Feb-brrr-ary

I spent the last few days of January at a conference in San Antonio with some other principals from my district. We had a couple of days of cold, rainy weather, but on one beautiful day, I enjoyed a lunchtime walk to the Alamo. I sent this picture to Steve and the girls, which inspired our little "Texas Tour" road trip we have coming up for spring break!

I was back at school for one day after the conference before we ended up at home for four ice days! No snow ... just pure sheets of ice. Our driveway was once again the preferred sled run and it sure was fast this year.

There wasn't much to shovel, but Emma enjoyed hacking away at the ice.

We did lots of this ... spending the first part of February, including my birthday, cozied up with the fire, books, and true downtime was an amazing reprieve from real life that we didn't know we needed!

Once we could get back out, Steve and I had a belated birthday date night - margaritas and HEB!

Every year the 4th graders in our district go to hear the Plano Symphony Orchestra and are supposed to dress up. Emma literally wears Nike shorts and athletic tees every single day (a hoodie if it's cold), so I knew finding her a real outfit might be a struggle. She finally agreed on black jeans and a top - she looked so cute!

She said that on the say of the field trip, everyone did a double take when she walked down the hall. One teacher told her, "Ok, I'm not going to make a big deal about this, but wow, you look nice!" The next day she was back to her usual look, but I would like to think she enjoyed her day in a complete outfit. The tradition at Daffron is that the 4th graders get a pizza lunch (with table cloths, even) after the symphony. Emma was thrilled that, based on luck, her class had front row seats and she could see everything!

February has been a month of academic accomplishments for Sara. After she won her school's science fair, her project advanced to Regionals. She spent most of a Saturday downtown being interviewed by judges about her project. She didn't win any awards, which disappointed her, but we were so proud. She did every part of this project completely independently and absolutely deserved to be among all of those regional projects!

Sara's Mock Trial team continued to pour hours into practice - several hours on Saturdays, late nights after school ... it has been a lot. Friday was the first day of competition at the Collin County Court House.

Sara won an Outstanding Witness Award. She sent Steve and I think picture mid-morning on Friday. Steve had won the same award a hundred years ago, and so a few hours later, he sent us a picture of his almost identical prize that he had gone into the attic to find!

Sara's team was one of four (from fourteen) that advanced to Saturday's semi-final round. They won that round, then competed in the finals, and took 1st place. The hours these kids and their amazing teacher have poured in are countless, but the work paid off. So proud of them! Sara is about to have a lot more time on her hands after school without Mock Trial practices. She'll miss this group, but I know she's also looking forward to her after school walks to Starbucks with friends, too. All about balance!

Meanwhile, we got an email from Emma's PE Coach that they had been doing a jump rope challenge at school, and students were to work their way through nine levels. Emma was the first student at her school to accomplish the "Black Belt" level with 175 consecutive jumps! She got to sign the "Black Belt" wall and she said all the kids cheered for her!

After Sara received her 1st place trophy yesterday, Emma got one of her own at the end-of-season basketball tournament. This team has come such a long way in the past few seasons. They started this season in a bracket they were dominating, so they were moved to a higher won, where they continued to play well and mostly win. They were then moved to a tougher bracket for the tournament, and we hoped to play well but didn't expect to rack up wins ... but they did it. So fun to watch these girls! Several of them are back together this morning for softball practice as we kick off another new season.

Next week is spring break - hallelujah! Spring will be busy with soccer, softball, high school cheer tryouts, and normal life. The time is flying by, but I couldn't be more proud of my girls and all they're accomplishing along the way.