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School's out...Gratitude is up!

Last week I was out shopping at a local outdoor venue and ran into two moms from school. Of course we exchanged the "How is your summer?" pleasantries. I replied, "Very nice, thank you and how is yours...".

What I wanted to say  is "My summer is blissed out AWESOME!" and I don't really want to go back to my grown up life come August, thank you.

Some summer highlights so far:

• Our oldest promoted out of 8th grade and will begin high school (yikes) in August. 
• She has discovered veganism and cooking amazing meals for our entire family.
• Lots of trips to farmers markets and speciality stores for veggies and fun stuff.
• We have been hiking the local hills several times a week as a family. The kids love it and it is SO beautiful in the hills just before sunset!
• We have also been biking as a family and discovering new bike routes. Good times.
• We have been exploring outdoor shopping and music venues (P played her first concert last weekend!)
• Our neighborhood had our traditional 4th of July block party last week and it was so wonderful to see everyone again. Crazy how I can live so close to so many awesome people but work and life keeps us too busy to sit down and connect. 
• I have actually taken a daytime nap!
• J and I have been planning for Comic Con San Diego--coming up this week!

I am so completely grateful for this time off to really slow down and be with my family. It has been a crazy ride for the past two years. I work with some of the most dedicated and talented people around. We all work like fools and the rewards have been great. However, so are the sacrifices. Time is our most precious resource and while I can't say I have been wasting it, I clearly have not been spending enough of it with the people who matter most in my life.

I don't think I know anyone who has a perfect balance. I you do, and you are reading this, please drop me a line and let me know how you made that happen. I'm not going to worry too much about how the balance will work out come August. For now, I'm going to just Carpe Diem and go enjoy my kids.

Peace.

Plan to Eat is saving my marriage

Anyone who knows me from the BC (Before Charter) days knows that I used to LOVE to cook.  Truly, I love the whole planning, family management cooking gig.  Then we opened the school and all hell broke loose as far as structure and planning is concerned. As much as I know how great our school is for my kids, I have to admit a wee (OK, huge) bit of mommy guilt with the horrible amounts of take out, pizza, and teriyaki chicken bowl nights my family has had to endure these past two years.

Like many of you, I planned some 2012 strategies (the word "resolution" seems doomed to failure).  The Plan to Eat website is a fantastic tool in helping me accomplish my family meal planning, recipe archives, and shopping lists.  I love it!  I began with a 30 day trial and now I'm hooked.  I'm leaving my FamBam this week to hit the Sundance Film Festival and I have all of the menus planned, ingredients stocked, and recipes printed.  If I were superwife, I'd have the meals pre-cooked and labeled in the fridge, but let's not get crazy here...

 

A video to share...'cause it was pretty dang cool

 

Be sure to double-click to enjoy in fullscreen.

Five More Years Baby!

...and I thought opening the charter school was hard work....

After the dreaming, petitioning, start up and opening of our little charter school, we were humbled and amazed at our success.  Our oversight agency (Chino Valley Unified School District) made quick work for us (and lots of it) with their audits, reviews and demands, and we set out to meet and exceed every call.  We passed our fiscal audit with flying colors (100% clean).  We hit a 957 on the 1,000 point Academic Performance Index, and we went to work, each and every day, making school fun for the 1,076 kids who CHOOSE to come to our little charter school.

I can share story after story from parents who share that their kids now love coming to school...that their kid "went up 86 points in math on his API score on the state standardized test" (in the first year of attending...how our teachers are committed above and beyond what they have ever experienced.  None of this was enough to merit a charter renewal for our local district.  After all, with so many public agencies these days, it isn't about the results, it is about the process....

Our team has spent the past four months living the hell of charter renewal.  Writing, editing, rewriting, negotiating, and then doing it again.  Just when the document was perfect, then came the Memoradums of Understanding (MOUs) or ammendments that were the arm twisting and squeezing for blood by the district that the media and public didn't know about.  The school board came out looking like heros and my tolerance for bullshit reached a new level.  Under the guise of "oversight" the school district did a big power grab.  They want more money (doubled their encroachment), they want to limit our ability to grow (because what works just can't be in their eyes), but we can never say they are the reason we can't meet the demand.  They wanted us to follow their district rules for internal disputes, which is riduculous because as a charter school we are NOT a district school, therefore do not need to follow 99% of Ed Code.  They just could not wrap their heads around that. They made unbelievable demands, but thankfully, our Executive Director went to battle for us and kept our program intact.

Oh well, it's done.  Five more years.

Paris-London-Oxford, 2011

 

What an amazing adventure!  This was the perfect combination of adventure, education, refinement and challenge.  The BEST part was experiencing it with my daughter and our friends which whom we have grown  grown up since she has been in school.  These are the best families and we love them dearly.  I wish EVERYONE could have been on this trip! 

Here are just a few highlights.  It is impossible to capture everything we did, or all of the crazy, fun, amazing memories by photo.  I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity.  I am absolutely committed to going back.  It surprised me how much I LOVED Oxford, England!!  I think I could live there.  Do you think it is too late for me to go back to school?  Ha, ha...

 

The Amazing Race...again

We were resolved in our decision to forgo the 8th grade Europe trip for our oldest child.  We had a pros and cons list that was torturous, and we chose to sit this one out.

Then Gilbert called me.

Gilbert is the trip coordinator.  He is also a dad of a fellow student, one who has grown up with my daughter from the time they were five.  He  is French, has a passion for sharing his homeland and by ALL accounts and testimonials, "You will NEVER see Paris like you do led by Gilbert!  You simply must go!"  When Gilbert heard we were not going to make this trip he called me and said simply, "What happened?"  He said, "You of ALL people have been talking about Paris for years". 

He went on to explain that his fear was that my daughter was going to leave our school and all of the kids that have grown up together, and gone to school together since they were five would never have this chance to experience this trip, this time together again.  We only travel this way once in life.  Sold.

We leave November 11.

Thank You Steve Jobs

Thank you Steve Jobs. "Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

- Think Different, Apple Computers

I remember standing in the Apple retailer, with my mom,  purchasing my first Apple SE in 1987 when I went away to college. It was a HUGE leap of faith for my parents who were not versed in technology at the time, but they trusted I needed one and they trusted Apple was the way to go.

From 1985-1986 I made the trek up to the Moscone Center in San Francisco to the Mac World expo to wander the trade show floor. I was just a kid, but I was enamored with all things Apple. I remember marveling at the possibility and creativity. Just being surrounded by that energy flipped a switch for me.

When I moved to Ecuador in 1993, I couldn't take very much with me, but I do remember taking this very quote from a full-page Apple marketing ads for decor in my site "This is for the crazy ones....".   It somehow fortified me when I was so far away from home for those two years.  I also brought back a Mac PowerBook to write grad school applications after a Christmas visit home. Today's Peace Corps volunteers go over pretty wired. I took mix tapes and a Walkman

Today, I use my Macs (yes, multiple) in my work and private l life extensively. I use my iPhone to communicate and manage my time, my children use iPads in the classroom and for homework, iPods for games and music and even for music instruction. I use my iPad in many ways , both as a productivity tool and for relaxing (reading, movies, browsing). 

Thank you Steve Jobs.  You are a force.

Things I learned at Comicon

Captain Jack and I conquered the Con this past weekend and we had a FANTASTIC time!  He let me know last year that he really wanted to attend and I went to work to make it happen.  Little did I know at the time that scoring tickets would be SUCH a huge deal.  Multiple days of crashed servers, and three hours of sitting here hitting "refresh" and mama came through!  The Con was on!

Comicon was an amazing experience.  True, it was oversold, overhyped, and over-the-top.  People come from all over the world to experience it.  I learned that Comicon truly does offer something for everyone.

I met some wonderful and very interesting people this weekend (had plenty of time in line to chat 'em up).  I also learned a few jems:

San Diego's rail system is awesome!  We were lucky enough to say at mom's best friend's place in San Marcos and take the Coaster in to the Convention Center.  This saved us so much time, hassel, and stress.  Jack loves trains and the Coaster is a fab way to get to the heart of San Diego.  I feel like I can find my way around a little now!

I learned about Ugly Dolls this weekend.  I can honosty say that I don't know whether I am enchanted by their simplicity and sweet story of how they came to be (small business success story driven by love) or disgusted with myself for grabbing the  trade show booth trend.  No matter, my eight year old LOVES her new BFF:

Meet OX:

I grabbed Ox a Ninja Batty Shotgun fleece string backpack to call home and for D to love;)

While browsing the aisles at Comicon, I walked by a booth featuring this girl.  The more I studied her, the more I began thinking, "What is my daughter doing in a comic book".  As I began reading the books and browsing the items, the more the Twilight Zone music began to play around me.  Here is a bio of the protagonist Emily:

Emily's not your average thirteen year-old-girl. Pink is her worst nightmare...she wears the same black dress every day. She loves math and science. Her best friends are her four BLACK CATS! She's into old rock & punk, but also digs newer bands like My Chemical Romance (BTW, Gerard Way is featured in her Dark Horse comic book, "Revenge at Last!") Emily is so anticool she's cool... a subculture of one, and a follower of no one but herself. Emily is: An Artist, A Dreamer, An Inventor, A Scientist, A Skater, A Rocker and An Individual!

Now, THAT was strange!

Jack and I covered a lot of ground in two days...we followed Tweets for the Cowboys and Aliens gold rush to get movie swag, got our Osborn Corp ID badges for Spiderman, he played two rounds of the yet-to-be-released Gears of War xBox game, I took a photo of him with a replica prop, posted it on the N.E.C.A. Facebook wall and he got Gears Cogs tags.  We attended an Indiana Jones panel discussion.  I met Jay and Jack of my favorite Lost Podcast (great guys). We saw a late show of Captain America, I got to see cast members of my favorite show Sons of Anarchy, and best of all....my son and I had an adventure that we will never forget!

We loved it!

Inspiration for Summer Days

I find some fantastic things while browsing the Pinterest boards...

I need to post this board in huge letters on my living room wall for my kids:

 

Full instructions on how to make your own are found here.

I think this is a brilliant idea for the "What's for dinner" question that faces me seven nights a week:

All I need is a little vinyl rub on lettering and some magnet-backed embellished squares.  I think the dusty 'ol Xyron machine could handle decorating the fronts.

I adore this bubble fill station:

 

I love the idea of a Family Manifesto:

  

Here is another blogger's post offering guidance on how to write your own family manifesto and a link to Aardvark, a company who will make a customized print of your work.

 

Urban Zen Juice

Back in the saddle again!  Unbelievable what a few days off can do for your mind, body, spirit and FOCUS!!! I picked up a fantastic new book (it always starts with a book, doesn't it;)

Amazon Link HERE

P.S. I love how she calls it a 21 Day "Adventure Cleanse".  Totally summarizes her approach to wellness and life!

This book is full of great information, fun to read and fabulous smoothie recipes.  She gave me the "duh" tip on bagging up all of my smoothie ingredients so all I do is dump them into my Vitamix and blend every morning.  Viola!

I go to Henry's Farmer's Market, buy all of my green goodies, wash 'em up, bag 'em up and then blend 'em up over the next few days.  Easy peasy.  I add some SuperFood spirulina Goji Acai berry powder to give me a SuperWoman boost and this Urban Zen juice is crazy good stuff!  Try it!

As Kris says, Peace and Veggies