Summerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I have had the busiest few weeks...in the very laziest of ways. I don't know how else to describe it! My days are full of gardening, hanging out with my boys, cooking, doing endless mind-numbing chores around my (thankfully) small and manageable home, and working. Yes, working. Teachers typically work all summer. But, here's the beauty of summer work: we only work on what we WANT to work on. So summer is a time of creativity, reflection, and productive output the likes of which you cannot fathom from the whirlwind that is our gig from September to June. I am having a blast and falling in love with all things classroom once again. Soon enough the boys head off during the days for their beloved summer camp, and I'll be giving two one-week workshops at the same time. So scheduling and rushing and real work looms ahead...but for now, I'm quietly and happily puttering around in this Land of Nod between the past and the future.

A few pics from our short, oh-so-sweet romp at DisneyLand. Every year we go, and every year it is better than the last year. This time, we met my brother's kids and his ex-wife for a day and we had a blast. Can't wait to see them in a couple of weeks.

 (fyi: that IS a space mountain astronaut t-shirt my honey is wearing. LOVE)

 The new CarsLand at California Adventure is sooooo gooooood! The new Radiator Springs ride is AWESOME!!!!!!!  

Do you want to hear about how we got there at 7am, for a park that opens at 8am, to stand in line for a fast pass that opened at 9am, so that we could get on a ride that didn't even open until 11am? And do you want to hear about how, when I picked up my family set of fast passes at 9:15am, they were already for a return ride between 3:15 and 4:15? Do you want to hear about how, when I met up with the rest of my family and we strolled by that very fast pass outlet not 30 minutes later....the entire ride had 'sold out' of fast passes for the rest of the day and night? The hapless folks who didn't leave their hotels at 6:30 am to get tickets (haha! #winning! wait.) had to wait 2 hours and 10 minutes in the standby line. Because of a fluke, our kids got to ride twice (and we each rode once) during the designated hour only using two of our four fast passes (one of the kids we traveled with that day had a pretty severe disability, and had a special pass that we all got to use). So we were able to gift two of our fast passes to a man and his son, as they took their positions at the end of that line.

 Scotty was all arrrrrgh matey! on this trip. He bought (I bought him) one of those scopes after one of our many turns on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (don't mind if we do go again, son, it is one of my favorites too!) and he was checking to see when the "pirate ship" was coming. It's actually their "Columbia" ship ride, but try telling him it wasn't a pirate ship.

Being a pirate is hard, lonely work. But well worth the sacrifices.