Resilience Cafe

For the first seven weeks of study in the humanities at Audrey's school, she and the other Middle School students learned about resilient heroes from the past and present. They explored what it means to be resilient and the music, art and literature that can be born out of resilience. Students selected a historical figure to research and wrote Readers Theatre pieces to help their audience learn about them. They read To Kill a Mockingbird and non-fiction texts, looking for themes of resilience in characters and figures in the literature. Each scholar connected a resilient historical figure, a resilient community member, and their own personal story of resilience through writing and performing a spoken word poem. They did a wonderful job presenting their work last night. Audrey decided to research Joseph Smith, and wrote a piece about when he had to have his leg operated on as a young boy, and how he persevered through the intense pain with only the comfort of his father. She invited her third grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, who has been through some pretty hefty health setbacks and has come through with her faith and outlook intact. We were so proud of our girl! Photos below, and a video of her spoken word poem at the end.

Audrey performing her poem.

Participating in a Readers Theatre, written by one of her classmates.

Audrey and her guest, Mrs. Smith.

IMG 7570 from lesliehorn on Vimeo.

Octoberness

Just some Horn fam happenings from this month.

Audrey and I went to the symphony when they came on a tour of the suburbs. It was incredible!

We have a Little Free Library nearby. One can take and leave books at will! Audrey and I stopped by on a pretty afternoon.

Parker received some awards for his scouting efforts this summer.

We had Parker's buddy, Matthew, over to play one evening. We made sure he brought his guitar so they could jam.

Miles and his friend, Ellis, on crazy hair day. They have gold and silver spray in their hair, though it's hard to see in the photo.

So I took a really cool picture of a rainstorm in Ranger, Texas, on our way home from Arizona last month. I submitted it via Twitter to USA Today, and just a few days later, they sent me an email letting me know that they had published it in the paper! I ran out and bought one, then found the image on their website, too. Exciting!

Miles strained his hip flexor last week. A combination of a trampoline park, a baseball game and possibly just growing too fast. Needless to say, he was in a lot of pain for a couple of days and we ended up getting him some crutches to help him walk a bit. He was fine after some rest and tylenol, but I have a feeling we'll see that happen again.

Trooper and Audrey, best friends forever.

Oh just lately.

My life is suddenly very busy. I'm sitting here on a Sunday night, just reflecting upon the fact that I have rarely had time to do anything of the leisure sort since school started, but that all of the things keeping me busy are good things. They just prevent me from documenting my life and relaxing as I used to!

I have taken two "jobs" with local schools. Both are definitely part-time, and only one is actually paid, but they are keeping me busy enough (or have thrown me off enough) that a lot of other things in my life have fallen by the wayside. Not the important things, of course. I still get to snuggle Miles to sleep at night and go on dates with Neal, but things like grocery shopping, dinner cooking, reading and blogging are definitely on the back burner! My poor family; we have been eating pretty poorly as far as that goes.

The first job I took is as a Marketing and Development Consultant/Director for Audrey's school. She attends a new private school, which charges tuition, as they tend to do. We knew that Audrey was a good fit for the school, and the faculty really looked forward to having her as a student, but we weren't sure we could make the tuition payments work out. So I presented my resume to the administrators and offered my time and talents in exchange for a tuition reduction, and they took me up on the offer. I was so excited! I work 8-10 hours a week for them, managing all of their social media accounts, creating their weekly newsletter, applying for grants, keeping up the profile of the school in the local community, and now, substitute teaching. It is really fun to be so involved with the inner workings of the school, and I am impressed every day with the dedication of the teachers there. Audrey is thriving in the smaller environment (she is in a class of about 10 7th and 8th graders), and looks forward to her school days and all of her research and projects.

The second job I took is at another local school, this one is a private homeschool academy. (I taught Language Arts there at the end of last year.) The students there meet twice weekly for regular classes, then complete a great deal of their other work at home. On Fridays, they have two electives from which to choose, and one of them is my Latin 100 class! The kids are 11-17 and are doing a great job so far. We have only had two classes, but I am having fun revisiting the language I learned in Mr. Barrett's class at VPHS and one semester at BYU. I hope the students will gain as much from it as I did as a teenager. The families pay me monthly for my teaching services. It's a lot of fun!

The kids are all doing well. Audrey is still taking piano lessons (year 7) and has started up with a new DI team. She and I go to Young Women activities weekly and she still spends a lot of her free time reading. Trooper is her BFF.

Parker is doing really well in fifth grade at the intermediate school. He had super high grades on his report card and was really pumped about that. He is an Orange Belt in karate and is taking bass guitar lessons on Tuesday evenings (Neal takes guitar lessons at the same time). His band practices about once a week, and they hope to have a set ready to play for some sort of event this fall.

Miles is having a lot of fun in first grade. His teacher is really sweet, and even though one of his best friends moved away, he is still happy in school. He started piano lessons last month and is playing baseball on the Tigers. He gets lots of hits and does a great job in the infield.

Neal just got a new calling at church today: Assistant Stake Executive Secretary. With 14 units in our stake, and some frequently-travelling stake presidency members, we will not be seeing a whole lot of him on Sundays. He has served as a clerk in our ward since we moved here in 2008, so there will be a big hole in the clerk's office now that he'll be gone! We'll miss him, but I know he will do a great job serving with the Stake Presidency. They are all wonderful, devoted men and he will be a good fit for them.

We are all staying pretty busy, no doubt. I still try to get to the temple once a week, which usually works out if I am sure to keep my Tuesdays clear, which I usually can. I'm grateful for the refuge from the busyness that I find there and really encourage you to try to get to your temple more often, if you are able. I read a great quote on Instagram the other day: "Anyone who sincerely and consistently makes the temple a bigger part of his or her life will experience an increase in understanding, happiness, calmness, direction, testimony, patience, faith and every other component of eternal joy."--John H. Groberg. I know that is true! I have found that I have more capacity for compassion, more time to serve others, and a general calmness about life and its ups and downs since I stepped up my temple attendance last year. Try it!

I'll be posting some pics from our life lately this week, hopefully. Until then!

Conference in Weatherford

It has become a sort of tradition that we spend General Conference weekends out in Weatherford with Neal's dad and Gail. I am always up for a weekend away from home; we had a really nice time.

We had to take note of the pretty, undulating clouds we saw on our drive west. 

We went to lunch at Dave's Stove Shop, which has a delightful new cafe in the back. The food was incredible, and the shop is so fun to wander through. I feel like you could buy anything there. I was just poking around and noticed this man in the back room, and felt like I had been transported through time. He was keeping his books, in overalls and a cap, like it was 1915. Such a cool moment.

The rest of the time was spent watching conference and enjoying the pretty fall weather that suddenly fell upon us that weekend. Hooray for sweatshirts!

The view from Daddy and Gail's driveway is lovely. It was hard to go home!