In too deep?

Sometimes when I volunteer for things I find that I'm in over my head.  I incorrectly assumed when I volunteered to teach a VBS class for our parish that I'd have 10-15 kids in my class and that I would be as easy if not easier than a regular CCD class.  I'm finding that the opposite is actually the reality.

On Sunday I'll have to head over to the parish school and transform my assigned classroom into a rainforest.  With my modest budget I needed to procure decorations and craft supplies for 5 days.  Initially I thought this would all be a piece of cake since my class size was going to be 8 or 9 kids.  Shortly after being told the size of my class, I was asked if I minded teaching all of the kids in this age group and having an assistant.  An assistant is nice to have when you're doing crafts so I agreed.  Surely I could handle 17 kids with an assistant.  The class number has now grown to 21 kids, most of them boys.  Now I'm a little concerned.  I haven't taught a class with more than 17 kids since 2000.  The jump in class size also means I need to rework several crafts to ensure I have enough to go around.

You better believe that I'll be praying that I survive this next week.  I have to admit that I'm a little nervous that I'm responsible for teaching slightly more than 1/5 of the total number of VBS campers.

Unfulfilled plans

Over the past month I have spent a large amount of time planning classroom holiday parties. I'm room mom for Madeline's class, and as such, I am responsible for organizing class parties. It's a lot of work, but I happily do the job because I know it makes Madeline really happy. The first three years she was in school I didn't help out like I do now because I was busy with an infant who grew into a hard to wrangle toddler. I had my hands full and sending in napkins or cookies for a class party was about all I could manage at the time. On some level I really enjoy planning these parties. I'm very organized and in most cases, I can put these parties together in under 5 days. Sometimes things get a little hairy, but seeing the smiling kids at the party makes the hassles worthwhile. Planning a party for my CCD class is a little less stressful, but still it took me some time to figure out what I wanted to ask the parents to provide for the party, and of course planning a craft takes a little time. The time it takes to plan these parties really adds up. When all of it gets cancelled due to one snow storm, it's a huge understatement to say that I'm disappointed.

I got a phone call from Madeline's school about 30 minutes ago. School has been cancelled for the rest of the week. In one week, our school has used up all three built in snow days. Easter break will now only be a few days long. (Madeline is going to LOVE that she will be at church just about every day of her Easter break.) I'm angry with the township for doing the crappiest plowing job I've ever seen. (Note to plow truck drivers: If you put the plow DOWN, you can move the snow better!) If they had been proactive and plowed throughout the snowstorm instead of waiting until there was 24 inches of snow on the road we might not have such awful road conditions and the kids probably would have been able to go to school this week.

Madeline is very upset that her holiday brunch and Polar Express day will not be happening at school. I feel bad for all the parents who are now stuck with brunch items for a class of 25. If I had known this afternoon that school was going to be cancelled for the week I wouldn't have had to endure a trip to a mad house supermarket with a poorly cleared parking lot to buy french toast sticks for the brunch. Ugh!

On the bright side, today was not a total waste of a day. I took the girls to visit my parents. I dropped off our gifts to my parents and gave them all the gifts I had for my brothers and other family members that they would be seeing. I got Madeline off to confession, and to make her feel better about going, I went, too. (Twice in two weeks. That's astonishing for me.)

My brother, Mark, who got in the car accident the night before Thanksgiving is still pretty shaken from it. (Did I mention that before? The car was totaled but he wasn't seriously injured.) I called him today and he told me that this year he won't be driving up to my house for Christmas Eve. I'm disappointed, but I'd rather him not have to stress out about the drive. Since Madeline was born, Mark has come to our house late every Christmas Eve to say good night to the girls and help Bryan and I put all the Christmas gifts under the tree. He usually hangs out with us for a few hours and watches movies or hits me while we play the Wii. (He said it was an accident, but I think he was being a sore loser that year.) It will seem odd not having him here this Christmas Eve, but given his track record when traveling around holidays, I'd rather him stay safe at home. I suspect my parents will probably drive him to our house on Christmas.

I'm amazed at how much one snowstorm has managed to thwart a vast majority of my plans. (Let's not forget that all of my weekend plans were ruined, too.) For a control freak like me, this is a very humbling experience. Clearly, I am not the one in control here. I'm doing my best not to get too upset about all the upheaval.

Eeek! Chistmas is in less than two weeks!

I've been chugging along all Advent happy in knowing that my Christmas shopping is totally done. The gifts are all wrapped and tagged and I'm not worrying about gift giving. That, in itself, is a great feeling.

So with the house decorated and the Christmas shopping done, one might assume that I'm having a rather relaxing month of December, right? Of course not. Life has once again become a whirlwind of activity. On Tuesday, I got an email from Madeline's teacher asking me to organize the Holiday Brunch for her class. I had already committed to organizing all the parties for Madeline's class for this year in September. I'm the room mom. I don't mind doing this, but I do mind that I was given 15 days notice. In an ideal world, the teacher would have notified me that there was going to be a party the weekend after Thanksgiving. Most people are busy getting ready for the holidays and getting asked to take off from work to volunteer at a party or send in hot food for a brunch is probably pretty low on their list of things to do. The party planning started off well enough, but we've now hit a lull and several key food items are still on the list and no one seems interested in sending volunteering to bring them to the school. So right now I'm just a little stressed about the holiday brunch.

On Thursday morning I got called to substitute for a 7th grade religious ed class. I agreed to sub and I discovered that the class was without a catechist. The teacher for that class showed up for the first two weeks of class and after that the class has had a string of substitutes. I felt bad for them. Clearly, no one was responding to the call for help in the parish bulletin for religious ed teachers. I talked to the DRE on Thursday and explained that I was going into this class with some trepidation as a sub and that based on how they behaved during that class, I would consider teaching the class. I was pleasantly surprised by the class.

They're typical 7th graders, but I didn't have any kids with bad attitudes. Sure, we had some moments where talking got out of hand, but for the most part, they were a pretty good group. I had one girl roll her eyes at me and that stopped when I informed her that I can roll my eyes, too, and have been doing it since before she was born. It always gets these kids when I call them on something they don't think I saw.

Since cell phones were a problem when I subbed for a 4th grade class last month I made sure the first thing I told this class was that cell phones weren't allowed to be on during my class, unless of course, they wanted me to get a cup of water and "accidentally" drop their phone in it. That comment alone was enough to make them all reach for the phones and silence them. They warned their friends as they came into the class to put their phones away or I was going to make them drop it in water. I can be a fun and fair teacher, but I'm not going to even try to compete with cell phones and texting.

I also made it clear to them that how they acted would determine whether or not I'd consider being their permanent teacher. They clearly were getting weary of having subs, and were surprised when they were told the old teacher had decided she didn't want to teach the class. (In fact, some of the kids were really hurt saying they did their best to be good.)

At the end of the class, I asked them to raise their hand if they wanted me to stay on as their teacher. It was pretty much unanimous (I had a couple hold outs who wanted to know if I was going to give them homework--a question I wasn't willing to answer.). So I informed the DRE that I would take the class. Ellie and I will now be spending our Thursday evenings in the company of 7th graders.

Since Thursday night, I have been busy writing lesson plans and trying to determine what I need to focus on in the class. In some regards, I'm at a disadvantage. As a convert to the Catholic faith, I never went to CCD or even a Catholic school. In fact, I stopped going to Sunday school in third grade because I HATED going there. (I used to ditch Sunday school and sit in the stairwell when I was a kid as young as 5.) All I have to go on is what I remember my friends telling me about CCD and what my husband remembers of his years in CCD. I used to quiz my friends on the stuff they had to memorize for confirmation, so I essentially learned all the basics by helping them study. So I'm not totally clueless, but I'm now entering a territory that is light years ahead of a kindergarten CCD class and is more in depth than the RCIA class that I went to for less than 6 months. I guess what I have going in my favor is I am well read on Catholicism, I'm familiar with the Bible, and I like to read the Catechism when I have nothing else to read, so I'm not oblivious and walking into the class totally blind. It's a big jump going from kindergarten to 7th grade, but already teaching this class is having an impact on my lesson plans for the younger grade. I can't explain it, but a certain clarity came to me in how I'm writing up my lesson plans for the younger grade when I formulated my plans for the 7th grade. It's funny how things click sometimes.

I'm feeling a little stressed with all the the new responsibilities, but I'm hopeful that everything will work out just fine. Now if I can just get the motivation to bake some Christmas cookies, my stress level would surely plummet.

I'm still here

To look at my blog, I get the feeling that I must have fallen off the face of the earth or I've hit a major time warp. Actually the time warp thing is partly right given the recent time change for daylight savings time. Let me just say that I think that particular practice should be abolished. I'm taking a beating with the time change. Who would have thought that "gaining" an extra hour of sleep could screw a person up so much?

My past week has been a whirl wind of activity. Friday was jam packed with fun and not so fun moments. I saw the classroom Halloween party that I planned for Madeline's class come to fruition. For the most part, I'd say it was a success. The kids, the teacher and the wonderful parents who took a few hours out of their day to help run the party all seemed pleased with my efforts. Bryan took Ellie on her field trip to the pumpkin patch before he dropped her off at Madeline's school for the class party.

When I finally returned home on Friday afternoon I spent a couple hours engulfed in Madeline's social studies project. Sadly, the project was a bust and I found myself redoing it this afternoon. At long last, it is finished.

Since Bryan took Friday off to take Ellie on her field trip and to go to the doctor we decided to head out to the Olive Garden for a much anticipated dinner. Once we arrived at the restaurant, disaster struck. As soon as I got out of the car I heard this loud hissing sound and immediately suspected the tire I was standing next to. Sure enough, I had a tire that was going flat. Figures, when I'm starving and haven't eaten since 7:30 AM we would encounter a flat. Ugh! I wanted to scream and cry. I think my blood sugar had totally plummeted by the time we arrived at Olive Garden based on the massive headache I developed and we weren't able to go eat because of the tire. We rushed over to Target so Bryan could get fix a flat so we could make it home. The Olive Garden is about 30 minutes from our house and once the flat was discovered our new focus was to stop the leak and get home ASAP. The drive home was interesting. We only made it home thanks to the little air pump in my car, and the lovely air pump at the WaWa. Of course, when we got to the WaWa with a gas station we had to wait for the air hose. While waiting for 10 minutes, the tire went completely flat and all of the fix a flat oozed out of the tire. I had to yell and scream at someone who decided to butt in line and take the hose. Extreme hunger, less than desirable situations and cranky kids and husband can make me lose my composure very quickly. After letting the poor inconsiderate man from Delaware have it, he backed off and got in line for the hose. Bryan was annoyed and willing to let the guy go ahead of him, but I wasn't having it and neither was the man who was next in line. The moral of the day for the young man from Delaware was don't mess with a tired and hungry Karen and wait your turn like everyone else. We managed to make it home. Within seconds of pulling into our garage the tire was totally flat. Turns out we had quite a large gauge in the tire and how we managed to make it home is a mystery.

Saturday saw a day with a no-show soccer team (Madeline's opposing team decided not to play and didn't think to let the soccer club know.) and trick or treating. Sadly, trick or treating wasn't all that fun. It started off rather nicely with just Bryan, the girls, Oscar and me. By the time we almost made it around our block our neighbors asked us to join them. I didn't want to simply because one of Madeline's soccer teammates was going with them and I wasn't fond of the mother. Before we were done trick or treating I found myself wishing we had taken a different route when we set out. The mother of the soccer teammate criticized my dog's appearance, his rectum and the fact that we actually paid money for him when he's "so ugly". My decision to stay at home was also attacked and the mother asked me if I at least had a college education. She seemed rather stunned when I told her that I did. (I don't stay at home because I can't find a job or because I'm uneducated. I stay at home because I don't want someone else raising my children.) This woman then began to go on about how "superior" her children are because they are or will be going to private school. Her son goes to the local parish school and her daughter is in Madeline's school. They don't use the public middle school because of the "riff raff" and because their children are "superior" to the "inferior children who go to public schools". She went on and on telling me how her children are better than every other child who gets a public education. I held my tongue and decided not to say anything to her. I just said oh and I see as she and her children went on about how "superior" they are. I found it really sad that this woman has warped her children into sounding a lot like Hitler youth. And I learned that if I want my children to be "superior" all I need to do is give them a Catholic education. Since I know that our local Catholic school has a curriculum that lags behind the public schools, I'll let them find out for themselves how "superior" that education they're paying for really is. My "inferior" children will have to go to the public school and learn that not everyone is as blessed in life to have all the nice things that they do. I try to teach my children to have humility and not flaunt anything that they have and quite frankly, I'm shocked that there are parents who teach their kids that they are better than others. It's something that I found totally sickening.

Sunday was Bryan's birthday. I took the girls to Mass early in the morning and they both behaved for me (What a shock!). My CCD class was half empty due to illness for the second week in a row. I'm beginning to wonder when I'll have a full class again. The girls both had soccer games in the rain at the same time on Sunday. I'll be so happy when we can have a weekend without rain.

I don't know that I remember Monday. I'm sure I spent most of the day reading books that I have waiting for me to review. I know that we had to take Madeline to my parent's house to spend the night so they could take her to the dentist since my car went into the shop Monday night.

Since I had the tire issue on Friday, we sent the van to the Toyota dealership for repairs. I wound up with new breaks, four new tires and a bunch of routine stuff. So my flat tire led to a $1,200 bill. Just what we needed.

While Tuesday wasn't the most delightful day thanks to the car repair bill, I did have a good day. My parents took Madeline to her dentist appointment and I did some of my Christmas shopping from home. When they brought her back home, I got to go vote and I'm happy to report that New Jersey will have a Republican Governor. So I certainly feel like my vote counted. I also stumbled upon Halloween costumes for 75% off at Target. Madeline found a costume she liked for next year. She's going to be Super Girl and for $7.50 with all accessories included I'm one happy mom. I LOVE a good bargain.

Madeline is off from school all week (except Monday) so after we dropped Ellie off at school today we did a little more Christmas shopping. Then later in the day I immersed myself in Madeline's social studies project. I'm happy to report that it's finally finished and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. I hope it gets an A. I even got some Christmas gifts wrapped today. Now I just need to go relax and read a book.

I now feel like I'm caught up.

Did they move the meeting?

I went to Ellie's school tonight for the board meeting.  I got there 6 minutes early and saw that the parking lot was empty.  Not wanting to be the first one there (I'm a little weird, ok?), I decided to take a little drive to kill 5 minutes and arrive fashionably late (Why yes, I am a big dork! Thanks for noticing.).  So I get back to the school at 7:31 and the parking lot is empty.  So I decided to drive around a little more.  I spent 10 more minutes driving around and nobody showed up.

I have no idea what happened to the meeting.  Perhaps there was a situation that necessitated the postponement of the meeting, or maybe I was given the wrong date or time.  What I do know is there was not a meeting at the school tonight.  Maybe I'm just not meant to be a member of the board.  Twice now I have missed the monthly meeting.  I'll have to find out what happened when I drop off Ellie's tuition in early July.

Clearly, I am not a PTA mom

I just spent three and a half hours working the 2nd Grade Luau for Madeline's class and two others.  I'm sunburned, again (Anyone want to take bets on how old I'll be when I have my first melanoma?).  Oh and I'm exhausted. 

The kids had a good time and I guess that's really the most important part.  It was nice to see them having a great time enjoying some of the games that I was responsible for putting together.

Over the past two years, I have paid my $5 membership fee to be part of the PTA, but I never go to the meetings.  I'll happily send in supplies for PTA events, but I don't volunteer to run the events.  I'm happy to stick to volunteering specifically for my child's class.  Apparently, I'm an anomaly in that regard.  You either sit back and do nothing, or your jump in and do everything and become part of the PTA clique (I don't do cliques, I'm against them.) Today I pretty much went up against the 2nd grade PTA clique.  Yay me (<-Insert sarcasm here.)!  As the ONLY parent from my child's class to volunteer to help run the Luau, I was vastly outnumbered by the PTA moms from the other classes.  I realized about 15 minutes into the morning that I was being deliberately ignored by the other moms (the PTA moms) despite my numerous attempts to interface with them.  It made for an interesting morning.  I can't tell you how happy I was to scamper home when the event was over.

If I learned one thing only today, it has to be that my instincts to not force myself to be a PTA mom was dead on.  I may be a soccer mom now (yes, I'm finally admitting it now that it's been a full year since Madeline has done dance--I sort of miss being a dance mom), but I'm very clearly not a PTA mom.  I guess I'm too friendly and inclusive for that snake pit. Hooray for being the inferior version of a volunteering mom!  

It's school fair time of year!

This week is one of those weeks that zips by because it's a four day school week.  Add in two school fairs and a field trip and we're talking about a week that flys!  And, just for fun let's toss a 2nd grade end of year luau planning meeting on top of that.  And I thought I was in for a nice relaxing week.

Today I got a 6:54AM wake up call from the school district.  It was a recording letting us know that the Spring Fair was on for today.  Yesterday we had some cold, miserable, rainy weather.  I was actually banking on either a rained out fair or a chilly day outside.  I was hoping for the chilly day with a side of ominous cloud cover.  The day started off glum enough.  We had cool temperatures and plenty of clouds.  By noon it was warming up but some of the clouds were still kind enough to lull me into a false sense of security.  I decided that a short sleeved shirt and no sunscreen were the way to go.  Five minutes later I pull onto the field to park and realize that it's a little warmer at the school than I expected.  Figures.  We live essentially two blocks from the school, and every single day I find that it's always colder at the school than it is in my front yard.  So, of course, I'm perplexed that it's warmer over there today.  Then the clouds decided that they should make their exit.  As a result, Ellie and I both have sunburn now.  I can deal with myself having it.  I know better and it's my own stupid fault that I have it.  What I can't deal with is Ellie having a burn.  I knew I should have put sunscreen on her before we left, but I started rationalizing all the reasons why I didn't need to.  I wasn't planning to be there for very long, it was cloudy and it wasn't that hot out there.  None of these are or ever will be valid reasons to not use sunscreen when you have very fair skin.  So thanks to me, Ellie has some very red skin.  I have a nice heaping pile of Mommy Guilt.  Someday when my skin cancer ridden daughter granny-dumps me at the worst nursing home she can find and never looks back I'll have no one to blame but myself (let's hope this scenario never actually comes into play).

We had a pretty good time at the fair.  I met up with my friend Amy while we were there.  Her daughter was in Madeline's class last year, and she has a little brother who is around Ellie's age.  Amy and I had a pretty good time wrangling our crazy three year olds and trying to keep tabs on Madeline and Angie.  

I mentioned to Amy that I volunteered to teach a CCD class this year, but I was waiting to hear back from the deacon about it because I was going to have to bring Ellie with me to the class.  I've been trying to figure out if I could get a neighbor to watch Ellie and I would take their kid to CCD with me and bring them back in exchange, but I hate to burden someone like that.  Amy perked up when I told her about me wanting to teach and she actually volunteered to watch Ellie for me provided the deacon will put Angie in the same session that I teach.  How awesome is that?   If the deacon agrees, then Ellie will get to play with her friend every week and I'll get to volunteer like I wanted.  Not to mention, Amy's generous offer just sets off a nice chain of good deeds.  

I'm so happy to be surrounded by such nice people like Amy and my neighbors.  I actually feel like I'm part of a community now.  I haven't felt like this since I moved away from my hometown nearly 9 years ago.  After almost two years in this town, I can now go places and recognize lots of familiar faces on a regular basis.  I love it!

I'm jumping in!

I've been feeling way too ME centered for several years.  Sure I devote my entire existence to caring for my family, but that's MY family.  So I regard that as essentially being for me.  I don't work for compensation (just hugs, kisses and the occasional thank you) and I honestly don't see myself working for money anytime in the near future.  When I do have both girls in school full time and am home alone (presuming, of course, that I don't have another child to care for by the time Ellie is in full day school) I just can't see myself going out and getting a job.  I can totally see myself volunteering and I fully intend to do so.  Over the past 4 years volunteering hasn't been the easiest thing for me to do.  It's hard to commit to something when you aren't sure how the small child who is being toted along will behave.  Now that Ellie is almost four, life has become a lot easier in that area.  I can reason with her and she has the self control to sit quietly for a decent stretch of time.  

I made the decision that I'm going to join the board at Ellie's school.  Being on the board would require me to go to a meeting a month that lasts about an hour.  I would be helping out with various fund raisers and essentially doing the types of things I do when I organize parties for Madeline's class.  It takes a bit of work, but it's nothing overwhelming.  I plan to have Ellie at this school for another two years.  I let Cora, the director of the school, know that I'm interested in joining the board.  Last Tuesday a letter went home asking for parents to please consider joining the board since most of the parents on the board would be gone after this school year.  It was an open invitation to come to the meeting next Tuesday.  Apparently, next Tuesday was last Tuesday.  Really?   I'm either the loopiest mom ever or the letter had bad timing.  I suppose I should have looked at the events calendar on the wall at the school, but I think a date on the letter might have been helpful, too.  So I'm pretty sure Cora probably thinks I'm a total ditz.  I think I might live in a time warp or something.  This stuff seems to happen to me all the time now.  So next month (June 16th to be precise) I'm going to go to the board meeting.  I was set to go there tonight.  I'm very glad that I said something to Cora this morning or I would have showed up at a locked school tonight.

The registration forms for the kids Religious Ed classes came in the mail today.  So I got them all filled out and brought them over to the parish offices.  So the deacon goes and tells me that the letter that says to have the forms in "by June 1st" to ensure your first choice of class session, means that they're not accepting the registration until June 1st.  Hmm...the English language has either changed and left me behind, or these places don't know how to use it. First the preschool and now the church.  Maybe I just don't know how to read anymore.  It's a mystery.  Anyway, he wound up taking the registration after I mentioned that I wanted to teach a class while Madeline was in her class (don't want to teach Madeline since I envision that as a chaotic scene).  I explained that my trusty friend Ellie would be tagging along with me, but that I planned to bring a laptop equipped with dvds and headphones to keep her occupied.  He's going to get back to me, but we'll see what happens.  I'll send a follow-up email in a few days. Ellie was just happy to get a lollipop out of the visit.

I'm bringing my A game!

Watch out June 9th!  I'm coming for you, and I'm going to be armed with a box of Funfetti cupcakes with seasonally neutral cupcake liners and sprinkles!  I am very much aware that I am bringing cupcakes to Ellie's graduation.  All I need to do now I buy eggs that won't expire before June 9th and I'm totally set.

This weekend my mission was to make sure that I purchased cake mix, icing (although I just discovered that I had some in the pantry) and cupcake liners that didn't have pumpkins on them.  I'm not going to repeat the cupcake liner hodge podge of last month.  I felt rather foolish last month when I went to make muffins for Madeline's "Bunny Breakfast" at school and discovered that I didn't have enough Easter themed liners.  I brought the muffins in with Dora, Spongebob, Bunny and Halloween liners.  I felt like a total scatterbrain when I realized that I didn't have appropriate liners.  I was able to organize the entire breakfast for Madeline's class but I couldn't remember to buy a pack of Easter cupcake liners.

Tomorrow I'm going to head to the grocery store and pick up eggs.  I want to make sure that I have everything I need for June 8th when I go to make those cupcakes.  Now I just have to pray that I will not forget the cupcakes at home the morning of her graduation.  I have reminders on my calendar so I hope I won't forget.

I've been considering taking on a little bit more on the school volunteering front.  I'm contemplating whether or not I'm going to join the board at Ellie's school.  They need new board members and tomorrow night is the next meeting.  I was approached about joining the board when Madeline was in pre-K at this school but I was too busy adjusting to live with two kids.  I've been slowly volunteering to help out with more school stuff.  This year I started helping out in Madeline's class for parties instead of just sending in things.  Madeline has been very happy with my involvement.  So far, for Ellie, I have stuck with sending things in for class parties and snacks.  I've also volunteered to teach a CCD class at our church, but I didn't get a response from the Religious Ed office.  I'm going to email them again this week.  I'm thinking my volunteer offer may have gotten ignored because I said I'd have Ellie tagging along with me, or my email just got lost in the shuffle.  I'm going to email them again with my offer this week and let them know that Ellie will be occupied with my laptop and headphones so she can watch a movie or play a game while I'd be teaching.  I used to be a substitute teacher when I was in college and I miss teaching kids, so this is something I'd really like to do.