September knocking on my door

I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but it appears that September is just two mornings away.  I feel like the entire summer slipped through my fingers.  This realization started to set in on Friday for me when Madeline's school letter arrived.  I'm not sure why the letter Ellie received a couple weeks prior did not have the same effect on me.

The past few days we've been in that familiar place of trying to find out who will be in Madeline's class this year, and of course, wondering how we'll like the new teacher.  We don't know much about the teacher.  A few parents who have heard about her say she's tough, or strict.  Madeline doesn't like hearing that, but I'm not too worried about it.  Some of my favorite teachers have been the really strict ones.  They're great because they don't allow nonsense in their classes and the students actually learn.  If that's the case for Madeline this year then I welcome it.  

But still, I have my mixed feelings on sending her off to school.  I want to homeschool, but I can't hash out whether or not it's the right choice for us.  Maybe next year, or maybe never at all.  I just don't know.  This coming school year will be one of some deep introspection on my part.  

With a single week of summer vacation left to us, I have to seriously plan our activities.  Yesterday we visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art for what will probably be a good stretch of time.  Our annual membership will expire tomorrow.  We've decided to let it lapse and hope that one of the grandparents will be kind enough to buy a new annual membership for us this Christmas.  We hardly used the membership last fall because of soccer and we suspect the same will be true this year.  No sense in buying it now when we might not be going back for several months.  Our lives will not be totally devoid of culture this fall.  We will be taking the girls to Washington DC in October to tour the museums in the Smithsonian Mall, and we will visit the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception while we are there.  I'm looking forward to going to Mass there.

I was nudged into planning my religious education classes this past week, too.  Classes will be resuming a week earlier than I had anticipated and up until last Wednesday, I hadn't really done much by way of planning.  I met another third grade religious ed teacher at the meeting I attended this past Wednesday and she inspired me to get planning.  I liked many of the things she does with her class so I set off to create a similar model.  For months I had been contemplating creating a blog or website for my classes but wasn't sure about it.  After checking out the site this teacher had for her class I decided to give it a go.  Over the past few days I've put a lot of time into the blog I created for my two classes.  Take a look if you have a moment and tell me what you think of it.

At long last, a small person is now awake in our house.  I'm going to get the other one moving and try to make the most of what appears to be a beautiful summer day.  Maybe later I can continue my thoughts on this quickly fading summer.