Busy Days
The living room ceiling is completely painted! I just need to remove the tape and the plastic sheets off one of the walls. Whoo-hooo!!!! All that’s left is the trim. Lots and lots and lots of trim.
Also, Mike needs to watch a YouTube video to learn how to replace outlets. He’s done all the light switches for me, but the outlets look a little more complicated. I’ll put it on his to-do list and see if it is ever done. Hopefully YouTube instructions won’t burn my house down.
School’s been out for two days and Erik is already bored and ready to go back, despite spending three hours at camp this morning. Apparently sitting around watching Elsa play princess while I paint is not very fun. Also, having your little sister wrestle you to the ground then demand over and over “giddy up, Purple Horse, giddy up, Purple Horse” while jumping wildly is not the stuff of dreamy summer vacations.
I was also super mean and made him do two math worksheets and the whole family sat around for 20 minutes of DEAR time (drop everything and read). He sounded like one of my high school students, “so what am I supposed to do? Can I just stare at the page? Do I actually have to read it?” They do DEAR every day at school so I’m not sure why he couldn’t figure it out. Well, that’s not true. I know why he couldn’t figure it out–he was trying to get out of it. No dice, son. We’ll be doing it every day. We’ve got to keep our brains from turning into mush.
I am extremely disappointed with his cooking camp. It’s through the county, so I didn’t expect it to be super fabulous, but I did expect it to be COOKING camp, since that’s what it’s advertised as. They only meet four times for three hours each, but that’s enough time to actually cook a few things each day. Instead, they are doing totally lame stuff that does not live up to my little chef’s expectations. Today they learned about the food pyramid (not even the modern healthy plate version), made their own food pyramid, decorated an apron and made ranch dressing. They didn’t even each make their own. Two of them went to the front of the room and “helped” make it.
To say I am pissed is an understatement. Erik didn’t even get to taste the dressing because they ran out before they got to him.
I wanted to pull him out and demand a refund, but he wants to go back. It’s only three more days, so I guess I’ll let it ride but the evaluation form I fill out at the end will be smoking from the heat of my rage.
The real reason I am angry? This was the only local cooking camp we could find, but it is not that local! It is a good 30 minute drive down to the school at 8:30 in the morning. I never would have signed up for such a far-away, early camp if I would have known it was going to be totally lame.
Also, they gave the kids free t-shirts, which I thought was a nice touch until I opened it up and saw it was just an ad for the childcare center that is running the camp. Bah humbug.
Thank you to everyone who commented about PTA fundraisers. I’ve been talking to local parents as well and I am really going to push for a Read-a-Thon or Run for Education type thing. I don’t know a single person in the world who wants to buy crap from a magazine. I really like the read-a-thon idea since the kids can feel like they have some control in racking up funds from parents (even though I know most people will just give a flat amount).
Of course, it is not my call to make and I am not the fundraising chair (hallelujah!). I’ve figured that we need each child to pull in around $20 to run all our programs. Sounds doable, until you consider that a lot of families have more than one child in the school (and at other schools). Hopefully the newsletter and directory sponsorships will pull in a lot.