Exhausting but fun.

Summer vacation is over - school starts in a couple of days.

Boy, it went fast!

I think it is kind of sad the kids only get 2 months vacation. BUT I do know that dh is thrilled to send BM back to school! (I understand completely - love the kids - but he is exhausting beyond words).

I realize the last few weeks have been a whirlwind, as we try to fit as much "summer" as possible, into a mere 2 months. I look forward to a few lazy weekend in August. The weekdays will be filled with school.

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BM got the teacher he wanted and it is a male teacher. We are excited about that (there are so few male teacher but he is used to his daddy being his main caregiver - I think he will like the change).

His school is now the only elementary school in the district with class sized limited to 20. Otherwise, people tend to pay big money (private school) for this opportunity. I personally do not care that much - my child will be fine either way. But I do prefer if LM could start school in a class of 20 next year. So here's to hoping I can say the same for next year. I think a smaller class size is important for such a big transition (kindergarten). I often wonder why K is lumped with the other grades. They can't keep Kinder small???? I guess it complicated things to start smaller, but the wait list for even 1st grade is huge enough to work with it.

Anyway, the reason we are the only school in the district with this distinction? Because we are a charter and can do what we want. The rest of the district has no choice. Keeping class sizes small depends on managing money well going forward. For now it's not necessarily feasible for many more years, but the wisdom is once you switch it takes many years to pare class sized back down. So we are just hoping the economy turns around sooner rather than later.

This of course brings up many politics. "It's not fair!!!!" & then all sorts of fingers pointed at us for draining district funds, etc. It gets old. The only reason a charter school was formed was because the school district was completely inept, and involved in fraud to boot. (They chose to defraud the school district rather than build our new neighborhood a school - makes a lot of sense). I'd like them to tell us where exactly they would fit our 500 students into their existing schools. They should kiss our feet. Unfortunately we have to kiss their feet to keep our charter. Gotta love politics!

This year will be an adjustment. 1st grade is only 45 minutes longer than the "all-day" kindergarten. But I believe this year BM will start getting homework, etc. It will be interesting. As a working parent I love the school situation. I literally only miss 1.5 hours of time with him, since the school day is 7 hours. I can get used to that. The hard part will be evenings filled with homework, etc. I am a morning person and I like to collapse and/or relax when I come home. Weeknights filled with homework sounds rather blah. We will see...

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What was so exhausting this weekend? We went to the water park Friday, which was a blast. The weather turned out to be okay, though we left early when it started getting pretty cold after 3 or 4. I had been worried the day would be too cold, but the clouds parted for a few hours and it was "just right" most of the day - high 70s.

Yesterday was visiting with family. I took the kids for a walk down to the creek - they had an absolute blast.

Today we are entertaining for many (family). I need to clean the house a bit. No doubt I will end the day exhausted.

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We were in the Bay Area yesterday and my next door neighbor scared the living daylights out of me. I tried to check my cell phone voice mail and it was down and giving me all sorts of weird messages. Which was frustrating me. Probably somewhat related, my phone did not tell me who had called. So I finally got through to my voice mail and the message starts, "This is Lisa, your next door neighbor..." Of course, I freaked out at that moment. I figured the house was on fire or had been burglarized. Not sure she had ever called me for anything, and I gave her all our contact info a while back, in case of emergency.

So as wild thoughts ran through my mind and the message was cutting in and out, I finally realized she was asking me some questions about the school dress code, because she was out shopping and her son is starting kindergarten this year.

LOL. Talk about relief to find at that's all she wanted.

I never got hold of her, but I think she never called me before because we usually just chat in person. She didn't see us around and so called I guess. Or realized she had my # when she was out shopping. I will have to tell her she scared the hell out of me!

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Oooooh - I just got the electric bill.

We have not done a thing. We switched to mostly CFLs earlier in the year, but we historically use so few lights in the summer - it stays light so long, etc. Anyway, haven't done a thing.

BUT our electric usage was 35% lower than last year. Since we are on budget billing and July/August are our only high electric usage months, they decided we had way overpaid, and credited us most of the month. So I got a $15 bill for July - not bad! (Total was about $88 before credits - not bad for hottest month of year).

I can't put my finger on it at all, but that the weather has been rather mild. We were gone most weekends in July, BUT we leave the air on for the cat. One weekend it had been pretty hot and it ran much, no doubt. Another weekend dh accidentally flipped it on to 78 degrees all weekend while we were gone - so it ran 24/7, no doubt, for 3 days. So I was actually worried about the bill because of that, and instead it was far lower than expected. Go figure.

I think it's more mild weather than anything. Though maybe not being around much helped a wee bit.

We usually run the AC on 78 degrees most days (downstairs only); don't run anything at night, but maybe 20 minutes to cool the upstairs for bedtime (cool nights), and usually get a couple of $120-ish bills in summer.

This month was $25 for gas and electric then (gas is only $10/month for us in the summer). Not bad!