A Better Example

I have so much I need to get done today...but here I am trying to be a "better example" by starting my "blogging habit" before school starts. I am hoping to become more fluid, fluent, motivated, yadda, yadda, yadda. Writing like this is very difficult to me...BUT I want to stop whining and "get with the program". Chances are, no one will even read this but me...

This summer I have tried to slow down. --Let me back up a tad and explain where I am coming from. I have become one of "those teachers" who obviously doesn't do anything during the summer, so I am obviously available to take on all the projects every other "working" individual needs me to do...since I'm not doing anything anyway, right? I started the summer by taking our InvenTeam to MIT for a week in June, I got back and jumped into our church's Bible School (I promised I wouldn't do it this year and especially not all the crafts for all the kids classes...but when asked, I said, "OK"). From there I worked in the Globaloria training academy, then came meeting with a group of Cabell County teachers and taking them to a mining sight to show adverse/good aspects of mountain top removal and linking that to project based learning projects for students. Let me see, from there, I have been meeting with my InvenTeam students (dragging my boys as part of the team during their summer...)and restoring/working at a local community park. While cleaning and working at the park I have been training the kids about environmental monitoring/sampling by teaching them how to use Vernier Labquest units for pH, conductivity, temperature, etc, etc. As a sidebar, our team is planning a "Picnic at the Park" to invite our community to come and see what we have accomplished at the park and to showcase our invention that we demonstrated/presented at MIT.
In the meanwhile, I am trying to get caught up at home by "creating work" for my boys to help me with (that is how they describe it anyway). I just got back yesterday from the most recent Globaloria Academy (I really like the folks I'm getting to know and the mentees I have really seem to be excited about joining in). I am off this morning to see if my classroom still exists in the rubble of our remodeling project at school, pick up a copy of my upcoming class schedule, find out if I'll even have computers in my room and then run to the local store to pick up canning supplies so that I can make spaghetti sauce from the vegis I have ready in the garden (I believe I have enough tomatoes ready to do about four batches of sauce which translates to about 48 quarts of spaghetti sauce). My eldest son, Corey, took off this morning to help at the park (they are using welding/cutting torches to remove some metalworks out of the way). My youngest son (Morgan or Moe as I call him) will probably get stuck with me and have to help at home later...poor kid.

Notice my ramblings? At least I am getting writing on the page...now for later, yard work, groceries for cookout for my husband's employees this saturday at our house. We just had our driveway paved so the boys can play basketball in front of our garage...those guys are coming back today to finish and drop off more gravel...I need to put gravel in front of the new flower beds I just cleaned out (from which I got my latest batch of poison ivy)at the end of our driveway, I need to rip out the old landscaping timbers and re-bar (sp?) so that we can put in the new timbers (you know how hard it is to rip out re-bar with a spud bar on a hot day?!) And yes, I don't wait for help from others most days 'cause I am impatient and want what I want, RIGHT NOW! Hmmmm...one of these days I really plan to clean out all the cobwebs I see all over my house....I'm nuts, I tell you...just nuts....(I wouldn't trade it for any amount of money that I'm not even getting paid...hee hee)

And now you know why my boys say I am just like the dog on the movie "UP" that runs off on multiple tangents....SQUIRREL!!!!!