I am so sad....

I only have four more days left of my summer vacation. I return to work on Friday, August 1. We have a teacher work day on Friday and then start up with kids on Monday. I am so sad. I am more sad because I still hate everyone that I work with and I so don't want to go back to work.

Kenneth and I were talking and mused about taking the kids out of school and traveling around homeschooling the kids in our camper for the next year and selling my hairbows in craft shows to make money (and on line of course!) Do you know how many hairbows I would have to sell to make any money??? We would have to form a good ole "sears sweatshop" kicking out hairbows by the hundreds!!! It is fun to muse though.....

Okay, so back to reality. I want to really work on my Disney album and finish that up before I go back to school and I know the kids will want to spend a bunch of time at the pool so we will be spending the next four days here at the house and down at the pool with that clock ticking ever so much faster now....

I do have to say that I have really enjoyed having our camper down at Grey's Point Campground. The kids love it and we really like getting away every weekend again. It has been a long three years since we piled in the car on Fridays and headed down to the river for the weekend. We will continue to go through the fall and I am looking forward to the quiet fall weekends down there. I hope that Nicholas will want to do some fishing in the fall and that the girls will enjoy swimming in the warm river water once the jellyfish move out of there.

They have asked me (Grey's Point) to do some crafts with the kids. Last weekend I did notecards with them and will do that again this coming weekend and then in two weeks I will be painting with the kids.

Oh, Thanks for Asking...

about my day today. Yes, I had a good day. I wouldn't say it was a great day, but good all the same. And thanks for remembering. Yes today was the first day of me being principal at our school. I get there bright and early and well under-caffinated. I arrive with a load of bags and stuff. No, I was not bringing presents, I was just returning all the stuff I took home to work on over the holiday, of which I didn't touch a thing. They all sat there in the utility room tucked into the bags I brought them home in. Nope, didn't touch them at all. I thought about taking the bags of books and laptop computer to the beach but decided that the reality was that I would take it down, lug it up the steps to the house and then not do anything with them except haul them back down the steps and pack them in the car when it was time to go home. So I didn't take them.

So, I get there and there were no major readjusting to do with the schedule. My sub didn't come in. He called yesterday and said he had hurt his back and couldn't come in. So I taught my classes and did the "principal" thing. It was busy but all got done and it was a good day.

At the End of the Day

I was saying goodbye to all my jailbirds and my principal comes in as they file out. He asks if he can talk to me for a minute. So I am thinking to myself, I know I haven't been into teaching lately and I have been on the computer emailing cub scout stuff a lot and oh yeah, last Friday I showed a movie to the kids (it pertained to what we were studying, I'm not that bad) and I worked on a newletter for scouts all day and then printed it out and copied a bunch of copies for the weekend.

"Yeah sure" I say. I sit down and think, Okay here it comes.

He starts out by saying, "So how was your day?" Oh man I am IN for it!! "okay" I reply.

He then goes into saying that he just came back from the surgeon about his neck and he has a titanium plate fusing three vertibrae together and one of the screws has broken off and it lodged somewhere else and that bone is growing around it and the bone is pressing on a nerve which is not only giving him pain but also making numbness in his arm. I had known that he has been going to doctors and having tests done and that he is in pain sometimes.

He goes on to say that he needs surgery to correct it and that it is going to be a relatively easy surgery, only 3 hours long, but it is a long recovery. About 4 months!

At this point I am not sure why he has chosen to dump this on me but I continue to nod my head and I respond, "yuck".

He says, "yeah, yuck! So I am going to need someone to fill in for me while I am gone." I start to think okay, Mr. **** will step in as he is put in charge when our principal goes out of the office or is out sick from time to time.

Then he says he was talking to our supervisor at the Department of Ed and her advice was to fill if possible from within instead of bringing another principal in from outside. She asked if there was anyone on staff who had administrative experience. He told her about me and my administrative experience running a private school.

So then just as I am thinking I am going to get reamed out for showing too many videos, he asks if I would be willing to fill in for him. He goes on to say that he is going to hire a long term sub for my position so I don't have to teach and be principal at the same time.

Yes, I will be teaching my best for the rest of the week.

Leap Day

I thought when I woke up today that today is like an extra day. One you wouldn't normally have. One that should be special in some way. I wondered what I would do with a special day. I thought that maybe we should take the day off and spend it as a family doing something special. I thought that would be really fun to make it a tradition (if we can remember in 4 years that it IS a tradition) and do something special. As I said good bye to the kids, put my shoes on and grabbed my coffee, I thought that today should be filled with special things. Maybe I should make something. Maybe I should celebrate the day doing something fun in the classroom with my students. Maybe we could do something as a school. I arrived at school a few minutes late and I mentioned to another teacher that today should be fun and special and we should do something neat today. She agreed with me and I went into my classroom and prepared for the day. (logged into my computer and checked my email...)The kids came and went 3 times before lunch and then came and went another 3 times. The last group I just watched the clock as I taught. I couldn't wait to leave. After they left, I grabbed my lunch bag, coat and keys and out the door I went. Grocery store and then home to fix dinner and take a shower. Now I sit here and I have not done anything special with my extra day. I think I need a do over...

Back to School

When I was a kid I remember the weeks prior to returning to school. Now, of course we were at the beach for most of the month of August and we would return the Sunday a week before school began. Mom would return to work the very next Monday, as she was a teacher so she started the week before school began. We would spend much of that week out shopping and getting our school supplies and a new outfit or new shoes for school to start. In the weeks prior to this week while we were at the beach I would scour the fashion magazines, teen magazines, and newspapers to figure out what I wanted. I loved new school supplies, the new notebooks, pencils, and markers. We didn't use a book bag or back pack back then but I remember as a kid thinking about what lunch box I wanted. I had a Holly Hobbie lunch box and a Peanuts one. It was such an exciting week.

Nowadays, that week has turned into a month long series of sales. I have been collecting school supplies for my kids for the past several weeks. Nothing goes on sale at the same time and they never are at the same store. Walmart will have crayons on sale, Office Depot will have glue, Staples will have pencils. My kids are barely involved in the process anymore.

While I don't mind having the super sales and getting packs of pencils for a penny, I do miss the excitement that no longer exists. The biggest excitement we have had was back to school day (or really half hour) where the kids get to take their supplies to school and meet their teacher. It is a madhouse at the school for a half hour but the kids really enjoy it.

Does anyone have anything that they do to help get that sense of excitement back like we had?

Alexandra Quits School After 1st Grade

Last night Alexandra announced at dinner, "Mom, I've been thinking and I don't think I am going to go to school this year."

Kenneth looks at me with a look like, "so, what are you going to do with this one honey?"

Nicholas stops eating in mid bite and looks with wide eyes as if to say, "oh no Allie you have done it this time."

Without missing a beat (and you all would be so proud of me), I say, "okay, if you have really been thinking hard about this and you are serious about not going to school this year, then you don't have to go."

"Really? I can stay home?", she asks.

"No you can't stay home because you aren't allowed to stay by yourself yet, and since Daddy and I have to work you can go with Daddy to work everyday." Kenneth still keeps silent.

"Now of course, since you aren't going to be in school anymore then you will have to start paying rent here and helping out with the bills, so it will be important for you to work hard so you can earn enough money to help us out."

"Okay," she says, "I can work with Daddy."

Kenneth then says, "We will drop off Nicholas and Caroline at the bus stop in the mornings and the you and I can go right to work." (for those of you who don't know, Kenneth does lawn care and maintenance, so this isn't a desk job but manual labor mostly.)

And I add, "You don't have to wait for school to start to start working for Daddy. He has a job tomorrow and you can start then." She smiles and agrees.

This morning at the breakfast table, Kenneth reminds her that she is working with him today and she said she remembered. They, then worked out a fair payment schedule and an hourly rate.

Two hours after they left to trim some bushes at a customer's house they return. Allie walks in and gives me a big hug and says I am going back to school now. Nothing else was said.

We were willing to play this out, even though it didn't take us long to convince her that school was the best choice. We were even willing to go as far as not sending her to school on the first day of school and having her work with Kenneth, but luckily she saw the light early.

The Video part 2

I previewed the National Geographic video last night and in the first two minutes I realized this was not going to fly with my bad boys. I should have looked at the copyright date on the back. It was 1982. It was probably a video I watched in school. In 1982 I was 12 years old and in the 8th grade!!! So I pop in the Pole to Pole video and start watching that. Unfortunately it plays more like a travel guide than anything else and I figure this isn't going to work either. I go to Tivo and see what I have recorded. There is a video of the making of some of Disney World's rides and attractions. I decide that is what we will watch. So today had absolutely nothing to do with Africa like I had planned.

Oh well.

Friday Videos

Today I have been in a bit of a panic. It is Thursday and in my class on Fridays I try to bring in a video usually having something to do with what we have been studying in class. It isn't a "movie" as the kids would like but a documentary or some sort of TV show corresponding to our subject. For the past two weeks we have been doing Africa. Last week we watched the Biography of the Wright Brothers (nothing to do with Africa). So this week I wanted to find something on Africa. The kids have been asking about the Egyptian pyramids and I was hoping to find something interesting on TV but to no avail. So this evening I went to the local library to see what videos they had that I could show.

They had a series called "Pole to Pole" it is an A and E series that showed in the early 1990's on PBS. One man (and his camera crew) take off at the North Pole and travel to the South Pole. They go through all kinds of countries and the cover much of the continent of Africa. At one point at the equator he shows the spin of the Earth affecting water draining out of a bucket. On one side of the equator it goes clockwise and on the other side it goes counter clockwise. Pretty cool.

I also got a video (National Geographic) on Egyptian pyramids. Now the panic has changed from can I find a video to which one do I show. Oh, the dilemmas.