Spring Break

It’s finally Spring Break!  I feel like I can breathe again!  

Isaac made green and blue oatmeal to celebrate.

It has been so busy around here.  I’ve been drowning in a mix of a teacher training for school, a really big fundraiser, a general school meeting, a grant proposal, a few field trips, a grad school application, and sick kids--all in the last few weeks.  We’ve had late nights, piles of dishes, and some really bad dinners.  When we served hot dogs with tortillas and canned green beans, I realized how bad it had gotten.  But our kids have been real troopers, and having a crazy life makes Spring Break all the better.

So, the recession has finally hit the island; quite a few people have left or can’t make ends meet. Our hospital has been playing hardball with the government to get its promised funding, and this affects health care professionals, administrators, and families supporting sick families members.  It’s been really tough, and everyone feels the ripples, including our school.

So, I’ve been literally up to my elbows in cookie dough.  We launched a cookie dough fundraiser at Ta’iala Academy to help cover our costs. We sold almost 360 dozen cookies.  That’s a lot of dough!   (My mom in Utah laughed that we made the dough ourselves.  What else can we do?)  Luckily Ephraim let us borrow the 20 qt mixer at his facility, so we could make about 45 dozen at one time.  We got the kids involved with scooping and rolling the dough balls, and then once they were frozen, counting and packaging them.  They loved it!  This project was a lot of man-hours, but we made over $1,400 in one week.  We would like five times that, but it’s a start.

And you know, I thought by the end of this I’d never want to eat or bake another chocolate chip cookie, but actually I’m so good at it now, I might just make them more!  And that classic taste never gets old.

But I am glad to be done with that fundraiser.

This Spring Break I’m going to do some major de-cluttering.  My neglected home will be in smooth order and ready for another run. 

Ephraim doesn’t get a break.  He’s been coordinating all the details for the second annual week of ASCC QUEST (Quantitative Underwater Ecological Surveying Techniques). This upcoming week he and a group of other teachers and students will be at Faga’alu doing field work, giving lectures, and snorkeling, then camping at night.  His hard work is paying off, and this should be a great week.

It will be a great week.