School Drop Off Day

Today is school supply drop off day in the district. Patrick took a half day vacation so he can take the kids to school and meet the teachers, etc. I met the boy's teacher last Friday, did I mention that? Yesterday we had staff meetings most of the day. Today we had a technology meeting with all of the tech staff and info assistants. Lack of funding is extremely hard on these folks. On a somewhat related note, while working at the other place over the weekend I noticed a little blurb in the paper about the district education foundation, and at the end was the web address! My first website to get newspaper publicity! www.ccsd46educationfoundation.com for those that don't know. lol

Tonight is my last night in the sweep of 7 days straight at the other place. I have tomorrow off! I wanted to have tomorrow off (first day of school) so we could all do something together. Maybe we'll go try Potesta's pizza. It is a new place that opened up near our old house. Tomorrow we also start our new after school plan, although Patrick is taking abother half-day vacation tomorrow so he'll be home with them the rest of the day.

Off to work!

Barely Kicking..

Well, looky here....it has been a week since I last posted. Let's see...what have I been up to? Um...1 word....WORK! 40 hours at the school district and 35 hours at the other place, plus orders for Happy Jack. And PTO stuff too. It is a madhouse around here. The good news is that pretty soon we will be settled into a more normal routine, I hope. The other place seems to have finally figured out my schedule requirements and I actually have some days off coming up. I'm taking off Monday nights for village/school board meetings and Tuesday nights for PTO meetings and Saturday mornings for Market Day and soccer games. And I'm taking off whenever there are any other school activities, like the first day of school. I was asked tonight to serve on a committee for the village. Programs committee, I think it is. I'm seriously thinking about it because I think it would be extremely cool. I've been told it is only a once per month meeting and doesn't take up much time. I'll have to mull it over for a bit, but I'm definitely interested.

My boss at the district loaned me a terrific book (two actually) on getting business to come to you. For a business book it is very good. I've been taking it with me to the other job to read on break time. And here's something that occured to me tonight as I was ringing someone up. I *think* today was payday at this place. lol. I've been so busy I've forgotten to notice. I'll have to check that. And hopefully I will get a paycheck from the district this time around. I missed the cutoff with my paperwork last time so I should get a nice big check at the end of the month. Greatly looking forward to that.

Ok, off to bed for me. Gotta work again in the morning.

Um...sorry...!

Can't believe its been almost a week since I wrote in last. Ooops. Well that's what happens when I'm never home. This has been a non-stop week. Working, working, meetings, and more. I've seen the kids for about an hour all week long. They were sad today when they went to Granny's house because I had to kiss them goodbye and tell them I'd see them tomorrow sometime. And well, I'd say more, but I have to run back to work in a few minutes and my bagel just popped from the toaster.

BUT, I did want to share a fantastic site. One plus of the new job is seeing all of the cool curriculum and educational catalogs that come in. One is for a company called MindWare. They have fantastic mind games and some art stuff too. I would love to offer some of this stuff on Happy Jack. But in the meantime, this would be an excellent site to bookmark for Christmas gift giving ideas!! There are a bunch of games in there that I want to play too! Visit them at www.mindwareonline.com.

I got a car!!

Yea! Finally some really excited and long overdue news. We got a second car, finally, today. We've been looking all week long, and took the plunge today and were driving home in the new VAN by 3pm. We got a used Nissan Quest mini van. Beige color with tan leather interior. It is very similar to our old van, but is missing a few options, but actually has some other really cool options, so we are very happy with it. It will be primarily for me to go back and forth to work and around town while Patrick will use the Malibu to go back and forth to his work, as he's been doing. We decided to go with the van over several other smaller cars we looked at because of the obvious room advantage, plus we get the option again of doing shows if we want to, being able to haul stuff home (like wood, etc.), being able to stick the bikes in the back and go further out to go riding, plus this van has a sunroof AND the back window opens up too, so this will make the perfect Happy Jack Parade-mobile! Peter has already designed plans for how we can throw candy out the back window and I can stick my head up out the sunroof and with a spinning Happy Jack hat on my head. lol. Kids.

Tomorrow I start back at the other job. Working from 1 to 10 or 11 or something like that. Not sure if I'll be cashiering or working the floor or what, but at least I won't be unloading a truck!! Off to bed!

FRIDAY!!

I made it through week 1 of the new job. I miss my babies though. They've been at Camp Granny all this week. I was very sad yesterday at the thought of how much I'm having to work and not be able to see the kids, but I did get 1 good year out of staying at home, and at least with this job I am very close by and get home early and for lunch etc. It's not like I have to drive an hour and a half both ways, just about 5-10 minutes. So while it's not my ideal situation, maybe it's only temporary, and it isn't as bad as it could be.

Alright time to get going back. Have a good weekend who ever is out there...

I'm Home!

First day of work under my belt. Let's see....the AC wasn't working this morning, but someone came and fixed it, although it never really cooled down much. I ordered a bunch of stuff, made some phone calls (although my voice mail doesn't work yet, so please, don't leave me any messages), had lunch, did some contracts, made an appointment to get fingerprinted, and came home. So that was my day.

The kids went on the train this morning with Patrick for their "Granny Week" festivities. Not sure what is being planned, although they will go to the pool with my sister, and possibly Medieval Times at some point. I miss them already.

Tonight we are going to try to run a care package up to my niece who is camping in Wisconsin and then we're going to swing over to Kenosha and look for a car. It would help if I knew how much money I'm making with the new job, but until the teachers' contract is settled I have no clue. Wonder how they'll pay me if it isn't resolved soon....hmmm...