Summer already?

We had snow on Saturday, and then it really warmed up yesterday. My students wanted me to hold class outside as it was in the 60's. It was even warmer today! I'm not sure what the official high temperature, but I do know when we were at the playground this afternoon it was 76 degrees! That might be typical weather in Florida in February, but it's very unseasonably warm for Pennsylvania. Tomorrow the high will be only in the 30s so today we took advantage of the warm weather. The kids went for a walk with the babysitter yesterday, but I didn't really spend any time outside yesterday aside from walking to and from my vehicle.

This morning we did school work for about 45 minutes before heading out the door for a field trip to see a musical entitled "Four Score and Twenty Years" which naturally was about the Civil War battle in Gettysburg. We haven't studied American history thus far. We will be studying US History more the next two years. Lately we've been studying the Reformation. The kids know a

lot more about Martin Luther and his 95 theses and Gutenberg's printing press than they do about the Civil War. In hindsight I should have given them a mini lesson on the topic before our field trip. Because we pack lunches on the days they go to the babysitter, I decided to make today's lunch more special and we used part of a gift card to Applebee's that we received at Christmas. After lunch we stopped at the library before taking Nadia and Ian to gymnastics. While they were in gymnastics, I took Oliver to the Children's Museum located in the same building. After gymnastics was over, we all headed to the playground, which was a VERY popular place today in light of the gorgeous weather. It was nerve wracking for me as far as trying to make sure Oliver didn't run, go down slides, climb anything, etc., but it was just too pretty of a day to stay inside. Nadia played outside more when we got home.

I was grateful to have that many hours of pretty much only wearing my "mom" hat. I did email a few students during the

day, but that was it while we were out and about. I did some schoolwork after I got home from choir rehearsal this evening. Yesterday Nadia asked me if this was the last semester I was going to teach. She would prefer for me to return to being a stay-at-home mom.

Tonight at AWANA the kids were to wear something related to an athletic team. They all chose to wear Steelers t-shirts, so I was even more inspired to get out my camera today. Oliver was dressed the most appropriately for the weather, but I didn't feel like digging through the short sleeve shirts packed away in Nadia and Ian's closets to find them short sleeve shirts to wear.

I was tempted to skip today's field trip because the theater is located a little over an hour from our house and I am already driving quite a bit these days to visit student teachers. I've been filling my van's gas tank twice a week (thankfully I will get my mileage reimbursed at the end of the month which will help compensate for paying more for gas these days). So the last thing I really wanted to do on my day "off" was to drive for 2+ hours, but I have skipped so many field trips the last two months I decided to stick with the plan. Tomorrow night I'm taking them to see Mr. Popper's Penguins. The play we saw today was free for everyone (mostly public school children were there). I received free tickets for tomorrow night's show from the Children's Museum, and it's being held at Bucknell (less than 20 minutes from our house). We're making up for lost time a bit with field trips this week as we have four planned over four days!