Next school year

I am getting ready for next year, which fortunately does not start until after Labor Day. I am laughing an evil laugh at all you who have to start in August... mwhahahaha. I work at a smart school where we like to wait until September, the proper time to start school. And we still get out the first or second week of June - and that is counting snow days.

Anyway, getting read for Kindergarten currently means rearranging my room, cleaning and organizing on the way. I am also making a lesson overview for the entire year so as I find fun things to do, I know what folder to put it into. It is like a card catalog on my computer. It is taking a long time to type in, but I know it will be helpful in the long run. I currently like the new arrangement of the room too. I have a little office that is somewhat separated from the rest of the room. I still have one huge shelf to move and boxes of stuff to find places for, but I also have several empty shelves currently. I haven't started decorating or writing names on things yet . It is a bit too early for that and I like the summer decorations I put up at the end of the year.

My current biggest dilemma is trying to hang five Beatrix Potter Prints on cement walls. Sticky tack doesn't hold them up and I don't want to ruin the prints by nailing them, nor do I want to spend the money to get them framed. I may just do what I have done the past three years, and put them behind the bookshelf where they stay hidden. But they would make nice year round decorations for the top unreachable-except-by-a-very-high-ladder four feet of the room (our ceilings are approximately 12 feet high). I currently have some posters that look like they came from a Kindergarten class in the '70's. Cute kids, dressed in oranges, pinks, yellows, browns, and blues drawn with rather geometric shapes, but not quite what I am looking for. The teacher looks absurd too, wearing a very impractical dress... tight and pink.

I have had a pleasant little break now, so I should return to my cleaning and so on.

We are Home

We had a wonderful vacation, but there is something so nice about being at home. It is good to see friends and sleep in my own bed and work at my own desk and be home.

That isn't to diminish the greatness of the vacation though.

The trip down was full of excitement. We left mid afternoon Sunday and entered a rainstorm around Dillsburg and followed it all the way down to Richmond. We almost got squished between a tractor trailer and a car entering the highway. We saw a jeep with its top down driving in the downpour. We were glad we were not them.

On Monday morning, we left later than we meant to, but that is what vacations are for, right? Around noon, we got a flat tire. We changed the tire by the edge of the road. It was wet and drizzling and not the nicest weather, and the tire was the front driver-side tire. Not five feet away from the zooming traffic, my babe was working on the tire. I was scared, but I stood at the end of the car, wearing my cute denim hat and my bright yellow shirt and hoped that I increased visibility so they would move to the other lane. Sometimes they did. Finally we made it to a Wal-Mart where we got new tires (the others needed to be changed anyway) and about three hours from our initial stop we were back on the road. We arrived in Savannah finally. It was a long day.

The next few days we were at the beach. I love the waves! I love looking around historic districts. I love hanging out with my family. It was really nice. I will write more about the waves some other time.

Then we went to the family's home. It was nice there too, very relaxing.

Then we came home. The trip home was boring, Praise God! Although I described the trip down in the most detail, it wasn't the most detailed part. I just don't have time for anything else right now.

Books and Movies

I finished The Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L'Engle. It was amazing. You should read it, but you should read it after you have read the other two in the trilogy. You might not like it, but that is ok, because you should still think about the importance of names and genealogies and pictures and unicorns drinking the wind. I need to read it again now that I know the ending. I think I will appreciate parts of it more.

We watched Wall-E. I liked it, not as good as some other Pixar's, but still great fun. I think my favorite part was when he woke up with a low "battery" and then soaked in solar rays for energy. I really related to him at that moment. I also wondered how that plant survived. I can't get my plants to live very well, and I don't carry them all over the galaxy. Oh well, maybe if I watered more regularly. My aloe and cactus variety plants do well...

We also watched Come What May. I have been working on a fuller review so I will wait to comment on that.

Yesterday, my sister and I finished our three week watching of the Bourne trilogy. I really enjoyed them again. Sister pointed out that part of the fun of watching them is seeing smart people chase other smart people. You don't want to cheer for the bad guys but you can't help noticing how clever they are, even though Bourne is, of course, more clever. I also realized this time that the scene at the end of the Supremacy happens half-way through the Ultimatum. So most of the third movie happens before the end of the second. Very clever movie-makers too! Sister didn't like the nebulous ending though. She preferred the first one, where it was happily ever after, (until the next movie.) She did appreciate the parallel scenes in the first and last one though, but didn't like the car chase in the last one so much. She also kept pointing out how violent the movies were. I told her that what happens when people try to kill other people.

Well now, the next time I post, I will either be on my way to GA, in GA, or having come back from GA. Happiness!