Strength in Numbers

Fun times at preschool. Ms. Jane is back!! She is our P.E. teacher, for want of a better description, from November through February, one day a week. She comes up with all these wild games and movement to exercise the phlegm right out of those coughing munchkins!! Last week she had just about half of Pre-K hacking their lungs out and then she said time to stop coughing, and guess what?! They did!! Wow, the power of Ms. Jane!! We played alot of freeze tag games today. One version was where the teachers were the only ones who could unfreeze the kids who had been tagged by one of two giant neon green carwash mitt wielding kiddos. We have one little gal who just turned 4 - she is Japanese and English is her 2nd language. She's doing good with it, but speaks rarely. I think we wild Americans sometimes freak her out. Ms. Jane's P.E. class is way outside her comfort zone. She sits there and won't participate unless I hold her hand or carry her. For a little shorty, she has serious heft, lemme tell ya. Wow, she's heavier than you'd think from looking at her. After one back-breaking round of carrying her I decided she'd better run alongside me. Once we tagged a couple kids she got right into it and started giggling. Man is that the cutest - she is sooo yummy! Next thing I knew we snagged another little gal who was intimidated by the "run fast or be run over" momentum of the game. Then another gal hooked up to our chain of little girls. At one point I think I had about 5. Now, imagine trying to stay away from the giant neon green mitt freeze-tagging kids and all the running wild children while not tripping over the wave of tiny little girls holding your hands and maneuvering under and around your legs, in front of you, behind you (at the same time!), pulling you to the left, to the right and the screaming....my gosh, my ears still hurt!! Amazingly, we never did get tagged. I think the taggers were afraid of our chain gang! I decided my strategy was going to be to sacrifice the gals on the end of the chain gang and risk a hernia swooping up my little one and running like crazy while everyone else got frozen if a tagger got too close, but it never came to that! Of course, as long as she was attached to my side, my little friend kept merrily tagging everyone regardless of whether or not we were allowed to do so no matter how many times I told her it wasn't our turn to freeze people, so I had to keep saying, "you're not really frozen! RUN!" Ah, good times.

Then tonight was the protest/get to know your School Board members in the "special session" held at the high school where we could "voice our concerns" and see a map (whoo-freakin'-hoo)before they, in the infamous (and oh, so true) words of a German neighbor uttered, no shouted more like, (no lie) at an HOA meeting (you have to say it in the heavist German accent you have ever heard -hardly understandable) - "dis ees jus an twick...dey have an agenda and dey will scweeeew us!!!" I turned to my neighbor sitting beside me, gave her my blandest look, and I asked, "did he just say...'they will screw us?'" and she replied ever so dryly, "yes, yes he did. Gotta love the Germans." (They were kinda taking over the HOA meeting).

Anyways, tons of people showed up tonight at the special session. Mike, Gib, Mariah & I went. Let's hope our message to the Board swayed enough of them to at least table the discussion and not vote on it the day before the new School Superintendent takes office. Talk about trying to pull a fast one. From all accounts he wants it reviewed further and to have his own input rather than just inheriting the fall out.