- Landscape my yard: This will be done only with lots of help from Reed. We are in the middle of putting up a retaining wall for a flower garden and beefing up the soil. Soon we will be picking out plants (mix of herbs and flowers) to finish it off. I will be sure to post before and after pictures. My one hope is that I didn't kill my purple bulbs in the process!!
- Take care of errands: One main area in my life slipped through the cracks during the school year. That is the chore of errands like getting my teeth cleaned, making sure the party van is in working order, and managing my retirement accounts. Those (and many others) were postponed until now. I currently have a list of errands and phone numbers that I plan to start to tackle tomorrow.
- Home repair: I was blessed by my parents in June. They came out for two weeks and conquered two major home repairs for me. They remodeled my front porch and replaced my garage roof. Now, I would really love to have my driveway repaved and the trim on my house repainted. Those two items are on my list to call for bids tomorrow.
- Organize!! Ever since I moved in, one of my three bedrooms has been a storage room. It was meant to be a fun craft room / office, but it has been occupied by stacks of boxes and randomness for quite some time. My garage isn't in that bad of shape, but it is chaotic enough to cause me frustration every time I try to find a tool. I spent about 20 minutes today trying to find my deck sealant in there (by the way, I did seal my deck today - one item checked off my summer list!!). I would also love to organize my room at school. My classroom has huge cabinets FULL of science stuff from past teachers, some of which I did use, but a lot that I didn't. This last year I did my best at keeping the cabinet doors closed and pretending everything was in order.
- School stuff: As much as I would like to think I can ignore school stuff until day one of school, I do need to do some preparation for next year. I will be teaching four classes of freshmen Earth Science again, but I do have one new class. Instead of teaching chemistry, I will be teaching physics. And I am planning on using an engineering twist to that particular class, which I think will be super fun. Luckily I have an existing curriculum to use, so I don't have to make things up from scratch, but I do need to carefully read through everything so I can tweak it if I need. I will be adding the UMaine Windblade design challenge and possibly a rocket design challenge to bump it up a notch. I also need to work with the other Earth Science teacher to plan out our year and repair some of the equipment that we used last year. I DO believe (and strongly hope) that year 2 will be easier since I'll be using a lot of the same material from last year. So I will be making improvements along the way, but not starting from scratch.
Okay... that was the work stuff, but I am also planning on having some fun too! I've already went camping with Reed and the boys near the coast, and we may be heading out this week too. Yesterday we celebrated the 4th by going to a BBQ at a friend's house, and then we watched the fireworks downtown. Today we headed out to a local pond to go swimming and cool down since its been super hot and humid lately. Normally, I would be planning a trip to California over the summer, but I'm not sure if I'm going to make it out this year. As you can see, I have a lot of things to get done and the weeks are slipping by me faster and faster. I want to thank all of my friends that have been diligently uploading their family photos - I can't believe how fast all of your kids are growing up!! I hope to update my blog with more pictures next time. I haven't been very good about getting the camera out lately. It's after midnight and I'm hoping my bedroom is now cool enough to sleep in, otherwise I may pitch a tent outside =) g'night!
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