Latchkey Rant then Gardening!

Another week flown by! Now that I'm teaching 4 days/week and trying to get DIY projects and gardening done, the weeks just don't have enough days in them.

I did manage to finish my book "Romancing Miss Bronte" by Juliet Gael and really enjoyed it, but then I'm a big Bronte fan. I've now moved on to The Brave by Nicholas Evans, who wrote The Horse Whisperer and I'm already stuck into it. He has a great way of making you fall in love with the characters immediately. Jack's doing a fairly good job of recognizing letters now and he reads to us at bedtime (from memory, not from reading the words, but still..)

Jack started soccer games again this week and he has music class on Fridays nights. I have resisted all attempts to sign him up for t-ball, football or any other kind of organized thing, firstly because I don't want him to be over-scheduled as so many kids are, and second because I'd rather watch paint dry than watch t-ball! Terrible aren't I.

Warning! Rant coming: In early May we have to take Jack to be assessed by the "English as a Second Language" department at the local school district before I can enroll him in school. Regardless of the fact that he's American with English parents that's the rule. Ironically, the lady who rang to make the appointment could hardly string a sentence together. Just one more hoop to jump through in the circus that is enrolling your kids for school and latchkey. Latchkey is an after-school program for working parents so that the kids can stay afterwards until 6pm (5pm in our case). The school where Jack is going does not have a latchkey program so I want to sign him up for latchkey (3-5pm) at a local school that does. Because this local school is less than 2 miles away from his school, they won't take him on the bus. They want to bus him miles away to another school in a rough part of town. Nice. They also will not let me register him to enroll full-time at the latchkey school because he is not in that district (by just one block). The secretaries at both schools say that they do bus between them and not to worry, but the official Latchkey department is telling me that they won't. I'm so confused and frustrated by the whole thing. May 9th is the day I have to sign up for latchkey but I can't do any of that until after they make sure he can speak English. Grrrrr...

And on to more lighthearted things.

We watched a fabulous film last night. Very entertaining & highly recommended (even by Craig who generally likes blood and guts) ...

And it's going to be EIGHTY degrees today so I am now going to get my morning coffee and get outside again. I'm itching to get my garden straight and get the lawn mowed for the first time this year. I love spring!