This Is The Year

Here I've let a bunch of time go by AGAIN since I've posted and visited my friends. LahoooosER! I do have quite a bit to share...let's see if I can remember it all. Oh. I got older. Yeah, had my birthday last week. It was good to spend the day with my family. We went to breakfast and did some shopping. Sadly Hubby had to work that night, but I had a fun girls night with my girlfriend/cousin Kimberlee who also recently had a birthday. We treated ourselve's to a yummy dinner from Famous Dave's. I also got spoiled by my other friends and family as well, and just had a really great Birthday. I've been crazy busy with school stuff this week. We had our summer work session/retreat this week. 2 evenings and then a full day today. Making some good progress, but hard to focus when I'm getting ready for GIRLS' CAMP!!!! We head up Tuesday morning. I'm so excited, but sad as well. This will be my last activity with the girls. I've been released from my call...

I was so prepared this morning! I hauled my lazy butt outta bed super early so I could make sure the morning of the first day of school went off without a hitch! Got up, fixed the kids one of their favorite breakfasts, toasted english muffins with peanut butter, honey and cinnamon. They like bananas on them too, but we were out! Anyway... had it all laid out for them, little glasses of milk, and went to wake my sleepy-head darlings. Amazingly, there was no complaining or whining of "I'm tired", "Why does school have to start so early?", and other such nonsense. I started packing lunches for the kids, and realized I could not find a sandwich baggie anywhere! Last they had been seen was when we were packing for the reunion. Eeek. Called hubby who had a 5 a.m. job, but was planning on making it back to take the kids to school with me. He said, no prloblem, he'd pick up some baggies. Finished the sandwiches, left them on a plate, and went to work combing hair. E...

This past couple of weeks has been eventful on the school front. I'm fortunate to be able to have my children attend a charter school which I was a part of creating, and starting. It has been a trial and a blessing! But that's a story for another day. Our school is affiliated with Expeditionary Learning (EL). EL takes the approach of going beyond the walls of the classroom as much as possible. The year is divided into learning expeditions, where every aspect and subject of the learning is related to the topic of study. Fieldwork is a big part of EL. Ideally fieldwork will NOT be just a field trip related to the topic of study, but actually real world application of the concepts taught in class, as they relate to the topic of study. We're still working on this! We're only in our third year, and there is so much to do when starting a school from scratch! Some other, more established EL schools have actually done things like environmental analysis of water samples from a l...