Update on Vanguard Middle School

Just yesterday I was blogging about my daughter going off to Vanguard kindergarten. I was blogging about the Vanguard test and waiting to find out what school she would be attending. I've blogged about public education and the Vanguard system several times over the years.

Cute image from michigan.gov

Well here we are SIX YEARS later and we are in the waiting place waiting to find out what middle school Miranda will be attending. We didn't have as many choices inside the loop, as we did the first time around for elementary school. We really only had one first choice. The others were okay choices, but not the best. We had one great choice for a magnet school back-up and thank goodness she did get into that one. However, she was wait-listed #65 for the our first choice Vanguard school.

What does this mean? When you apply for Vanguard you have to list  your 3 school choices in order of preference. First they check all your test scores, report card grades, and teacher recommendation to see if you even made it into Vanguard. Next they do a lottery. They choose their designated number of students and wait list all the rest who want to go to their first choice school.

We received a letter on Monday telling us that Miranda was accepted into the Vanguard program for middle school, however she was #65 on the waiting list for her first choice school. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that our first choice school is also everyone's first choice school. My initial reaction was sadness and then as the day went on, and via facebook conversations and comments, I found out that #65 is actually really good. I found out that the school got as high up as #242 on the waiting list last year.

How is this possible? They send out the letters and parents start calling in to accept or decline. Once they have all the replies on April 9 they start calling down the waiting list. So that's when we get called. One mom told me that anything under 100 is "golden."

Now to wait until April 9 to get the official offer so we can celebrate!

Random Stuff and I Forgot About Baby Bottle Nipples

So this blog is going to be about random stuff that has something to do with either reading, writing, blogging, newspapers, NPR, traveling, art museums, spirituality, learning, self-discovery, public education, inner-city living, old architecture, fashion, parenting, gifted and magnet school programs, Nike quotes apparently, and cupcakes at some point.

Defensive Driving has been kicking me in the butt and it really shouldn't have been. It was really really easy in retrospect but I made it really really hard on myself because I could save it and go back to it whenever I wanted. So because of that I would save it and I wouldn't go back to it for days. I started it I don't know, like September 6 maybe, and I didn't finish it until this past Sunday, October 16. It was due to the court today and I turned in everything yesterday. I actually felt like I had been set free from the bonds of slavery when I went to the court house to turn it all in. I felt like it was something hanging over my head that I couldn't get past.

Random art from Anne Taintor to go with my random subject. www.annetaintor.com

The funniest part about all that is that not only did I finish on Sunday, I also had to ask them to FedEx the certificate to me. I was expecting the certificate by Tuesday or Wednesday but mainly on Wednesday. On Tuesday I went to check the mail and there on the sidewalk over the side of my gate was a FedEx package. I do not check the mail every day so I'm so glad I happened to go out there and that I saw it. Can you imagine?? After all that I went through procrastinating to finish it that would have been a tragedy and a comedy too I guess.

Now that I'm all done with that I can move ahead in my life. I can tackle the craziness of my house right now. I have a lot of work to do in that department. That should really be my main focus from now on. I need to proceed with the remodeling.

I also need to get on the ball and figure out when these middle schools are having their tours because apparently I've already missed out on some. I still can't believe I'm doing this. Choosing a middle school for my baby girl that is. The baby I just had 10 years ago. Amazing.

Another interesting package that we received this week came with the baby sock monkey I ordered my son from Amazon. Except that these packages come via UPS and that guy is smart and he knows to put my packages inside the breezeway between my kitchen and the garage. There was another big box there with a little box that had baby sock monkey.

I told the kids to open it and they said, "It's a toilet brush." I came back into the kitchen and looked at the brush and what is amazing is that it took me forever to figure out what it was. I actually had to look at it for a while and I had to re-read the description.

It said it was a bottle brush with a nipple brush. It was the nipple brush part that just totally threw me off. I thought nipple as in "nipple" at first, not baby bottle nipple. Apparently it's been a long time since I had a baby and I don't think I ordered that bottle brush. It was an error on the part of Amazon I think. Now I can't find a phone number on the Amazon page to tell them about it. Maybe they sent it to me as a bonus for the baby sock monkey.

So there you go...random stuff.