1 long weekend somewhere not expensive and save the rest.

Flights EVERYWHERE are expensive from here. $350 ONE WAY to Boston.

Also, start looking for a job.

I have applied for a couple this fall. I think I need to do something completely new.

He said later he'd seen parts of his wife even a husband should never see.

K got wobbly and she says she remembers thinking, "Why is her stomach on her chest?"

I have to write some today. 12 pages is cake, right?

I think that photo is pretty cool, but I don't get why some are so surprised to see a newborn clutching at someone's hand. Newborns do that!

Just walked my son through a report he's supposed to write over the break. Who gives 2nd graders homework over break? It's not like the 4th grader had any homework. Although she did bring home a book to read, which has lain mostly ignored, mostly because it fails to be about The Lord of the Rings.

12 pages is not exactly cake, but I've certainly done it before. I'm guessing you've done it before too.

We don't even give our high school students homework over break. That's why it's a break. Sheesh.

Casper has a huge book report for the break. Luckily she chose to do it about The Hobbit. We are 4/5ths done; tomorrow she glues the 4 written segments to a paper bag and creates 10 items to go inside. Apparently I am helping to make an origami dragon. (The Theme of The Hobbit is: "even a very uncourageous person can find it in themselves to be 'the best of the bunch.'")

That was my reaction, Pix. Then again, not a difficult assignment. He needed to write about an Asian American. Instead of picking someone famous he wanted someone he could interview, so he picked a friend who works for the public defender's office. He emailed her questions, she answered, and he just wrote up his 2 paragraphs about her. We'll correct spelling and grammar later, and then he'll rewrite it. The hardest part was just getting him to sit and do the work!

My BFF's 5th grader and 7th grader have homework over break. She actually seemed to spend most of her days getting them to do homework, when, if they would just do it, it would take 1 -2 hours! I would totally give up and just let them fail, but I think parents and homework are much more involved than they were in my day. I also did my homework mostly during other classes/lunch, and can't really suggest that as a strategy!

Sue is me.

ita, you're making me wish I had a destination birthday for my 40th. All I had was brunch.

I just got invited to my first destination 40th bday party....it's in Allentown PA. (Actually, that's a lie. I was invited to go on a cruise, but declined due to finances.)

I have six days of vacation I have to use before the end of March. I am torn between going somewhere and saving the money in case I end up leaving my job. I have a terrible time making up my mind.

I always have this dilemma! Because I always think I might leave my job.

My kindergartner had homework over break. I made him do all the worksheets and writing assignments but let him cheat on reading. (My grandparents own a bookstore and so when we visit them for Christmas we are allowed to "shop" for our own presents. Dylan picked out an armload of Little Golden Books and I let him read those instead of forcing him to read the dreadful leveled reading books the school sends home. I do see the practicality of leveled reading in the classroom, but books designed by committee to contain a certain number of sight words are pretty much uniformly awful when it comes to actual storytelling, and since they're so repetitive, Dylan memorizes them after a single readthrough anyway which renders them useless as a learning tool!)