Rain, Rain, Rain

As most of you know from the news, we've had A LOT of rain here lately. Many of you Oregonians laugh at our Californian freak out over rain, but nothing here is built for this much rain. Roofs are leaking all over the place. Streets and parking lots are flooded and I actually saw a Red Lobster pumping water off their flat roof today. I had never really noticed before, but there are very few drains anywhere around here, which leads to all this flooding.

Jason, the kids and I are planning on venturing over to Yosemite tomorrow. The snow should be really beautiful after this week of heavy precipitation. The kids are VERY excited. I'm trying not to dwell on how cold and wet I'm going to get :-).

Next week looks CRAZY for me, so I'm planning on sitting around and doing nothing on Sunday. Starting Monday, I'll have my neighbor's daughter every afternoon. I have another 2 kids all day Tuesday and half day Wednesday. I will also be shuttling a few other kids to and from appointments for a friend who's having surgery, and making a meal for 8 extra people on Monday (Stew. YUM!). I'm exhausted just thinking about it, but at least I won't be bored.

Jason and I are looking into school options for the kids next year. Due to money mismanagement in our current school district, they have to cut 10% of the budget next year, in a district that is already really tight. Last year, they laid off all teachers who had been hired within the last DECADE! Class sizes went up, and it looks like they will be going up again. I said I would never homeschool. I'm just not a teacher. But I've been looking into it a bit lately and homeschooling is definitely not the way I pictured it in my head. We have several federally funded charter schools around here that provide all of the school books/curriculum free of charge. They also have lots of classes the kids can attend weekly, like music, gymnastics, karate, comic book writing, piano, etc. I'm still really nervous at the idea of being responsible for the education of my children (GULP) and am not convinced I'm organized enough to pull this off, but we will definitely be looking into this a bit more.

Friday nights are our family night and tonight, we have chosen to watch the movie "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs". I'm making mashed potatoes (the clouds) and meatballs for dinner and then we will have banana splits during the movie. Should be fun :-).