This photo was in the east.
These were in the west
I finally told the boys were we were headed the end of October.
One of Jose's clients has a connection for tickets to pro sporting events so they were gracious enough to get us these. We are so excited. This is a bucket list item for us! I was able to find really cheap airline tickets (to where it was only about $50 cheaper to drive than fly, so we are saving the driving time and hitting the air!) We will fly out Halloween night, which excited me because I don't really enjoy Halloween anyway! For the cheap airline tickets, our trip will be 4 nights. I don't know that I have ever been in a non familial city for 4 days to go and play and explore. Usually we just pass through Denver...this time we have time to play and explore more!
I don't consider myself a huge political person. I follow politics just enough to know the issues but not really enough to have a strong opinion about most things. Recently, I have had 2 incidents at the kids' school where I am seeing the over reach of the government mandating things. I don't know about other states, but it is now (as of Oct 1) a Montana law that if your child has not been immunized for Varicella (aka Chicken Pox) they cannot attend school. I guess I have always understood some of those other life threatening diseases and immunizations for them, but chicken pox. I don't agree. I can of course sign a form stating that my religious beliefs interfere with that, but it doesn't, so in good conscious, I can't sign it. So, my child is either given the chicken pox shot or he does not attend school. I had held out on Joseph, because I really would rather have him gotten the chicken pox than the vaccine. However, that is no longer an option for me. Jacob never had the vaccine, but he did end up getting the chicken pox from Benjamin. However, since I never took Jacob to a doctor (cause it just was the chicken pox) there was no record of Jacob having them. So, Jacob had to have blood drawn to show he has the chicken pox antibodies in his system. (When I asked at the school why the new law, they weren't real sure. Two possible reasons is they are hoping to cut down on shingles or because of convenience. Now a days, a stay at home mom is pretty rare and it would be too burdensome for a family to miss 5 days of work to stay home with a child who has chicken pox.)
The other area where the government mandates are overreaching, in my opinion, is in the lunchroom. Because of the childhood obesity problem (which I get) the government mandates how much a child can eat in the cafeteria lunch line. Whenever my boys choose to eat in the cafeteria, versus take their lunch, if they are still hungry they are not allowed to have seconds. So, my very active, athletic, 8 year old is being grouped together with every other child and told he cannot have extra food. Therefore, he leaves lunch hungry! (There was actually a nearby school that was losing money on their lunch program because according to the gov't standards, they were only allowed to serve like 6 ounces of protein to a high schooler, kids weren't getting filled up and were no longer eating in the cafeteria, so the school district was losing money. I think the school ended up saying, who cares about the government money, we are going to feed these kids and lose the government subsidy by not obeying.
Rant over.
Speaking of political stuff...it seems that every year our school board wants to put another bond on the ballot. Being a tax payer, I finally decided it was time to get a little more educated. I am sure it is this way in lots of areas, but our area really struggles to keep up. We are finding lots moving to the area due to jobs or because they want to escape the rat race and land someplace slower. I went to a community meeting that was discussing future plans. I learned more of how difficult it is to plan. After the meeting, a school board member introduced himself and asked if I might be interested in attending a strategic planning meeting. I said sure. We talked further. One of the things we talked about was expansion of the high school. There are currently 850 kids and there are plans to build fro 1500, 1800 or 2400. (When the current 5th-8th grade classes get there, provided the numbers stay the same, we will have 1200.) The board member started questioning the wisdom of spending too much money and building fro 2400. He said that who knows what things will look like in 10 years..will there even be a need for large high schools. I was totally struck by this and the truth that is in it. With technology, who knows what things will look like then and the trends high schools might move towards ~ online classes? dividing groups up and kids going 2 days a week? who knows. It was just an eye opening conversation to me about the times we live in and how quickly things change.
Quiet week this week. My computer crashed but is now up and running. I lost most everything, except JR's business files ~ which really is the most important. I did save some files but over a year ago
No comments:
Post a Comment