Leaving is hard…

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… even if it’s just for two days.  I’m at a conference today and tomorrow.  I stopped by the front office at school on Wednesday afternoon to let the secretary know that I left the sub plan on my desk.  She said, “I don’t have any note of you being out.  I have no sub for you!”  Ack! I got approval from the boss and did all required paperwork!  Apparently he forgot to tell her.  She scrambled and found me a sub, and I felt bad, even though I did everything right.

I told Alan last night that he’d have to bring both kids to school because I was leaving early. He asked why I was leaving early, so I reminded him of the conference. I told both kids about it at night when I was putting them to bed, both seemed surprised. Holy moly, I’ve been talking about this for weeks! So much for my prepping.

This morning Eve work up late and in a total funk. She was crying and sad about everything. I felt bad both leaving her and leaving her for Alan to deal with. This evening she called to tell me the dog chewed up her shoe.  She only has one pair of shoes. :/

Sigh. The conference is going well at least.

Fun with paper circuits… or in this case, ribbon circuits!

The view’s not bad, if you like all that white stuff!! :)

The Addams Family

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We’ve had two weekends of amazing youth theater in a row.  Last weekend we saw a production of Newsies at the LOH. The director and musical director are both my friends and colleagues at DBS and there were a bunch of kids we knew in the cast.  Lex had originally signed up to do tech for the show, but it overlapped so completely with the high school musical that he decided not to.

This weekend was the high school production: The Addams Family!  It was hysterical and so well acted.  I loved it! Most importantly, it was lit to perfection. :)

Light Designer and Operator

They even gave him an award for it at Friday’s whole school assembly!

It says “Artist, Designer, &  Innovator of the Week Award”

The show opened with two Thursday matinees for local schools. All of the middle school went to see the show, plus many elementary classes as well.  Eve came home Thursday afternoon raving about how great it was!

I worked the concessions stand for Saturday’s show, so I got to sit in the back of the theater and watch most of it.

I bet you can’t even see the picture without hearing the tune. C’mon, snap those fingers!

Gomez and Morticia

This is Lex’s old bestie, working the sound board. The two of them have grown apart on separate teams in middle school, but I have secret wishes that they’ll become friends again. :)

Lex gave me a tour of the tech booth after the show.  He even let me take his picture. :) He’s so good to me!

The headset is called “the comm” and used to communicate with the stage manager.

It all looks pretty complicated, but he seems to have no trouble with it.

Found inside the door of the tech booth. I think it’s good advice for life in general. :)

I purchased tickets for today’s show. The plan was to bring Alan, Eve, and a friend. Eve opted out, so Alan and I went alone.  Turns out I missed one of the best scenes while setting up concessions yesterday.  I’m so glad I went again!!

It blows me away the level of youth talent in the Upper Valley.  It gives me shivers watching those kids dance and sing their hearts out! I can’t even imagine having that level of talent and confidence, especially at such a young age! I’m so happy that we can support these performances and that my own kids have these opportunities to participate in magic being made.

Book Fair

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Another book fair has come and gone.  This year, to accommodate the new parent/teacher conference schedule, I ran it from Wednesday to Tuesday, instead of the usual Monday to Friday. It made for a weird week, but it was nice to have the weekend off.  The book fair takes 110% of my energy! I “open” it at 7:30 each morning, run it throughout the day, whenever I don’t have library classes, and keep it open until 4:00pm each day.  On conference days I keep it open until 6pm.  It’s fun and the kids love it, but I’m always happy when it’s over too. :)

I love the trees in front of the school.

This year Clifford came to visit!!

Clifford visited several classrooms and brought a friend along to read stories. I coordinated and took pictures. :)

We had nearly $1000 more in sales this year than last year, which results in more Scholastic Dollars I can spend on books and supplies for the library and classrooms.  It’s well worth it.  I’ll be ready for it again this time next year. :)

Halloween 2019

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All of my posts should start with a “better late than never” caveat these days.  Halloween was last week.  During book fair week.  I’m exhausted! Eve bought herself a  Shoto Todoroki costume, which is an anime character from My Hero Academia, her new obsession.  It was a pretty amazing costume really.

Shoto Todoroki

Halloween itself was rainy and blustery, but oddly warm. Eve wanted to go trick-or-treating with a bunch of boys from DBS who were all dressing like a bunch of bananas. So Eve, me, Huxley (briefly), two other moms, and a screaming bunch of bananas braved the gusty winds and rain and walked around the neighborhood for an hour and a half, collecting candy. Lex stayed home and doled out candy to the very few people who came to our house.  When Alan got home he opened the garage and put vampire teeth on the Tesla to hand out more candy.

The Tesla Vampire

I was hoping we’d get more trick-or-treaters this year, but due to the newness of the neighborhood and/or the bad weather, we had plenty of leftovers! So, of course, we’ve all been bingeing on candy ever since.

Happy (late) Halloween!

 

Huxley!

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Meet our new pup! Fresh in from the Bahamas. Winter will be fun for him. 😄 He is practically perfect in every way. He’s calm, he’s quiet, he’s small(er), and, most importantly, he LOVES Alan! 😄😄😄 Actually he loves everyone!

Unfortunately he has heartworms and tape worms, but we have him on meds and he’ll be healthy soon enough. He makes us laugh and smile and awww every day.

Canopy Walk

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We had a fun family outing today. VINS opened a new Canopy Walk at their nature center. It’s a beautiful, HIGH, walk way that gets you way up into the tree tops.  There are interesting and humorous signs along the way telling you about where you are and the nature all around.  The forecast called for “dreary weather” but the sun came out and it turned out to be a beautiful day! Yay!

We stayed for a raptor showing as well. The birds are cool, as usual, but we are old hands at the raptor program. Eve was able to name the birds before they even came out. :)

Somehow the subject of donuts came up earlier in the day (while I was showering!) so the kids had donuts on the brain.  Alan surprised them with a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home. Everyone came home tired and happy.  :)

Animals, Apples, and Ascutney

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We had a lovely family outing today to the apple orchard and Mt. Ascutney.  We made our annual trek to Wellwood Orchard, where I was overwhelmed with how many people were there and how big my kids are now!  While Alan waited in the donut line (there was a LONG donut line!), the rest of us visited the petting zoo. We discovered that visiting the animals isn’t quite the same when they’re overfed, not interested in the food or people, and it was hard to walk anywhere.

The goats would politely sniff at a handful of food, then walk away. No more greedily gobbling down the food, hanging around the feed dispenser, or bullying small children for food.

Chickens in trees.

Chickens in trees do NOT want to be touched.

The bunnies were hiding in their houses, probably trying to avoid getting stepped on.

This fat sheep was happy to eat any food you brought her. :)

We decided to just buy apples instead of picking our own, but the kids wanted to check out the big rock, so we hiked up there and climbed a giant rock for awhile. :)

King of the mountain!

I almost caught them both smiling. :)

We bought some apples, fudge (I can’t resist!), maple candy, and salsa, then headed off to hike Mt. Ascutney.  By “hike” I mean drive most of the way to the top, then hike the final 20 minutes, which was enough of a hike for my wheezy lungs!

On the way up they posed for a picture!

A closer cropped view. :)

The view from the watch tower was amazing! You could even see a mountain in Massachusetts! I think we still have a little more time before peak leaf colors though.

There was a guy on the top of this tower! Alan felt a little nostalgic for his own tower climbing days. I did not!

Eve did not climb the tower with us, so this is a modified family selfie.

She hung out at the bottom instead.

It was a beautiful drive on a beautiful day in a beautiful car with a beautiful family.

Life is good.

Oh, baby!

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I am having a very good time with Lex’s health class homework.

He came home the first week of school and told me he’d have to take care of a robot baby for a 12hr period.  He was *very* uncomfortable with the idea. There was also a vague option of an “alternative assignment” for those who couldn’t do the baby thing, and he seriously considered it, but since he didn’t even know what that alternative assignment was, he ended up talking himself into the baby.  He talks about it a lot and I know he’s trying to work himself up for the task. He decided he wanted to have the baby on a weekend, and have it activated on a Sunday… but when?

At high school open house last night the health teacher reminded him that he only had two weeks left, which means just two weekends.  We talked him in to taking baby this weekend. The teacher set it to activate on Sunday from 10:00am-10:00pm, times he chose so he can wake up and prepare himself before baby activates.

I got home from school today and he said, “Sooo…. I brought home a baby today.”  LOL!  Other kids have named their babies, but Lex is 100% resistant to that.  :)  He cracks me up.  He also keeps talking about all the baby noises it will make, and he calls them “ambient noises.”  LOL! I’m having so much fun with this.  I said, “You mean coos and baby gurgles?” He said, “I think of it more like Minecraft ambient noise.”

When Eve got home she was equally weirded out by the baby.  Much to my surprise though, she seems to be warming up to it.  We watched a show this evening and she cuddled the baby the whole time.

I can’t stop laughing about this whole situation and Lex’s extreme discomfort.  He’ll do fine, but he’s just so worried about it.  Last night he says, “Oh, no, I just realized I’ll have to shower during that time…. what should I do with the baby?”  LOL!  I told him he could probably ask someone else in the house to look after it while he showered.  :)

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to take any pictures of him with the baby because I don’t want to stress him out too much…. just enough to make myself laugh!

Happy weekend all!