Is It Done YET??

I am waiting, rather anxiously, for my new school building to be finished. This is the current look of the seventh grade wing. Looks done to me!! (Unfortunately, the inside isn't quite so complete...)

With a little luck, we'll be moving in before the end of the school year. And then I will have an actual classroom with WINDOWS. And WALLS. And a DOOR. (Not to mention a stage with a CURTAIN.)

Hurry up, nice construction people!!

Hershey Park Happy

We thought we lucked out when a coworker gave us a coupon good for either a family four pack of Hershey Park tickets for $60 or a free ticket to the park. We planned to use the family four pack option, and headed to the gates. But we didn't count on the guest who walked up to us, asked if we had bought our tickets, and promptly handed us three free tickets he had left over from the season! We quickly changed our plan to use the coupon for the free ticket and spent the day at Hershey having fun for free. Lucky us!
The first order of business was for me and Scott to ride Great Bear. I rode Rock 'n' Roller Coaster with him this summer, and this was payback - I love this coaster, but Scott had always refused to ride. He loved it, too, after he got over the "I'm-going-to-die" thing.



If you were following our exploits on Facebook, you know Scott got a little sick on this ride.



I say you get on a ride that does THAT (see above) on PURPOSE it's your own fault you're sick.

We detoured through Zoo America to see "wolfies!" for Nick...

And "Hedwig" for Kai...

We rode pretty much everything we wanted to ride, and enjoyed the tasty chocolate treat at the end of the factory ride. The best part is, when we all got tired in the early afternoon, we felt no guilt about going home. After all, the tickets were free!

Things I Liked About Today

Just some random moments from an ordinary day...

We couldn't decide what to do, so we voted. We do this often. If no one has a firm enough opinion to say "this is what we're doing" we list all our options, rank them, and add them up. Lowest score wins.



Of course, the problem with that tactic is that when you vote before breakfast, "brunch at Perkins" tends to win. So we decided to do two from the list and hit Putt U, too. It was a beautiful morning and great to get out of the house. I won, but Kairi nearly beat me. She's got this habit of making sudden GREAT shots, and she stays out of the hazards better than I do.



The weather was perfect and felt like fall, so we set up our fall decorations when we came back home. A trip to the grocery store also netted us some mums and mini-pumpkins. I asked Nick to help me with the rest of the decorations, and he said, "Absolutely. I love fall." It's nice to have something in common with your son. We had a good time pawing through the totes in the garage looking for "just fall" decor - as opposed to all the Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff. Too early for that.



Then, in keeping with the it's-beginning-to-feel-like-fall theme, we had baked ziti for dinner. Yum.



While I was waiting for dinner, I watched the birds at the feeder my nieces gave me last Christmas.



Nine years ago was an ordinary day, too, until events made it extraordinarily tragic. I normally keep this blog newsy and everyday journally, but I'm feeling upset and frustrated with what September 11th has come to mean. In my school yesterday, it meant I was supposed to break a promise to my kids to play board games in end of the day study hall. I was supposed to show them a video of the events of 9/11 and discuss what they remembered. News flash, folks. They were three. They remember nothing. I'm told that's why I need to make them remember. Where's the day of remembrance for the hundreds of thousands who died in a tsunami since that time? Or the day for the thousands who die daily of malaria? Or the innocents who are killed daily by ongoing warfare in the world? Why this one event?

And what does it mean to remember it? Should we foster hate by remembering? Should we burn books and deny places of unity and worship? Or should we turn it into a day of cookouts and patriotic themed cupcakes? (That seems to be the plan of my local grocery stores, anyway.)

Or maybe. Just maybe. We should have an ordinary day. With our ordinary families. And take the time to show them how much we love them. And thank God for the beauty and wonder in our world, from birds to mums to turning leaves. Because life is precious. And celebrating life keeps those who celebrate death from winning.

We Came, We Saw, We Ate French Fries

It's band season again. Time for football games in all weather (tonight happened to be very warm and clear), hemming uniforms (ugh, do I hate sewing), stadium seating (ouch - those stands are much harder now that I weigh less - wonder why?), and of course, stadium french fries.

Oh, yeah, and let's not forget...

The Award Winning Saucon Valley High School Marching Band (pronounced saw-kin, you say it right, we play it right).

Now featuring Nick in honor guard:





And Kairi, melliphone extraordinaire:




And apparently, starting next week, it will also feature Nick on trombone in the stands. Sheesh. Where will it end? Unfortunately, with Saucon, not with a football win. Another classic tradition - we lost.