Grades, Curls, and Exercise

Garrett and Jack finished their 1st semester last week. We were worried about whether Garrett would pass all of his classes. He had not really had a desire to do work in any of his classes since after Thanksgiving break and his grades steadily declined, even in the class that he was excited about, mythology. He would get angry if we brought up grades with him. We finally got out of him that he had been feeling lonely again and like he didn't have any friends. The two friends that he usually hung out with (which wasn't very often) seemed to be really busy and could never hang out. A long story short, I was able to contact the mothers of these friends because they're in our ward and he ended up hanging out with both friends at different times twice each during the Christmas break. It helped, but he still didn't want to do schoolwork after being back from school in January for a week and we had to talk to him again. If he failed even one class, he would not graduate and he wouldn't be able to go on a mission, which he still does. 

We were slowly able to get him working on bringing his grades back up. In his American Literature class, they were doing a big project about utopias that they started before the break. He hadn't started anything until the 2nd week of January. He was to create his own Utopia with a map and the final would be writing an essay about it. Once he started getting information written down, he was getting into it and actually enjoying it. Curtis did most of the helping with this project. Garrett was pretty pleased with how his project map turned out. He had slowly brought his grade up from an F to a B- before the final. Unfortunately, the final essay he wasn't able to finish, along with several other students and he didn't do well on that, but in the end, he did pass with a C+. There are only 6 class periods during the day and because he had an open period (due to dropping his math class late) and release time seminary, he only had 4 classes with grades. He received three C's and one D. Yes, I would have liked to see higher grades, but with all of the struggles we were having, we were just happy to get him to pass his classes. This semester he has said he will try to do better and we're already seeing that the past two days. He's turned in a couple of assignments and even worked on a project last night with Curtis's help again. This time he actually asked for the help. Yay! We know he can do it; he just needed the motivation. Oh yeah, and part of his motivation was that if he would start working on getting his grades up, that I would contact the mom of a couple of girls in our ward who are sisters that he wants to hang out with, but he's too scared. I have done that and even though we haven't gotten them together yet because of their busy soccer schedule on the weekends, he knows that I have talked to their mom and trying, and I think that's helped also. He's too scared to talk to these girls, which is why I needed to step in. He'll get there eventually.

His map of his utopia, "Arcadia Village", located in the Greece mountains.

Jack finished off the semester strong, getting only one B and the rest A's. He's doing great and I'm glad I don't have to worry so much about him.

Charlotte has been asking for a curling iron recently so that she can curl her hair like her friend. Well, I decided to look at Goodwill before purchasing a brand new one. They actually had quite a few to choose from and different sizes. I ended up buying two sizes, one for $3 and the other for $5. The first night we did just Alice's hair because I had also bought an air popcorn popper and Charlotte wanted to test that out also. We were going to do Charlotte's hair that night as well, but we ran out of time because of different things going on. I did do both of their hair for school the next morning. It took about 1 hour to do both (about 30 min each). Then we did it again on Sunday for church. It's fun to see that the curls stay in the next day. They aren't as tight as when they're first done but they still looked beautiful. It is very time consuming, so definitely not something we can do all of the time but we're glad we have the curling irons now as an option for hair. I used to have a curling iron a long time ago but got rid of it because I never used it anymore. I hadn't used it since Nikki was little.

Alice the first night of trying it out.

The next morning, we did it a little differently. We did the small tighter curls on the ponytail and the bigger curls on the rest. Charlotte took her picture.

I remembered that you could pull the big curls gently apart to create more curls that look nicer.

Charlotte sporting her curls and pullover sweatshirt, ha ha. She still looks beautiful!

Sunday after church.

Our big project for last weekend was building our new exercise machine that I ordered on Amazon. It had a coupon for $100 off also (not too surprising since it's January and it's the time of year for resolutions of exercise. I first got the idea though when Charlotte and I saw a similar machine at Costco while shopping. That one only did arms, but it was also out of stock. Charlotte really wanted me to buy it because she wants to get stronger arms for pulling herself up on the gymnastics bar. Jack and I wanted to have a machine also that we could do lots of different exercises to help strengthen our bodies. Curtis thought it was a great idea. So, we bought it with everyone being excited to use it except maybe Garrett. Jack has a goal to be able to beat his uncle Ricky's bench press record, which we don't remember what that is at the moment. 

Anyway, it took Curtis and I about 4 hours to build it. The girls helped a bit, but Jack was at his Choral Fusion practice (singing group) for most of that time. He's excited to use it and has even gotten up extra early most days this week to exercise before going to school. And his first class is at 6:45am. I'm proud of him for making that effort and glad he's using the machine.

Lots of parts!

We bought a floor mat to go underneath the machine to protect the flooring.

Testing it out.

It's great because we can watch shows or listen to Spotify on our TV through our Roku while exercising.

Charlotte trying it out.

And even Alice. I later told her that she needs to have shoes on when she does the machine.

And it came with a poster for different ways to use it and which muscle groups they use, so we hung it on the wall.

It's great to have our own little gym right in our basement now. It makes it easier and more convenient to do exercise. I also bought another fold up mat for the girls to use for their gymnastics bar but decided to bring both mats out to use for other exercises as well. I have not used their mat a couple of times doing stuff on the floor. We also brought Curtis's exercise ball out of our bedroom and downstairs. I wonder what we'll add next!