As summer begins...

I have some goals.  I'm putting them online so that you can all roll your eyes and enjoy watching me eat my serving of humble pie in August when I go back to work and have to report on their failure.  We all know that public humiliation is more fun than any other kind...occasionally you have to take the brunt of it.

I submit, for your feelings-of-superiority-enjoyment:

1) To help Kamu learn his numbers and colors better.  He's doing remarkably well lately but still needs a bit of help to catch up with where he probably should be at this point.  We're making it a priority to count anything we can with him and make colors into a game, so we're already into this goal.

2) Get Patrick writing his letter facing the correct way the majority of the time.  He regressed in this tremendously over the last year.  Since his teacher did not feel the responsibility to address it even slightly, we're on deck to continue getting him to write letters the right way.  This is especially important because my next goal is...

3) To scan in Patrick's first completely self-written and self-illustrated story and post it!  He wrote a story that he titled "A Fantasy Story" about a baby dragon's search for his mother.  He wrote the whole thing himself using only minor help with spelling--usually spelling help consists of Jason and I telling him to sound it out and telling him if he's right or wrong.  It's cute as can be and really sweet, and I want to share it with everyone.

4) Somehow figure out a work-life balance.  I'm teaching two classes this summer and yes, that IS considered full-time over the summer since the semester is half as long as a regular semester.  One class is online and one is at night, so I'm still home with the kids every day.  As I told Jason, I'm working full-time and home full-time.  I'm not sure how that works with the whole time-space-continuum-thingy.

5) Eat veggies from our own garden more often, and buy local and organic when I can't.  We're going berry-picking sometime this week (hopefully tomorrow) and I'm going to be scouring the area for convenient farmer's markets and local farm stands.  I decided against joining a CSA group because I'm just not sure that I'll be dedicated enough to this one to have something set in stone, but there is fantastic local produce and I want to take advantage of it!

6) The whole host of home-improvement projects that we've got set to do.  Fun stuff includes caulking the tubs, getting the edging down around all the floors we've replaced, and hopefully talking Jason into helping me put down laminate in the dining room.  Oh, and I'm repainting the front porch this week.

7) Bask in the adorableness of my kids.  Summer is always so much fun and I hope this one will be just as great!

Photos coming just as soon as I manage to locate the camera, with its 200+ non-downloaded pictures.