Friday, August 24, 2012

High School is a Whole New Ballgame

I wont lie.  I love the start of the school year.  There are some annoying tasks - like filling in three huge stacks of forms that need signing.  Contact information, permission forms, lunch forms.  On and on.  Usually takes me hours to complete them.

Happily, this year all three of my kids are at one school - high school - and all the forms are online.  Easy Breezy.

So imagine the look on my face after the first day of school when they all brought me piles of forms.

Contracts.  I hate them.  Every single class wants me to sign a form that I will hover over my kids and make sure they do their homework and wipe their noses.  Then I have to fill in three contact numbers and an email for each class.  Seriously, are you going to have some emergency in math class with my kid that you have to try four different ways of contacting me?  Are teachers really going to keep these numbers handy?  They couldn't use the contact information I supplied the school?  Are they going to take me to court if I don't sign one of the contracts?  I'm all kinds of annoyed at these.

But I slogged through my stacks until I got to even more forms, that were not contracts and permission forms.

Like an order form for a pearl necklace.
And a tuxedo shirt
And opera tickets for Rigoletto and Tosca at San Francisco Opera.

Whoa.

Turns out the twins have to dress formally for their Symphony Band concerts (it's a faux pearl necklace - but it still threw me), and they get to go with the band to see the operas.

So awesome.  I almost wish I were back in high school.  Almost

This year also brought some surprises in the school supply category.  No longer can we raid the big office stores for colored pencils and pink pearl erasers.  The supplies are considerably more boring now, and expensive - like graphing calculators and expensive textbooks.

Finally, every year I remind my kids that I'm not a delivery service.  I will not deliver forgotten lunches or books or homework to school.  If they forget they have to face the consequences.  The exception is the very first week of school.

Minutes after their dad dropped them at school this morning, I got a call at home.

"Mommy?  It's the first week of school, and I sort of forgot my biology project and I really need it!  It's out on the front porch."

"All I see is an Altoids tin."





"That's it!  Could you please bring it to school?  Thanks mommy!!"

I can't resist it when they call me mommy.  I'm also human.  And it's the first week of school.  So I agreed.

The one thing I should have resisted though, was opening up the tin to see what was inside.



If you can't tell, there are a bunch of pill bugs/potato bugs/roly-polys in there.

I miss middle school already. 

Monday, August 20, 2012

Makes My Monday: Disney Studio

On our recent trip to Disneyland, we had the wonderful privilege of visiting the Walt Disney Studios.  I am so grateful to my friend who is an employee there for giving us the grand "insiders" tour.





Here is Wasabi Girl sitting in the recording studio.  It was all set up that morning for a celebrity.  Not sure if I can mention the name because she was coming in to audition for the next Pixar feature (Monsters University).  Each of the kids got to sit in the chair, but before we left, they all had to sit in a different chair - the one Johnny Depp always uses.  Ok, I admit, I sat in it too.  You can see the huge screen in the background that's used when actors are recording lines for live action films.

Every Disney park around the world has this "Partners" statue, but this one at the Disney Studios is the only one you can walk up next to and pose with.  Wasabi Girl got her hand close to it, but Jungle Boy reached out and put his arm on Walt and got scorched.  That metal gets hot!



The statue is in an outdoor walkway that has plaques with hand prints of people who have been designated "Disney Legends."  It's a lot of fun to read all the famous names.

We also got to visit the Disney Archives, where the kids could get up close to wonderful items like the actual wardrobe from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."








I am so grateful for this opportunity.   Now that we've all been behind the scenes, we have a new appreciation for the work done by all those people in those long lists of credits at the end of films.

"Makes My Monday" is hosted by Cheryl at Twinfatuation.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Catching up

Vacation is over. Most of the family is home again, and the laundry room  is a busy place.





The word for the day is "catch up."  Okay, two words.  Not just on laundry but emails, paper mail, weeds in the garden, and back-to-school shopping.

Of course none of that looks as fun to do as putting my feet up and doing some stitching.  My projects will just have to wait a bit.  The sunburst above was a free pattern from Tiny Modernist.

I'm also way behind visiting blog friends.  Do you ever get the urge to hit that "mark all as read" button on your reader?  Seems like a great way to cheat and catch up without actually catching up.

Off to fold laundry.  What are you up to today?

LinkWithin Related Stories Widget for Blogs