Jack's first field trip!

I took this past Thursday off to go with Jack and his class to the Long Beach Aquarium. The kids were very excited to go to the aquarium, but I think they were most excited to ride on the bus.

This is Jack and his friend Sky, who also went to Maria's with him. Bell went with me on the field trip, so they asked us if we could watch Jack and Sky and another one of Jack's classmates named Lily. We were a little nervous about the two boys, but we figured Lily would be a piece of cake.

Wrong! We quickly discovered that Lily is a wriggler and a darter. While I followed Jack and Sky walking hand in hand through the aquarium, poor Bell ran ragged trying to keep track of Ms. Lily.

The magic bus.

One of the few times we managed to get all three kids together.

There was a lot of cool stuff to see. The kids were watching a playful group of sea lions when this shot was taken. There were also a lot of divers cleaning out the aquariums while we were there, which the kids thought was very exciting. They squealed like a rock star had just jumped in the tank.

Jack and Sky pretending they were about to be swept out to sea. (A cranky employee scolded us for letting them up there two seconds after I shot this. Who puts a bunch of rocks up in a place swarming with kids unless you expect them to climb on them a little bit?)

The kids all lined up for their picture. Except Lily. Her teacher had to chase her down and beg her to join the group. I was trying to get Jack to smile, so I stuck my tongue out at him. I did catch this...

...but it quickly turned into this.

There were a couple of cool things about this trip that I've never seen on our other trips to the aquarium. There is a giant model of a momma and a baby whale suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the aquarium. We stopped for a big, long potty break right below the whales and all of a sudden they shuttered all the windows and started playing whale sounds and then a movie appeared all around us. That was pretty cool, but it was also cool to go into the back of the aquarium for a special educational show.

Lily, miraculously holding still for a moment.

Sky entranced.

Two fingers! Finn taught Jack well.

Go ahead, everybody's doing it.

That's Jack's friend Roan next to him. She was the other poor kid in her pajamas at their Christmas performance.

Bell and I were a little tired by the end of it, but all in all, it was a pretty great first field trip for the Jack man. We just wish Finn (and Julie and Scarlett!) could have been there.

Satire!!!

A brilliant proposal from Nathan Bootz,
superintendent
of public schools in the town of Ithaca in central Michigan:

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Tom.

So I've been let go from my school after nine years.

We did it!

Many many months ago I wrote a grant for a reading garden for Finn's school. We won a $5000 award from Lowe's, yay! Unfortunately, everything that goes through LAUSD is a little slow and it is only now that we are starting to see it all come together. We were ready to paint the mural last Sunday but we got rained out. Well, we finally did it! We painted the mural today. We started out the morning with a go away rain dance.

We made these special hats yesterday. Thanks Scarlett, Jack, Finn, Felix and Bell for making these great anti-rain hats. It was a little overcast this morning but they did the trick!

We forgot to take a before picture of the wall we painted, but the bungalow next door gives you an idea of what it looked like. There is A LOT of this orange/brown color at Finn's school.

Thank you to Patrick, Bell, Steve, Jordan, and Lonnie for pre-painting the wall blue for us! That was a big help today.

Here is Ms. Gretchen our awesome creative leader chalking in all the outlines for us. We were all just standing around, sort of staring in fright at the blue wall and then Gretchen got there and took charge. Mom, she is a lot like you. We were debating getting a projector and other means of putting the winning design on the wall when she just grabbed a piece of chalk and started sketching it all out free-form.

Yay Gretchen thank you! We really couldn't have done it without you.

Patrick painting in the sun!

Some of our little helpers. The kids had a lot of fun painting, but they also loved having free rein of their school on the weekend.

The kids painted in all the grass for us at the bottom of the mural.

Even Jack sat still for a little while to help.

Ezekiel was my little helper all day. He was awesome and added in lots of great details.Slowly, but surely, here it is coming together.

I have to admit, that I was partial to Finn's design for the mural. He did an Octopus' Garden theme with an Octopus reading books on all of its arms to various sea creatures who were gathered around. He even showed a bit of copy writing skill, writing, "I'd like to read under the sea." Awwww. All bias aside, the winning mural design did seem like it was somehow meant to be. The centerpiece of the winner's design was a kid sitting on a stack of books. Gretchen immediately decided to use this very inconveniently placed electronics box as a 3D version of the stack of books. Perfect!

Voila! Here it is finished.

Here are our little helpers taking a break.

Here are the kids' hand print flowers. The two together on the far-right hand side are Finn's and Jack's and I think the little pink one at the top left is Scarlett's.

Almost finished...

This really was a great project to be involved with. So many parents, staff, kids and community members came together to make it happen. I think of it as our valentine to the school.

And to one little kid who I especially adore.

And to other future Glenfeliz kids yet to come. A lifetime of happy reading to all of you!

The Jack man

Jack had a Spring music performance. When Bell and I saw the program of seven songs, we were a little nervous. Would a classroom full of wriggly pre-schoolers really be able to make it through seven songs? Would they remember all the words? When they came out on stage and sat down, Jack looked a little nervous too.

Then they jumped up though. Jack looked ready. This picture captures a hint of the sweetness inside Jack if you get him when he's not lunging around jabbing swords at people.

That's him off to the far right. He was underdressed for the Christmas performance and a tad over-dressed for the Spring performance, but he was a trooper. He sang his little heart out.

See?

Another sweet picture of Jack. Note the military-like posture. Jack took the whole performance very seriously.

And never missed a beat.

In case you can't tell, he was having a great time hamming it up.

Dimples!

This was during 'You are my Sunshine.' Awww. You and Finn are my sunshines too, sweetheart.

See, very serious. Jack didn't just close his eyes, he squeezed them shut.

But he still took the time to send a few smiles our way.

This is Jack with his awesome teachers, Ms. Sylvia and Ms. Maritza. As you will see in the next couple of pictures, this is Jack's new posed picture smile. Exhibit A.

Exhibit B. Thank you so much for coming Aunt Bell! Since Bell moved into our complex, Jack has pretty much been glued to her hip. She manages to pry him loose every now and then, but he completely adores her and would happily move in with her if she would let him. That's his cutie pie friend Ethan next to them.

Exhibit C. I would make more fun of Jack's picture face, but obviously mine isn't much better. Thanks for the great performance Jack, we loved every second. We're so proud of you for doing such a great job in school!!!