Four months until wheels up.

 We recently took a spring break trip to Texas.  A's family lives in TX (minus his sister in IL) and we had a set of twin nephews who were born about 5 weeks before our trip.  They needed some cuddles (or maybe I needed some).  We also knew the summer is going to be a bit hectic with final packing, selling homes, cars, and possessions, and saying our "see you soons,"so we decided to see the TX family during A's spring break.  After looking at flight prices, we decided to drive and save some cash (we saved over $1,500 just on flights and we had our own vehicle so we didn't have to rent a car).  It was a really great trip (a few pictures below) and the kids were amazing with all the driving (thanks to the DVD player and ipad).  Sometime during our long (oh so very long) drive back I realized that we are about 4 months from Qatar..  gulp.

Since then, I've been having some serious trouble getting to sleep at night and having some unexplained anxiety about simple things.  I think that will subside once our current home sells.  We've got a list of things that need doing, but they mostly hing on the house selling.  After this home sells, we will move (only the necessities) into our much smaller house (about 3,000 sq. ft. to 1,290 sq. ft.) as we prep for the move.  When that house sells, we are going to move into a small furnished apartment until we fly.  We have the plan.. the waiting is hard. 

We did get the kids' passport (huge relief), got P's blood type done yesterday (this is a requirement for our move and she was the only one that we didn't have on record - traumatic, but done), got
A's FBI check back and sent it off for further verification, and am working on keeping focused.  As you can tell from this post, my thoughts are all over the place and lists don't seem to focus me at the moment. 

Well.. time for Easter card making with potato stamping :)  Gotta have some fun in the waiting

Cousin C and P jumping and jumping and jumping some more!

M and his baby cousins J and J.  Such adorable boys!

Me with the boys.  So many delicious cuddles!

P and M enjoying some jumping time.  I love how sweet they are to each other!

Why we spend "so much" on education...

I'm a teacher by personality and trade.  I'm married to a teacher.  My (2nd) sister is a teacher.  My eldest sister home schools her two boys.  My mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and countless friends are teachers...  We teach, we are passionate educators. 

One thing that has irked me about education is the lack of importance placed upon it by our society.  One mark of what is important to a society can be seen by where they toss their cash.  Education takes money and lot of it.  If you look at the graphic below.. there, the gray.. keep looking, it's there..  See it? 2%...  I'm not diminishing any category, I'm not suggesting that creating a budget is easy.  What I am suggesting is that education in this country IS grossly underfunded. 




We send messages to students by our underfunding;  school isn't important so we're cutting days.  Education isn't important, so we're not going to give your teacher an aid to deal with 30 1st graders.  School isn't important, so we're not going to maintain your facilities (sorry about the rain drops on your sadly outdated text books).  Ok, you get the point here.  No, funding isn't everything, but to suggest that teachers should teach "out of the goodness of their hearts" or that they "understand they aren't in it for the money" is absurd.  Teachers should be able to live well on their salary.  Education is the basis for all of society. 

Ok, I'm off my soap box. 

One thing that I really admire about the Qataris is their commitment to education.  They acknowledge the importance of education and fund it incredibly.  I know we don't have the oil resources that Qatar does, but they choose where to spend and so do we.  I read this article the other day on why Qatar is investing so much in education.  Check it out and let me know what you think.