Ten Years

Our family has officially graduated from elementary school. We spent ten years there watching our children grow, learn and occasionally be beaten down. Our kids learned a lot. So did Dave and I.

I will miss

• The sounds of laughter on the playground
• Performances like Geology Rocks and Rumpus in the Rainforest
• Amazing teachers: Marc Trapani, Melanie Carbrey, Brenda Aepli, Lori Ransdell
• Gold Rush Day and The Old Schoolhouse field trip
• The Halloween Parade
• Breakfast Book Club
• Lunch on the Lawn
• The elaborate, over-the-top Teacher Appreciation celebrations we could do in the early years
• Volunteering

I will not miss

• The parents who disregard the carpool pickup line
• The revolving door on the principal's office (three in ten years)
• Recorders and recorder concerts
• Questionable cafeteria food
• The cold water in the bathrooms when the taps say there is both hot and cold

I'm not sure how our children can be so old. Probably my parents ask themselves the same thing.

8th Grade Promotion

Our 14-year-old wearing a white dress and six-inch-heels in a sea of 14-year-old girls wearing mostly white dresses and six-inch-heels. Fourteen-year-old boys sweltering in long pants and dress shoes. 88F degrees. Sitting in the sun. Singing. Speakers. Diplomas. A field with a ratio of 3 grasshoppers to each human. Dinner at Chow. Cake. Exhaustion. Summer.

Back away, people.

Let me preface this post by saying that I'm having a great day. I've done some good work. I went to a professional group meeting over lunch. The speaker was engaging and relevant. Caryl Lyons is going to join my gym, which means we can spend more time together. Vanity Fair came in the mail. It's a perfect fall day in Northern California. I have lots to be happy about.

However, sometimes we need to put our big girl panties on and deal.

One of our neighbors drives very fast, much faster than one should drive in a neighborhood where children ride their bikes and walk to the bus stop. This morning she nearly ran over one of our kids and didn't even slow down; I think she didn't notice. Tonight I must confront her.

The youngest Pinks had an assembly yesterday. And something happened during the first five minutes of it which led the principal to cancel it. My children came home and told me that the principal yelled at them so that leads me to believe it was a behavior issue. Where is the communication to parents on this, showing the administration's side of the story? If there is no such message then I will just have to take my children's version of the story as the gospel. I sent off a note to her today, too. Surprise!

No, I do not have PMS.

SOS - Save our Schools!

Yesterday was Mike Cannon's last day as vice principal at our middle school. Monday he starts his new job as principal at a much larger middle school two towns north of here. I am happy for him professionally and personally, and I am also saddened at our school district's loss of this talented administrator.

From the outside, it does not seem like being a middle school vice principal would be fun. All those hormones. Discipline. Logistics.

I met Mike about a year ago when he helped me with logistics for the Rachel Simmons Curse of the Good Girl lecture. As it turns out, he lives in the same neighborhood as my brother and they're friendly. I've gotten to know his family and they're good stock, the kind of people you want around.

We have a new principal at our elementary school this year and she appears to be doing as little as possible to get by. I've spoken with our PTA president, other parents and the school district about this and am hopeful the district will address those in time for her to make an impact. She's got a tough job -- her two predecessors were both strong, opinionated women who didn't back away from a challenge. Fortunately the youngest Pinks have good teachers this year and that will affect them far more than the principal.

We intentionally live in a community with stellar schools. Yet I'm disappointed in these two recent events. We could private school our children but we don't want to. Dave and I are products of public schooling, all the way through college, and are advocates of it. This is what keeps me awake at night.

Mountain High - 2011 School Version

I have this bad habit of taking on elementary school class auction projects. I just love doing them. Creativity is a good release for me and it benefits our school, too.

This year I just signed up to do the class auction basket for Liberty's class. My idea was Mountain High, things you'd use for a trip to the mountains, set atop a custom snowboard bench. Her classmates contributed generously and for the benefit of the school, I ended up separating the bench from the rest of the goodies.

My brother Barry founded Chairs4Charity in 2009. He is a testicular cancer survivor and a mensch. This is his way of giving back to the community. The bench he made for our auction is especially beautiful - bright green and blue. Heck, I want it for our ski place!

In our basket were Amex, Any Mountain, iTunes and Bass Pro Shops gift cards, s'mores supplies, 3 books, sand toys, a fancy snow saucer, a thermos and French hot chocolate mix, sunscreen, snowball makers, a snowman making kit and hand warmers. I even managed to wrap it up cute after all the bow-tying and cellophane lessons in preparation for the BatM.

The baskets are on display this week and there are some fabulous ones. Here are my three favorites:

1. Game Basket. It looked like someone went to the game aisle at Target and filled a cart with all the best things. You buy it and then Family House at Children's Hospital is the recipient. What a win! Family House is the residential facility next to the hospital where the families of ill children get to stay when they live too far to commute. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

2. Emergency Preparedness Basket. All the things you're supposed to have in storage in case of a natural or unnatural disaster. Not so sexy but oh so useful.

3. Middle School Basket. Another sharp idea. Included were the ugly PE clothes and gym locker lock, which every 6th grader has to buy, the special calculator required for math class, and a whole lot of other things that mom and dad have to search for come August. A+.

Let the bidding begin!

SOS - Save our School

Our elementary school is not going to close. But class size may go up again and we may lose music, the full-time librarian I have issue with and PE if we don't solve our budget issue. How a school that feeds into a high school where 98% of graduates go on to four-year-colleges faces these issues is beyond me. Still, it's the talk of the town.

Our wonderful principal, who sadly came to our school two years ago just when the going got rough, sent out an email asking if people had fundraising ideas. Being wacko an out-of-the-box thinker, I suggested the following:

• A $10K donation allows the parent to choose their child's teacher the following year.
• A $250 donation allows the parent to request that a child not have a specific teacher the following year. $250 also buys the right to have your child not in a class with another child you predetermine.
• $100 buys you out of an unexcused absence. You don't have to lie and say Little Bobby is under the weather when truly he's under a cabana on Kaanapali Beach.
• $100 and Little Bobby can bring in sweets on his birthday, something that is now against district policy.
• $1K and Little Bobby can announce the Pledge of Allegiance over the intercom.
• $250 buys Little Bobby the right to pull the week's ABC cards.
• $250 and Little Bobby can skip the semi-annual timed mile run.

We'll see if they take any of my suggestions. Do you think I should give up my day job?!

I'm wiped out.

And I'm not the only Over 40 feeling this way today.

The first week of school is behind us. I just want to stay in bed all weekend but we all know the chances of that happening. It's 105F out I'm grateful that The Pinks aren't in a soccer tournament.

Although my husband does more than his fair share of the parenting, I still found this week draining. Three kids at two different schools with six schedules in total: Minimum Day (first day), Wednesday schedule and Regular Schedule (Thursday and Friday). Six different times that the bus picked up and dropped off. Three days of homework to supervise to completion, three sets of paperwork to process each night, three lunches to make each morning. Three children to coerce into bed at a decent hour each night and then out of bed the next morning.

And, to top off the week, my husband decided to orchestrate a neighborhood block party since many of our neighbors are now home from their summer travels. He planned this well in advance and executed it flawlessly. I did little except show up last night and clean up this morning. He is THE MAN!

Although the kids had ten weeks off school, I only had three. Why, Leslie, you may ask, did you go to school this summer? It's not that I went to school, it's that I spent a whole lot of time thinking about school.

The work I do right now is with technology solutions in education. It's really fun stuff, things I can absolutely relate to and it's interesting and challenging as well. But I cannot dispute the fact that I didn't really get away from school this summer.

The Pinks all seem quite happy in their new classes. Eldest Daughter started middle school and, aside from the huge, ugly and mandatory PE outfit, she's good with it all. I'm not sure who loves the bus more -- the kids or us. They just walk out the door in the morning then back in after school. In one more week after-school activities start (gymnastics, theatre, Hebrew, etc.) so Dave will be back to picking them up and driving them around but for now it's a beautiful thing.

'Twas the night before Christmas

Oh wait, wrong month.

Tonight, all over America, mothers and fathers are doing the same things.

Writing names on new backpacks. Inventorying school supplies. Making lunches. Laying out "first day of school" outfits. Locating bus passes. Spending an obscene amount of time on the phone and on email figuring out who is in whose class. Checking to be sure battery in digital camera is charged. Preparing for the moans when we insist they pose by the front door on the way out in the morning.

Eldest Daughter starts middle school tomorrow. As time marches on I have less and less involvement in her academics, her friendships and her selection of clothes. (Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Ms. Principal, for the dress code.) Her shoe size is barely one below mine now.

A few of my friends are sending their firstborns off to college. I'm glad I had children in my 30s instead of my 20s! This I cannot fathom.

We won!

A big hug and thank you to all of you who offered encouragement and kind words as I fretted over Thing 2's class auction project. I really put my heart and soul into it.

Today I achieved my goal: it brought in what I consider to be very nice amount ($1,950.00) for our elementary school and is the project that has brought in the highest amount of money this year.

I am happy its new owner will give it a special home.

My work here is done.

This quilt will be the death of me.

The countdown is on. The class auction project quilt has to be done by February 2. I managed to leave it up at Tahoe after Christmas, thus losing a week of vacation time to work on it. I've been DVRing random trashy TV shows to force me to sit on the sofa and hand applique twenty little handprints. (What was I thinking?!) Finally I finished.

I promised Dave sexual favors if he'd drop the quilt at The Quilting Company so Janna could stitch the front to the middle to the back. Once Janna's done, hopefully in a few days, I have another five hours ahead of me personalizing each house and binding it.

It's going to be close ...

In over my head

I'm still working on Thing 2's Class Auction Project. It's a little more ambitious than I'd anticipated and I'm starting to panic at how much is left to finish.

Do know what this block right here is? It's the Mustang Soccer Complex. See? Red and white? Green fields to the side? Use a little imagination please as I'm in that frightening place where I don't know if this quilt is going to be my best or worst ever.

I was feeling much better about this endeavor before I talked to the mom who is doing Thing 1's class project. She's also doing a quilt and she's a professional quilter. She really and truly makes her living designing patterns and fabric. She has my fantasy job. And her work is gorgeous! But I'm not competitive or anything ...

One last comment about this time-suck of a masterpiece. Eldest Daughter looked at it tonight and said, "I know the perfect place for it: the laundry room."

The year Thanksgiving went missing

I just came home from volunteering at the elementary school. I've never volunteered in the library before but someone in one of The Pink's classes needed a sub so I gave it a shot. In case you're short on time, I'll net it out for you: I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

The librarian was less than enthused to have me because I hadn't been through "Library Volunteer Training." Oh well. I told her that I was a sub for someone else. Apparently the most desirable subs have been through training.

She directed me to the electronic catalog of books and showed me the search she'd pulled for Christmas books, and how to help the kids find them in the shelves.

I politely, very politely, asked her why the students weren't looking for Thanksgiving books since Thanksgiving was the next holiday. She brushed me off and said, "Oh, we're doing Christmas now." This made me unhappy since Thanksgiving has such great associations and it's NEXT on the calendar.

I said, "What kind of message does that send the students if we skip the holiday about giving thanks?" For this I received a dirty look.

Someone must have peed in her coffee this morning.