Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to the 

cutest,

happiest,

bubbliest,

most squeezable,

lovable,

adorable,

little light of my life!

Logan is one today!  Happy birthday to my baby!  He's the best!

A Few Fun Pics

Logan and I were playing around with the Photo Booth application on my Mac today.  I forgot how much fun it can be.  Here are a few fun pics we took.

He gets the thumb sucking from me, but that's about all he gets from me.

Here is the smile that makes ME smile every day!

And again.

And again.  I love it!

He just can't stop looking at the camera.

Oh man, he is just so cute I can't stand it!

Logan's first birthday party is tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to take some pictures and post them soon.  We are super excited!

Woo Hoo!

Yes, I'm excited!  I am finally up to THREE followers on my blog.  Congratulations to me - at least someone is reading.  Thanks girls!

Logan is walking!

Ok, actually he has been walking for about 3 weeks now, but I completely forgot to post about it.  Here's a video my dad shot when he was here last week.  Enjoy!

The Future of Our Schools

I had an inservice this morning at school.  The woman who led the seminar was great!  She happened to share with us what she thinks Obama plans to address in the world of education after healthcare is taken care of (which I guess is predicted to be sometime around Thanksgiving).  The two big things that she mentioned surprised me:

1.  Year-round schooling:  The concept is simple - one quarter of school followed by a three week recess.  Essentially you get a three week break every season of the year.  I think this is FABULOUS.  A LOT of schools in North Carolina have year round programs and have since I was in elementary school.  I think there are a number of pros to this: definitely less time in the summer for students to lose knowledge, cheap vacations when my kids get old enough (it is super cheap to go to Disney in October!), and especially FOUR breathers a year instead of one long one during the summer.  Let's face it, our summer break is fantastic, but about halfway through I get bored and by the end of the summer I'm so into being bored all the time that I am completely unmotivated to go back to work.  On the other hand, child care for working parents would be a nightmare with year-round schools.  I pity the parents who would have to find day care for three weeks at a time, four times a year.  Yikes!  Also, where are we going to get the funding to put air conditioning in every school that doesn't have it (which are A LOT of schools around here)?  No way can we go to school without air conditioning during the summer.  Hmm...

2.  A longer school day:  I've heard this.  I happen to work in a district where our school day is already shorter than most in the area, so there has been talk of lengthening our school day next year anyway.  BUT the woman at our inservice today mentioned attending school from 9-5.  WHAT?!  My second graders shut down by about 1:30 and are completely unfocused and ready to go home by that point in the day.  How in the WORLD am I going to keep them focused until 5:00?  This seems a bit unreasonable to me, especially if we will be going to school year-round.  But I don't make the decisions (though I often think I should).

I have a feeling there ARE going to be big changes in the world of education.  God knows Bush screwed it up enough, we're going to have to do something to make up for what he did.  Not sure if these are the answers.  Not sure if these are even Obama's actual idea of answers either.  Maybe just the opinion of our presenter today.  But I think she might be onto something.  What do you think?