Concert Time!

In 8 days from now, my Spring Concert will be done and over with...

It is a shame, because you would think that the Spring Concert would be the highlight of a music teacher's year, as it is one of the culminating events. But, it is a lot of pressure: pressure that the students will perform well, and pressure that everything will go okay. Right now, #2 is more of an issue for me...

This is the first year where I am pretty confident in my student's performances, especially the Intermediate Band. I originally programmed three selections. When we had them all down a few weeks ago, I added a 4th, and that is now concert ready as well. I am also confident in the Beginning Band as well, although, they are admittedly easier. I am working out of Bruce Pearson's Standard of Excellence series with them. I pretty much picked two exercises that sound good, and then we repeat them, with each instrument section playing each time. Also, the Beginning Band isn't exactly supposed to sound good. They just need to sound better than they did at the Winter Concert, which they do. The Advanced Band is a different story. This group is the group that started with my predecessor, and still don't see the same vision for the band that I do. I have a lot of problems with attendance, and just with a general not-caring attitude. I programmed music that was a little challenging for them, thinking they might actually learn something. We will be okay, but only with some finger-crossing. At least two of my three groups are ready.

The logistics is the hard part. I just realized this weekend that my concert is in a little over a week. It will be one week from tomorrow. I made a short list of stuff that I could possibly get done at school today, and did actually finish it. But, I still have to: make the concert program, put in all of the necessary maintenance requests, move all of the equipment down to the stage, coordinate with the teachers on duty that night so that all of the 100 students in the band/chorus program are supervised, make sure the booster club is ready for the bake sale, get awards for the 8th graders, and I am sure a load of stuff I haven't even thought of yet.

And WHEN EXACTLY DO I GET THIS STUFF DONE?!? One 40 minute prep a day is not enough. I do get an hour lunch, but #1, I need to eat, and #2, I rehearse my bands during lunch. I also hate to stay late at school, because it means less Maddie time. So, basically, I just cram as much work into every free moment, and hope it all gets done before next Tuesday.

Oh, I can't WAIT until next Wednesday. So much pressure will be off. Of course, I still have a field trip, a 50th anniversary celebration (involving a school-song writing project--I better get started on that soon), and involvement with the spring musical...

Only 35 more school days. Only 280 more periods. I will only see most of my classes 5 more times.

Only 50 days 16 hours 56 minutes and 30 seconds till Summer Vacation!

Garden/Car Pictures

Here are the pictures from the garden that I took yesterday:

Garden Pictures April 22, 2007

And here are a few pictures of the new van:

Spring Has Sprung!

This weekend was BEAUTIFUL! I spent all day Saturday outside doing yard work, and while this may sound like something annoying to do to most, I actually love it. Oddly enough, when I was a kid, I hated to go outside and play. But now, there is nothing I'd rather be doing on warm, spring days like we had this weekend. Saturday I got all of the leaves out of the backyard, and then raked the whole yard clean. I got rid of all of the sticks that Max had chewed up, any trash that had been laying around, pine cones, etc. Now the yard looks very clean, but also very empty. Kind of like a blank canvas, I guess. My mom bought me this gardening book that I have started to read. I want to learn more about gardening and landscaping in general. I am always so jealous of the way my parent's house looks, and then I remember that they have been living in that house for over 20 years, and we have lived here for almost two. Once I am finished with the book, I want to sketch out 'dream' plans, that assume infinite time and money to complete. And then, prioritize what I have created, and add a little more every year. I'll get there eventually.

The rest of my week started out kind of hectic, but got easier as the weather got nicer. Monday I had off due to the flooding in the area around my school. Tuesday's trip to school was eventful, considering my main route to school (a country road that goes through the middle of a state forest--so no easy way of getting around it) was CLOSED due to flooding. I had to double-back and find a different route. Even though I was 15 minutes late for school, I discovered that this new route was shorter and faster. So now, I have a new way to school.

Grades were due this week, and I had everything finished by the end of spring break. However, our school still does things the old fashioned way--All report cards are done by hand, so I had to rush to get that done. After that, I actually had a pretty easy week.

Okay, I am going to attempt to browse the web a bit, even though I am uploading a video and pictures at the same time, and with my 768k DSL, that means having a particularly useless internet connection.

Garden Pictures...NEED SPRING NOW!

Okay, it is 1:54 PM, and I am HOME because it was a SNOW DAY today! Yeah, check your calendar, it is April 16. While I am enjoying one more bonus Maddie-Daddy day (Meg only got a 2-hour delay), I can't help thinking that it is April, and I should be outside gardening or something.

To remind us that spring IS actually here, I posted some pictures of the bulbs I planted back in October. They look beautiful. This, of course, is before all of the snow and ice from today weighed them all down.

Enjoy, spring will be here (IT IS HERE!)

Garden Pictures April 2007

I need to do this more often...

I was going to title this post "Where do I begin?" and then, I realized it was the title of my last post. So much seems to be going on lately that: #1-I haven't had the time to sit down and blog, or #2-I know that it will be big task to summarize my life in a single post that I continue to put it off, which means that I just have more I need to blog about. So, I am going to try to highlight some of the things that have been going on...

Meg Goes Back to School
The newest chapter in our life has begun--That of the story of two working parents. So far, it is not as hard as I thought it would be. Meg went back on March 28. We have yet to do a full week of this, due to spring break. It's kinda nice now that Meg is back, since we are both equal now (not that it was a competition or anything). What I mean by that is, when Meg was home, she felt she needed to give me as much Maddie time as possible when I got home. That meant that Meg made dinner, cleaned up, made lunches for the next day, mixed up formula, etc., while I got to play with Maddie and put her to bed. I felt incredibly guilty about this, because I knew that being home with Maddie all day isn't all that easy (see later in this post), and frankly, I actually ENJOY most household chores (no seriously, I am a geek that way). Now that Meg is at school all day, she is just as much in need of Maddie time as I am. So, we've got a good system going where one of us does housework, and one of us takes care of Maddie, and then we switch off. We also have family time, and, after Maddie goes to bed, Mommy and Daddy time, which usually involves cuddling on the couch while watching the same episodes of Scrubs again, because we are both too tired to get up and change the DVD.

Meg's perspective of this is much different than mine, since she had to deal with returning to work, as well as dropping off Maddie for the first time. She has done a nice job of summarizing her feelings in her blog.

Traffic Court
I usually am ecstatic at the start of a long vacation, counting the seconds until that final bell rings. Thursday 4/5 should have been like that, but I had my 5 PM court appearance hanging over my head all day. I had expected to be yelled at by the prosecutor, and then the judge. I had expected an emotionally crushing experience. Really, the only thing that was affected was my wallet. I showed up about an hour early, and was 2nd in line to talk to the prosecutor. I was glad I got there early, because there were a lot of people in line by the time court began. I guess when they have so many people to get through, my speeding ticket was just part of the process. The prosecutor was helpful, and amended the speeding charge to "unsafe vehicle operations," which does not carry any points, but does involve a $250 surcharge from the state of NJ. When I was called up in court, the judge completely dropped the whole insurance card thing, since I had proof that I was insured at the time (after cleaning out my car yesterday, I FOUND my insurance card). I did walk out of there $410 poorer, but at least I don't have to worry about points on my license.

I got home, and Meg and I went out to Friendly's to celebrate the start of...

SPRING BREAK!
Ah, a little reminder of what summer can be like. Well, not really this year, since the weather was pretty much cold and rainy the whole time. I am trying not to get bummed, as today is the last day of Spring Break, and tomorrow starts a full week, with not another day off until Memorial day (and my Spring Concert between now and then AHHHH!!). But on the other hand, there are only 65 days 4 hours, 24 minutes, and 45 seconds left until summer vacation. And that is calendar days, not school days (I haven't gotten organized enough yet to figure that out). We are now officially in the fourth marking period, meaning the year is 3/4 over (so it's gotta be slightly less than 45 days). Thinking back to my analogy of the year as a week, we are at about Thursday morning right now. Thursday as that "the weekend is near" feeling, but you realize you still have two full days of school to get through before the weekend. So a Thursday (the rest of April and then May), and then FRIDAY (June), and then, on June 19 at 3:15 PM, Summer Starts! (Friday after school begins).

Whoops, I am supposed to be blogging about spring break, better get back on task...

Friday was a yardwork day for me--actually, all I did was clean out and organize the shed, but considering that you couldn't even walk in there before, it was a pretty big job.

Spring break started out with a trip to Gettysburg for Easter. We borrowed my parents van (for the last time! to be explained later), loaded everything up on Saturday (including Maddie and Max), and headed over to Gettysburg. Maddie had a very nice first Easter. We headed home on Monday, and basically unpacked, went shopping, and went to bed.

Tuesday was like a summer day for me, in that I got outside and got a lot of yard work done. On Monday night, I bought a new bagging lawn mower. So, I spent Tuesday raking leaves, de-thatching, aerating, and mowing the front lawn.

Wednesday-Friday were my Daddy-Maddie days, as Meg had to go back to work on Wednesday. The first day, we pretty much hung out around the house. I took several cute videos, and took Maddie on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart and Lowes (nothing says home improvement better than buying plumbing supplies with a baby in the cart). When Meggie got home and took over baby duty, I got started on my next spring break project--fixing the pipe that burst underneath the deck this winter. This project also involved moving the hose bibb to a more convenient location. This was probably the biggest plumbing project I have ever done on my own, but it was actually a lot easier than I thought. So far, there are no leaks, and everything works. The worst part of the project was having to climb underneath the deck (lots of ivy and spider webs)

Thursday, Maddie and I visited my parents during the day. I also got my haircut. Meg met us after school, and we hung out there for a little longer. We got home, I buckled down and got to work on finishing my grades, since 3rd marking period grades are due when we get back to school. I stayed up very late that night, because after finishing my grades, I decided to crunch the numbers on our 07-08 household budget. I went into this project thinking, "how are we going to be able to do this, with having to pay my mom to watch Maddie," to "wow, we are way better off that I could have ever expected (due to our raises, and other cost-cutting measures), let's buy a

...Minivan!"

Friday, Maddie and I brought lunch up to Meg at school. I pretty much spent the rest of the day researching minivans. And narrowed our list down to a Dodge Grand Caravan, a Kia Sedona, a Honda Odyssey, and a Toyota Sienna. Friday night we did our Wal-Mart and Sam's shopping.

Saturday we went van shopping. I had already ruled out the Dodge, since my parents seemed to have a lot of problems with theirs. We started out a the Honda dealer, and looked at a 2003 with 67K miles on it. It was 18,000, and had a lot of features, but was a little older than what I was looking for (ideally 2004 or later, but not new). We then went across the Turnersville Auto Mall to the Toyota dealer. We test-drove a blue 2006 Toyota Sienna, with 26K miles for $21,900. It was the standard model, and does not have a lot of the bells and whistles (all of them really cool, but completely unnecessary), but it did have two features I really wanted... 3rd row fold-into-floor seats, and an auxiliary jack for my MP3 player. By this time, we had ruled out the Kia, since the impression we got from both the Honda and the Toyota salesmen is that they are cheap for a reason. The Toyota was a little more than what I wanted to spend, but our monthly payments worked out to be less than the $500 I budgeted for. So, after a talk with Meg, and a phone call to my dad to double-check his professional opinion of Toyotas (he drives a Camry to work everyday and loves it), we decided to buy it! I thought we would have to come back later to pick it up, but we took it home that day! Now, we were at the Toyota dealership for hours, because they were very busy (they had already sold over thirty cars by the time we left).

After getting home, I played around with the car for a while and read the manual. So far, I am happy with it. I would post pictures, but it is pouring today, so I can't get out to take any. But as soon as I have some, I will definitely post.

Today is a "getting organized" day, since tomorrow starts a full work week. In fact, I gotta wrap this up, because there is a lot to do around the house