sophomore year, and wouldn't you have forgotten Math I in the intervening year?

Other slightly odd things are that there's no honors track any more, so students aren't assigned to honors sections and you just sign up for honors or not or AP or not as you see fit. Also, I am slightly peeved that the recommendation for students who took Spanish I in middle school is to retake it Freshman year because Spanish II is really hard and they don't really feel like many students would be prepared for it.

Another weird thing is that Gym/Health is only required Freshman year, though there are other classes like swimming, yoga, weight training, team sports that students can use as electives.

For Ben's schedule, we've decided on honors English and honors science, standard social studies and math (he doesn't have the option of honors math in 9th grade), Spanish, gym/health, and then he gets 2 more electives for which he is hoping for team sports and sports & entertainment marketing ;) (I see a theme here). Seniors get first dibs on electives and the schedules won't be finalized till summer, so it will be a while before we know what his actual schedule will be, I think.

Check Ups

I took the girls for their checkups yesterday. Becca measured at 55 1/4 inches (51%) and 73.6 lbs (43%) which is great growth for her for this year. The previous year she had grown very little. Caroline measured at 47 1/2 inches (83%) and 51.2 lbs (77%) which was also a couple of inches and around 5 pounds of growth for her. Caroline got a large amount of wax cleaned out of her ears, about which she was not happy :) And when the doctor made small talk with her and asked if she was learning a lot at school she replied, "No, it is way too easy for me!" and then proceeded to launch into a litany of complaints about school.  The doctor seemed a little taken aback :)

Peace and Quiet

I am enjoying my first day of having the house to myself in over a week! Thanks to MLK day, Ben's stomach bug and 3 snow days, Ben didn't go to school for a week and the girls only went one day last week. Caroline also came down with the stomach bug Thursday night, but had fully recovered by Saturday. Keeping fingers crossed that Becca doesn't come down with it! She and I are the only ones who avoided it.

We also had a minor(ish) flooding issue, when Ben clogged one of the upstairs toilets and it overflowed and ended up in my kitchen. The kitchen ceiling looks more or less okay, and I went out and bought some caulk over the weekend and caulked the heck out of both upstairs bathrooms in the hope of preventing any such thing from occurring again since this is the second time that has happened.

And in good news, the Eagles are  heading to the Super Bowl for a rematch against the Patriots, so I guess I need to plan a super bowl party!

Fly Eagles Fly

Ben wrapped up in every piece of Eagles clothing he could find, including 2 hats and the blanket off his bed. He spent the first half of the game pacing around nervously, and then finally settled down when it became clear that the Eagles were going to win. Super Bowl bound!

Snow Day

I’m being optimistic by leaving that in the singular but I am sure it will end up being “snow days” instead. I am only measuring 2.5 inches. But some parts of the county look to have gotten more like 4 or 5. 

Hamilton!

Eventually, anyway! I had originally wanted to take Joel to NY to see Hamilton for his 45th birthday in April, but procuring those tickets at this point would have necessitating paying somewhere between 2 and 4 times face value on the resale market, so instead I got on the ball for the block of tickets that goes on sale tomorrow to the general public for performances between mid August and mid- January. I signed up for the verified fan pre-sale through Ticketmaster, and was able to get an access code through their lottery system and scored tickets for the 2PM show on our anniversary, October 27th. I *think* the seats are pretty good, I selected "best available" and it came up with orchestra level, left of center stage, row L. Now I have like 9 months to plan the rest of the NYC weekend ;) Starting with where to eat dinner - Nobu again?? Decisions, decisions :) And as a footnote, YES I know the touring production of Hamilton will be right here in Charlotte next October - but getting those tickets for such a limited engagement and with so many tickets already having been set aside for season ticket holders seemed like it would probably be even harder than getting tickets for the NY show. Also, there's talk that they may not even put those tickets on sale until a couple of weeks before the show to try to put a damper on the illegal resale market, and if I waited that long to try to get tickets and couldn't get them I'd be sad, so sad LOL. This girl likes to plan things far in advance, in case you hadn't noticed. Hamilton, here I come! Later.

Sound Logic

She certainly dressed the part today, anyway!

Lego Chewbacca

I won't lie, some tears were shed during assembly! Miss Becca needs to learn to be more patient, and to leave things for a while when they become frustrating and come back later. But, she was certainly happy when she was finished!

Out with the Old and... Well, Just Out with the Old

One of my new year's resolutions is to stop wasting money / be more intentional about the ways we spend and save money. To this end, I have accomplished several things already this week.

1. Cancelled our 13 year relationship with DirecTV. We were spending over $200 a month on DirecTV and watching maybe 5 channels plus the Eagles games on the football package. I told Joel that next season he and Ben are going to have to find a bar to watch the Eagles games at. We signed up for Hulu Live TV instead, which is $40 a month and gives us live TV for most of the channels we used to watch on DirecTV, as well as access to Hulu's library of TV and movies. It's definitely going to take some getting used to, but considering that we already have Netflix and Amazon Prime video as well, I don't think there's any reason why anyone should have any difficulty finding something to watch :) While I was at it, I called our internet company and got them to increase our speeds while simultaneously dropping that bill by $40 a month as well. I also asked my boss to increase my internet stipend from $55 to $70 a month and he increased it to $75 a month :) I wanted to get rid of our landline phone line, but Joel wouldn't let me.

2. Cancelled our 20+ year relationship with American Express (sorry Dad!) We switched 95% of our spending to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card over a year ago, and since that experiment has gone well, there's no need to be paying a $175 annual fee on a card that we were using very little. The other up side to that is that the random monthly expenses like consumer reports, kindle Time magazine subscription, and a few other things that were going to that card that we don't even use won't be able to get charged now ;) Also cancelled a couple other subscriptions like New York Times digital subscription that had been $8 a month when I signed up but now is $16, and the Guitarjamz online music lesson subscription Joel had paid $19.99 a month for the last year and never used (ugh).

All in all my goal is to save an extra about $300 a month with the above, which I am going to start putting in a fund for the girls' bat mitzvahs.

I also had been researching 529 college savings plans and came across a few articles rating North Carolina's plan as neutral at best and since there's no tax break any more for NC residents contributing to an NC 529 plan, I decided to move the kids' funds to a plan with lower fees and better average returns. So I picked California's plan, and opened the accounts and submitted the rollover paperwork.

The next item on my to do list is to review my 401(k) fund allocation and make some changes there. At the moment I believe I have about 60% of the funds in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, which did quite nicely for me this past year but it's probably a little risky to continue with that long term :)

Human Disco Ball

Happy New Year!

Bring on 2018!