Meet Diane and Noah...

They are our friends. They are found here. And more importantly, here. The FRC is helping them welcome a baby into their lives and they are hoping that we can all spread the word here on the interloop and maybe- just maybe- a mother who wants more for her child than she can provide will see it and contact them or the Family Resource Center.

If you are here by chance, and find that you might be that mother, search your heart and contact Diane and Noah. If you know a mother who is looking for options for her baby, please pass this info on to her.

Thank you!

Save Money With Mini

Click here. Go shopping. Save money.

This frugalista is the bomb.

At Peace

If you have had the pleasure of reading anything by Eva Markvoort, you know she has raised awareness about CF. I found her by accident and have enjoyed reading her blog and listening to music she posts, and reading her poetry. There was a movie made about her. She blogs. She battles. She went through a double lung transplant a few years ago and lives life to the fullest.

She went into chronic rejection and has lived in the Vancouver General Hospital for over 8 weeks.

Lauren Aggen is my mother's goddaughter. She received a heart when she was a week old. She is attending college, (YES, COLLEGE!) in New York and is making us all very proud.

If you have not signed the Donor Registry, do it soon. For people like Eva and Lauren.

I learned that Eva passed away this morning waiting for her second set of lungs, and I am sad.

Pink on March 19th!

If you are a teacher, know a teacher, love a teacher, have ever encountered a teacher....Wear pink on March 19th and show your support for the teachers in IL and around the country who will receive pink slips in the coming weeks.

If you've seen the news lately, you know that districts near us in the Chicago Suburbs have let teachers go because the state of IL cannot pay its bills. I am simplifying only slightly. In a letter dated March 17, 2010 from my Superintendent, the district states that Governor Quinn's proposed budget includes a $1.3 BILLION reduction in education funding. In my district, we received notice that IL owes us $570, 817. The impact of this proposed budget on my district results in a projected loss of $1, 111, 075 in state funding for the upcoming school year.

What does this mean? It means that my district is considering possible reductions in full time classroom teachers, early childhood programs, reading improvement teachers, technology facilitators, paraprofessional staff and curriculum work. My Superintendent is a wiz with numbers. She loves her teachers and supports us all the way. She thinks creatively, researches tirelessly, and asks questions of those who know...so I am confident that she will consider every possibility before she and the Board of Education make any tough decisions.

However, tough decisions have already been made for districts like U46, and Naperville. And we all hate it when we hear of someone losing a job, but it seems so much worse when so many small people will be so negatively impacted.

Please contact your local IL representatives and voice your concerns. Thanks.

Man, Cats Are Cool

I had a cat. Alas, he is gone now. He was crazy. But not as crazy as this fellow. I found him here.

We did lots of stuff this weekend. It was one of our busier weekends, actually. We haven't had a full one in a while, so it was fun to see family and friends. The weather was terrible, we turned the clocks ahead, and my school work did not get done, but those are the only blemishes on an otherwise great time.

Highlights:

• Quiet Friday night at home playing with the boys.
• Saturday morning Baby Shower for "Cousim" Jill and getting to meet Baby Maddie May for the first time.
• Lola, Lola and Mia's visit Saturday afternoon.
• Bought a new outfit at the Kohl's sale.
• Cocktail Party with grown ups on Saturday night.
• Church on Sunday
• Lunch in Algonquin with Papa Rog and Gram Betty
• Mike cleaned the bathroom.

Yup.

Ha!

What?

My Mother in Law's Pancit is good. Real good. This package was about the size of my hand. I assume this is astronaut Pancit. I also assume the astronaut eating it may not consider him/herself "lucky".

"Chicken!"

We went to the park this morning to take advantage of the nice weather. It will be close to zero in another week or so, mark my words. So we dusted off the red wagon and went out.

AJ started yelling "Chicken!" as I walked around the equipment. I see two geese sitting in the sun. I told AJ they were not actually chickens. "Duck?" he asked. He finally figured they were geese as they walked away over to a less exciting place.

AJ followed the geese. He went quite far without us. And kept going. So did the geese.

Science at it's Finest

Just enjoy...

Bloggity

I follow A LOT of blogs.  Like a crazy amount- and I add more every week.  I just troll around looking for good stuff.  I have a lot of mommy blogs in my feed reader, a few tech/teacher blogs, a few random things I heard about (like 65 Red Roses and Faking It), friends blogs, and the New Trier Tech guy's stuff.  I LOVE him.  He does great stuff and puts together fabulous presentations with cool music and never breaks any copyright laws and never reads his slides to his audience and I kinda want to be him when I grow up.  But I digress...

Check out some of my favorite blogs on the blog list over there.  Come on- I know you want to.  I can't remember what it was like before I could hop on the interloop here and read people's diaries.  However, I can remember heading to the library at term paper time and sitting in front of the periodical index and walking the shelves searching for the magazines I needed.  I didn't work a mouse until college.  My family's first printer was a dot matrix with the paper with the holes on the side.  I took my walkman to college.  My mother still has a tiny green transistor radio in the bathroom.  My dad only broke down and bought that big huge portable phone in 1996  or so after I got stranded in IN with Evil Chris after a camping trip and we ran out of quarters.

My, how times have changed.

This week my class has been working on a multimedia project during our down time after the ISAT test.  I am working with 2 classes to transform a song... hopefully I can get it done in a few naptimes this weekend.  It got me thinking about a video my tech coordinator showed us at the beginning of the year.  As a matter of fact, Katie was looking for this today, and I thought it was weird that I was thinking about just this topic as my kids were working.  As I said, my, how times have changed.