It's official

Oliver and the others who did the memory book craft.

On Thursday I was contemplating how much longer I should wait before asking when I might expect to receive my contract, and lo and behold it was in our mailbox that afternoon. I signed it and put it back in the mail. I'm hoping this means by the end of this month I will have access to BOLT so I can finish getting everything set up for the fall semester. I have to set up the folders for the students to submit their assignments, post the PowerPoints and other documents, set up the gradebook, etc. Yesterday I finished creating a total of ten Kahoot and Quizziz games for my assessment class and two for my math class.

Ian with his "tribe" for the week.

I am forty-six years old and have been either a student or an educator for almost my whole life! I was a full-time student from 1977-1992 and a part time graduate student for several years after that until I earned my doctorate in December 2002. From 1992-2003 I worked in Christian schools first as a middle school teacher and then as a principal of a school that had students from three-year-old preschool through eighth grade. From January 2003- January 2013 and August 2017- May 2019 I will have been a professor, and from

2013 to the present I have also been homeschooling my children. If you count my years of homeschooling, I will have been an educator for 27 years as of May 2019. If you don't count the years I was a homeschooling SAHM, then I will have been an educator for 22.5 years. Bloomsburg University will have been my employer for 10.5 of those 22.5 years; BU is part of the state system (called PASSHE), and I will have been employed by PASSHE for 12 years as the other university where I taught for 1.5 years is also part of PASSHE. I plan

Nadia participating in the final Quiz Down on Friday.

to continue homeschooling my children for 12 more years, which would put me at 38 years total as an educator as of May 2030. I have no idea how long I will continue to be a university professor. We shall see how this next year goes. When I am putting a lot of time into my courses I find myself thinking, "I hope I teach this class more than just one semester." I do enjoy being a teacher educator, but I was juggling way too much last year, and I miss the kids when I'm at work (and they miss me also and tell me they want me to stay at

Ian with some of the other kids who went fishing.

home). I'm going to pay off the retirement loan this year (which I used to pay off the mortgage) because that will make it a little easier to live off of Paul's income if I decide to return to being a SAHM.

During Camp Good News Oliver said three Bible verses, Nadia said 10 verses (the most possible), and Ian said 9 verses. Next year I'm sure he'll do all ten. He waited until the last minute to learn the 5 extra credit verses (Psalm 119:97-101) and because of that didn't work on the verse due for Friday. I

recorded three videos yesterday evening - Nadia's ten year old birthday interview (oops totally forgot to do that a few weeks ago!), Nadia and Ian singing the Camp Good News song, and all three kids singing the theme song for the week "Little by Little" by Patch the Pirate. It was a new song for them.

Today we took Nadia to Camp Susque. It has been raining most of the day, and unfortunately the weather forecast looks VERY wet for the whole week. Hope she has fun even in the rain! We'll miss her while she's gone, but Camp Susque is one of her most favorite things each year. Paul took the kids to see Pinkalicous this morning. The highlight of my day was seeing that Paul had fixed the bi-fold door in the kitchen that had been broken four months. I have a complete door again. WOOHOO!!!!