Type A

In general, my personality definitely leans toward Type A although I'd never characterize myself as "aggressive" (one of the traits listed for Type A). I do like to be organized and in general enjoy planning things. As a homeschooling mom in a family who goes on vacation about 5 weeks a year, planning is one of my significant responsibilities. I write homeschool lesson plans for my three kids, weekly lesson plans for four classes in our homeschool co-op, plan out our meals (which then leads to creating grocery lists), choose what audiobooks we will listen to as a family (and which I will listen to on my own), schedule doctor appointments, purchase tickets to concerts, theatre performances, and the like, and serve as our family's travel agent, which involves making many plans and various purchases (airfare, hotels, rental vehicle, tour tickets, etc.). Since we returned from Quito, I've put further time into lesson plans, co-op plans for the next ten weeks, our vacation to Alaska, and selecting future books for the kids to read and listen to. In terms of our trip to Alaska, I am really, really motivated to make sure Oliver gains 5-6 pounds over the next 5.5 months because he has to weigh at least 80 pounds to do one of the activities I booked for our family. The minimum age is 10, and he'll be 12 years old at that point, but he's thin. I used Turo for the first time to book our rental vehicle in Alaska. It wasn't cheap, but it was much cheaper than other options I explored for Alaska, and I don't think there will be any unexpected fees like we experienced in Florida. Live and learn!

When I taught middle school in Maryland, I took my students on many field trips. Several of these were to Washington, D.C. Over the years we've been there several times, but we still haven't seen everything I wanted the kids to see. In 2020 I had tickets for us to tour the White House, Ford's Theatre, and Washington Monument, but all of those were cancelled. Four years later, we again have tickets to those places. We are planning to visit DC this weekend and the last weekend in April. Over those four days we plan to visit the White House, White House Visitor Center, National Gallery of Art, Washington Monument, National Museum of American History, Jefferson Memorial, Holocaust Museum, Supreme Court, International Spy Museum, Ford's Theatre, National Portrait Gallery, National Archives, and Rock Creek Park. After that trip, we will have visited most of the places I wanted to take the kids in DC. The places they haven't been yet include the National Museum of the U.S. Navy (took students there), National Postal Museum (never been), and the FBI (took students there). When I contacted our Representative for tickets to the White House, I also asked for tickets to the FBI, but there weren't any available. If there's another concert or play that brings us back near DC in the coming years, maybe we will visit those places. This weekend the reason we're headed down there is to attend a Steven Curtis Chapman concert, and at the end of April we're planning to see a theatre production of Prince Caspian at the Museum of the Bible.

Nadia, also a firstborn, is the other member of our family who shows the most interest in planning. For example, she asked me recently to figure out exactly what day she can get her learner's permit in June. She was disappointed she has to wait one whole day, as the earliest after her birthday (6/24) that I can take her is on June 25. She won't be getting much practice with driving in July because she found out last week that she has been hired to work at Camp Susque for four weeks this summer! One more example of how she leans toward "type A" would be that she recently organized all the magnets on our refrigerator (and we own a LOT). They are now in groups - for example the forts are together, historical sites, industrial sites, natural beauty sites, Presidential sites, etc. That's my girl!