Weekend Update

Just when I thought the weekend would be quiet and boring it turned out to be filled with little tidbits to keep me busy.

I took Friday off to attend Ike's parent-teacher conference. Ike is doing pretty well and definitely improving. As I have mentioned this school has been like educational boot camp and it is taking Ike some time to catch up and get with the program but it is happening.
After the conference I went to my mother's to fix her new Vonage phone setup. Silly me should have realized that leaving it in a Static IP address setting when her IP address is only leased on a daily basis was not a good idea and I needed to set it for DHCP. Well I changed that setting and it worked perfectly (although I swear the first time it did not work like that). Then we went through all the neat settings.

When I got home Ike's peeps were already showing up for what we seems to be shaping up as a weekly gathering. It will be a long 6 years if that is the case. Ike definitely is changing his social scene. He has sort of left his St. Paul, Muskego class in the dust. Those kids were all good kids but I can see that Ike is a lot less frustrated and quite a bit happier with his new crowd. They are mostly freshmen either at Wisco or one from New Berlin Eisenhower so they are all his age. He also hangs out with two other separate groups of friends at different times. There is a group of girls and some guys from the 8th grade at Greenfield Middle School and there is most of the 8th grade class at St. Paul's, Franklin. He is getting pretty handy at getting around town on his bike to visit them all. They all serve different purposes. The Franklin crowd is his crowd for hanging out at the Wisco football games and during football season. The Greenfield crowd are for going to Southridge with or hanging out in summer. The freshmen are the core group and they are for hanging out on weekends. I think that Ike is happy with this crowd because they share a common interest in the same music, girls, myspace, video games,the mall, and preening themselves. Additionally the kids all have a certain amount of independence and are not so limited on their activities. They can spontaneously go to the mall when they want, sleep over at each others houses, stay up till all hours of the night, ride their bikes around the city, take the bus, etc..

My job is to drive them around when they are not all on bikes apparently. This cold rainy weekend was such a time. I took Nick home saturday morning . I took Ike and Joey to joey's house (they went to the mall). then I picked Ike and joey up to go to the Wisco game. Then I took them back to joey's. Then Karen and I actually got a chance to eat dinner and were going to go to the mall but then Ike called and wanted to go to the mall with joey so they could talk to Rosa (the cashier at hot topic that joey was flirting with on the first trip to the mall that day) So Karen and I picked them up and brought them to the mall. Of course they were too cool to leave with us, so they went to Rosa's house just down the road from the mall and I went and picked them up an hour and a half later and took joey home. That was Saturday.

While at the mall Karen and I walked around JCPenney looking at clothes for Karen with their uber big sale. We were coming up with ways to make Kt's life more interesting at cleanup time like putting all the hangers opposite each other every other one or tying all the sleeves of the shirts together in a long chain. Instead we went to Juniors and found Kt and then pointed out all the messed up stuff which she appreciated soooo much. When I finally did get home I worked on some homework. I think Karen set up a facebook for herself.

Sunday I was the big man in charge for church. Pastor and Sarah were jetting off to Phoenix to study the inner workings of Crosswalk Church in AZ. They are a chruch that started off much like ours and is about 3 years older than us. They have 350 members already and have already provided a lot of guidance. Pastor and Sarah were doing lots of research on outreach programs and worship styles. So I opened up church and set up things. I briefed the Sem student who was filling in for Pastor. He did very well and seemed very comfortable. Seemed pretty natural at the whole leading a service thing and it went as smooth as if he had been doing it forever. I did notice his hand shaking at times though at the beginning of the service. We had another large crowd. We had better find a new worship home soon. It would be interesting to be a church in a rented facility that had to go to two services.

Sunday afternoon I took a little nap to make my nagging headache go away but after that I finished up an 8 page paper that was due. I also typed up a project proposal. a fun day of typing for sure. I also managed to make dinner in there and do some laundry and wash the dishes. We have this darn fruit fly problem that is annoying and I don't know how to get rid of them. It started out with one lonely banana but now they are all over the house and they are multiplying. Maybe I need a bug bomb or something.

Oo I forgot to mention that Wisco won round 3 for the state playoffs against Greendale. It was a close back and forth game and either team could've won but Wisco stepped up when they needed to and won 33-27. I don't think the next game willbe as competitive. It was a verycold and wet game with it being about 35 degrees and misting/raining. I had blankets and such. Ike seemed rather clothed with girls that I think he stayed pretty warm. I never had a coat like that when I was 14.

I guess that covers it. Have a good week.