Day 1 down, 176 to go!

Seriously, it was great to be back and to see the kids! I am excited to start the week with them tomorrow! I think overall it is a nice bunch of second graders!

It was also Haliey's first day of Third Grade. Wentworth is such a big school and she will grow up fast over the next three years I am sure. She was all dressed up in her snazzy white capris with her black sparkly tshirt that said, "Daddy's Expensive Princess" in wild glittery letters. I stood with her, her dad, her mom, and her brother this morning at the end of the driveway waiting for the bus and thought back to the first time I did this when she went to Kindergarten! She is growing up way too quickly! Everything went very well today and she loved her teacher and her class. Tomorrow she will meet her 4th grade classmates. She will also take the bus from Wentworth to Eight Corners. I will feel quite relieved when I walk down at the end of the day and see her sitting on the bench waiting for me.

Jordan begins preschool next week and will go to his open house on Wednesday morning. I hope he likes it and does well. He does not do too well with strangers or strange kids so this will be a learning curve for him.

More later....

One week left

It just is not fair that summer arrives in all it's hotness right before school begins. It is really difficult to concentrate on what needs to be done while my head is still on vacation. Today is a good example. I woke up full of good intentions and by the time I was ready to go to school, I was no longer interested! I did make myself go over and forgot to bring my welcome letter with me so that it can be mailed out on Friday. I have a meeting all morning tomorrow so will 'try' to remember it this time!

This afternoon Courtney and Charlie came over to swim at the pool with Haliey and Jordan. We had a nice visit. I sat on the edge and dangled my feet, but Courtney got in and went for a swim. Charlie and the kids are part fish I think and really enjoyed swimming, playing ball, and just generally enjoyed the nice afternoon. These summer days are the ones that I will think about as I trudge through the snow and ice in December.

Counting down

I saw the Staples commercial this morning that shows the dad shopping for school supplies kicking up his heels and singing and the two kids scowling and dragging behind him slowly. What was missing from the commercial was me in the middle. As much as I love what I do, I am sad that vacation is just about over. I am even more sad because finally the nice weather has arrived and my thoughts and work are now towards preparing the classroom and myself for the upcoming 2009-2010 school year. When I left at the end of June, my class list was at 18. It was evenly 9 boys and 9 girls...thankfully since the past few years my 'girl' component has been much less than that. It is amazing what a difference it makes! Usually by this time in August, I am ready to go back, but this June we went until almost the end of the month so the time off seems shorter. I think back to my trucking days of 2 weeks vacation and no holidays or breaks and wonder how I ever stood it!

Update on the home projects.....garage--insulation is done! The insulating team of Mutt and Jeff finished the upstairs and part of the downstairs in record time. I think it was about 3-4 hours and they cleaned up afterward too. Then came the big decision...what to do about the floor upstairs. We decided to just paint and poly it. I went to Home Depot, Lowes, and Classic Flooring only to decide that I really just want a braided rug. With the walls and ceiling in knotty pine, I did not think that I wanted a wood floor. I went to LL Bean and looked at the rugs there and picked out a nice denim blue varigated to green and yellow braided rug. That helped me decide on the color of the floor...blue. I think it will look nice when it is finished. At this point, Greg just wants me to decide...I have a white wicker ceiling fan going in above so will probably go with blue/white color schemes. I had been leaning red/black but am thinking blue is a better choice. We went to Home Depot this morning and purchased paint, paint sticks, and rollers. Haliey was with us and felt we needed a painter's hat but Grandpa assured her that we could paint without one!

From Home Depot, Haliey and I went to Eight Corners to take a look! While I moved tables, Haliey supervised. I lost interest after about an hour so we decided to head home and return later. I can't do that too many times or I will not be ready!

We are heading to FLorida for Labor Day weekend. We got reward tickets on Southwest Airlines but ended up replacing them with tickets on Jet Blue from Portland. THe price was the same, both were nonstop flights, and we did not have the 2 hr drive each way. Our plans are to leave on Friday noon and return back Monday afternoon. This is an 'adults' only trip. We have taken advantage of some of the inexpensive resort specials, the free dining plan, and reward tickets so feel this is an inexpensive way to end the summer. This will be my last break until February school vacation week.

Today is the last day for EDU743 at UNE. THis has been one of the best online courses that I have taught! I am sorry to see it end but glad for the two week break coming up. More later...

1-800-4-myhome

The title of the post is actually a phone number for Sears product repair service. Over the years Greg and I have replaced all of the appliances in our home except for the trash compactor. When we bought our house, everything was in fine working order but over the past few years one right after the other needed to be replaced. We chose to go with Sears for everything except the stove. We also chose to purchase the service agreements and pay once rather than per call since everything now is full of expensive electronic parts. The night before we left on vacation I was loading the dishwasher and thought something looked funny. I called Greg over to look and asked, "is it supposed to look like that?"...He took a peek and said, "no, it is broken". Since we were leaving, my son and his family agreed to wait for the repairman on Wednesday afternoon of the following week. We were walking through the casino in the Mirage hotel and my cellphone was 'vibrating' off the hook. After waiting all day, Sears called my home and cancelled the appointment and rescheduled for the following week. I was home by this time and sat all day until about 3pm for my (8am-12noon) appointment. The technician came in, took everything apart, told jokes, etc and as he was leaving I said, "so its all fixed, right?". "oh no maam...I just ordered your parts"..soooo this week the last piece arrived and right away I called to schedule my repair. Much to my dismay, it was not scheduled until today. So again, the 8am-12noon window is given. At 11am, I call...oh yes he is ON THE WAY...At noon I call...oh yes he is ALMOST THERE...at 1pm, I heard..."I sent a message and he will call you". At 2pm, it was....he is in Scarborough so I don't know why he is not driving into your driveway. At 3pm, "Matt" said, "so what time is it where you are...wow he must be running late"...well, I lost it and poor Matt got an earful. He did, however, transfer me to a very lovely man in Dallas TX who had spent a vacation in Bangor Maine and wanted to chat. Finally at 5:15, 'Paul" called and said he knew he had been to the house once and wanted to double check the directions. After Paul arrived and fixed the dishwasher he told us that he was on his way home when he got our call. Apparently the technician that was coming ran into a huge problem with the stop before us and had been there just about all day. Did you know that there is a washer/dryer on the market that you put the clothes in dry and take them out dry...it is one stop shopping? It is so new in residential areas that the techs have not had enough training to really know what to do. Well, 'story' or not, we ended up feeding Paul our left over pizza and while his printer was charging up enough to print our receipt, he threw the tennis ball for the dogs...