For my regular visitors, if you find that this blog hasn't been updating much lately, chances are pretty good I've been spending my writing energy on my companion blog. Feel free to pop over to Moving On, and see what else has been going on.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Officially done for the year

Well, that's it for this year!  At least on paper.  We've had our facilitator visit (which was a huge amount of fun, as usual. :-D), got our paperwork done for next year, submitted our receipts, and our school year is done.  We've decided to extend Eldest another year, rather than "graduate" this year.  It gives us access to resources she can use to help get her going with her art as a business.  We were even able to get her a laptop this year (and many thanks to Dell for letting us get it at the originally quoted sale price - a savings of some $400.  We ended up ordering it online, using a purchase order, and the guy that helped us was really great).  She has no plans to use it on the internet, so we haven't bothered setting that up.  It has the capability to do quite a bit, should she choose to.  In fact, I think it's better than our latest desktop!  The old desktop the girls had been using is basically a big paperweight right now. :-P

As usual, the official year end doesn't really change much for us.  Summer is always our busiest time of year for activities.  There's just so much out there!  That reminds me.  I have to find out if Youngest's guitar lessons break for the summer or not.

Dh and Eldest went geocaching again, in the wee hours of last Sunday morning.  Youngest got interested, too, so they went out again after Dh had a chance to take a break (Youngest is like me - NOT a morning person! *L*).  She had a blast!  They are now on geocache as a team, and plan to go out regularly.  One of these days I'm going to have to go with them, just to take pictures of some of the interesting places they're finding in the process.  Eldest was telling me about their last trip out, which took them into the river valley, exploring a park we've passed through, but never checked out.  It's always amazing to be wandering around the woods, with nothing to tell you you're actually in the heart of a major city!

Hopefully, my summer will be busier.  I've just been hired as a crochet instructor at a local Michaels!  I'm pretty excited about it.  It's not exactly regular hours, though - I will have classes as people register for them, and the franchise is just getting into these classes (they're also going to be having knitting, beading and scrapbooking classes).  I'll be taking a certification course at the same time, and the hours I teach will count towards completion of the certification.  So far, I've only done a single demo, which was fun, but I spent more time answering questions on where to find things around the store than about crochet!  Though there was the one woman who asked advice about making a baby blanket as a gift, so I ended up helping her make some decisions and choose a yarn.  I hope that works well for her.

I'll have 4 different courses to teach (each a 2 1/2 hour class) for different levels, from bare bones beginners to more advanced techniques and stitches, and I get paid based on how many students register for the classes.  If things go well, I hope to be teaching at least those 4 classes a month.  It might take a few months for word to get out that they're available, though.  I can make myself available to other locations, too, even just as a back-up instructor.  Once my certification course is done, I'll be in a database for all of North America as an instructor, too.  The course I'm going to be taken is Levels I and II, but there's also a Level III Professional available that I will want to take as soon as I can.  For that one, I'll have to design a garment (something I've already done) and take an exam, plus have a higher number of hours teaching to be done within a year. 

I'm really looking forward to teaching my first class - even though right now, it's so new, I don't even know what I'll be teaching (other than the specific stitches), and neither does the woman heading the program in the store that hired me!  The classes are already planned out for the instructors, including patterns and material lists.  I'll just need to focus on actually teaching.

We're still hoping to get a trip in to visit the family back in Manitoba at the end of the summer.  Not sure how that will work out, or even if all four of us will make the trip.  We're trying to set aside money for it, but with the gas prices going up so high and taking everything else with it (I'm going to have to increase the grocery budget again - which means cutting from somewhere else, of course), I'm starting to wonder if we'll be able to at all.  My parents were planning to have a permanent gravestone placed on my brother's grave a day shy of the anniversary of his death, with a mass and blessing from a priest, followed by a get together with friends and family.  There's no way we can make it out for then.  They haven't been able to find a priest available for that date, though, so they might have to move it to later on.  The permanent stone would still be placed before then.  We'll see how things end up working out.

Meanwhile, we're looking ahead to a summer filled with activity, from taking in as many of the local festivals as we can, including Eldest's art display, geocaching, and general out-and-abouting on top of our usual routine.

Hopefully, that means I'll be posting more often, too! *L*

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