Well, I figure since it’s been two weeks since our Fall Festival I owed you guys like a really awesome title. What’cha think?

Today our PTSO board held our annual post-Fall Festival meeting to discuss the final income/expense numbers, to talk over suggestions we have for next year, and generally decompress after the amazingly stressful last 2 months. I would like to say that I was waiting until we had the meeting to write about it, but really…that would a lie. I’ve just been so overwhelmed with work, homework (finals were this week), and life in general that I just couldn’t write.  Now that the meeting is out of the way I am feeling a little relieved and more ready to write about it.

Two weeks ago, our awesome little school held our annual Fall Festival to give the parents, students, and teachers a chance to come together, eat some delicious chili, play some games, and raise some money to support our school community.  We saw a dip in attendance this year, but thankfully only saw a minor dip in the total amount raised.  After all those weeks of stress it was so good to see everything we all worked so hard for come to fruition and know that it was all going to support our children’s educations.

It’s inevitable when you’re working for something as important as your child’s education, there is going to be stress. When you add all the background and behind the scenes information {and stress} that I am privy to as PTSO secretary, I am usually a nervous wreck by the time we finally get to Fall Festival.  This year, to be honest, I stayed relatively stress-free up and until the last 4 weeks or so {which is about the point when I realized our local donations were way down}.  I’m so thankful for the amazing volunteers I have every year who help me solicit and collect donations.  Since we feel sending out Thank You cards to our donors is a must, each volunteer is also responsible for preparing a Thank You card for the donors they solicit from {the PTSO pays for the cards, mailing labels, and stamps}.  I had to do all of the Thank You cards by myself for two years, so I am especially thankful for their help in that department.

Each year we learn more and more about what needs to be done differently and we make specific plans for the next year.  Our PTSO always holds a wrap-up meeting to discuss the board’s perspective on the night, our suggestions, and ideas for the coming year; we also hold a post-festival meeting for the parents so they can come in and give us their suggestion and observations from the night.  We do this because for the majority of the evening we {the board members} are running around the school and don’t really get an opportunity to observe the actual festival as much as we might like…but the parents do. The parents are the ones who can tell us if the dinner we served was worth the amount charged, if the games were age appropriate, or if they had any general suggestions or ideas for the coming year.

Despite all the stress, hard work, and long-days that sometimes comes along with school festivals, we find it is always worth the price.  Last year, with the money mostly raised from our Fall Festival, we were able to help put airliners {tablet pcs & projectors} in each class room and send the entire school to see a ballet for Christmas.  I’m always reminded how “worth it” it is when I walk in our school and see students actively engaged in learning and enjoying it!

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be posting some tips to making your school’s next Festival or Silent Auction successful and (a little) less stressful…so stay tuned!

We Love Face Paint!

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Next Week

Sunday is my amazing church’s homecoming (that’s Southern Baptist speak for a day  when old members, members who have moved away, or quit coming get together with the rest of us and we fellowship (ie: laugh& eat all day) and I have volunteered to make a mess of baked beans and take pictures through out the event.  I’m excited to see some of our old pastors and introduce my children to people who helped shape my faith.

IABC-Social Media Club of Louisville is holding a one day ‘Content Marketing Summit’  Tuesday and I figure it’s a good warm up for Type A-Mom (which starts next Thursday and runs till the following Monday).  On the subject of TAM, I’m coordinating all the volunteers (and not everyone has signed up for shifts…if you’re reading this and you should have but just haven’t GO DO IT!) I am also speaking on the subject of rebranding (I promise to provide you with an outline of what I’m talking about and what is going on at the conference), moderating an amazing panel about how blogging is about community not competition,  and moderating a round-table discussion for Parentella about “Education and Homeschooling”. Yeah. Wow. THAT’S a lot.

Family

Recently we haven’t been real sure what’s going on with my Mommaw’s health.  She’s got Mantle Cell lymphoma (Cancer Sucks.) and has been receiving treatment for it for going on two long years. For her most recent round of treatments, she had to be bolted to a table with a mask covering her face and making facial movement impossible for radiation.(Um wow. I’m pretty sure I would be a mess everyday afterward.) About a week after radiation was completed she started losing her vision or have double vision.  Her doctors rushed her into their offices to check her for everything. I mean they’ve poked and prodded and she keeps on going. Well, this week we heard from an ophthalmologist whom Mommaw saw last week…the nerves above her right eye (the one she had radiation on) was swollen and given a few days her vision should improve it and thankfully it has.  Today, however, my 73 yo grandmother had to have a spinal and receive chemo in her spine (as a precaution).   Not a pleasant experience for anyone…my Mommaw is a fighter.

KJ has had pneumonia for the last week (yes, again. yes, I know that is twice in one year) so I’m feeling a little ragged. But after 10 days on Omnicef, she’s feeling back to her chipper happy self again and I’m thankful for God’s simple blessings.  KG will be needing some major mouth work done in the near future and the soonest I can get her in to see a dentist I trust is early November.  The stuff she needs done scares me just thinking about…so really I’m okay with postponing it, I just don’t want any undue damage done to her mouth.  Jon and I are still plugging along and trying to keep our heads above water and our bodies healthy.

CES PTSO

I need to update our website since I finally got the new username and password, update our Facebook, create about 60 more labels for donation, and email about a dozen contacts to see if any of them would be willing to donate for the silent auction. (If you are a brand and would like more information on how to donate to our PTSO Fall Festival’s silent auction, please feel free to contact me.)

Next Tuesday night we have a PTSO meeting and I’m hoping to see more faces there to be a part of their children’s education.

Education

Speaking of back to school, I have started back to college. If I push really hard for the next 2 1/2 years or so I will have my Associate’s in Arts w/Marketing Focus from Western International University. I pay a premium for online classes, but you can’t beat their service or the convenience.  But I’m still a little freaked out about it…it’s been a long time since I’ve had to read 13 chapters in a week, write two papers, take a quiz and still participate in the forum discussions. Honestly, I don’t think I had to do that much when I went to college at UL the first time around.  WIU requires that we vitrually attend classes once a week (for my first class it’s every Tuesday night from 9pm EST-11:30pm EST (Note: I am usually going to bed by this time and am struggling to stay awake.)

So far the actual class stuff on Tuesday night is a BORE!  Many of the students are technologically inept and make me crazy (and very sleepy) when they ask the same questions (questions they should have found out the answer to before class began) all the time, but our instructor is very patient and doesn’t seem to mind too much that she’s “taught” the same basic internet and computer skills (not what the class is even about) for the last two weeks. Hopefully, next week will yield more thought provoking discussions and lessons. In the meantime, I am working on finding out how to squeeze at least 5 more hours into each day.

Wow. When I put it all down that is a lot!!
What is on your plate this fall?

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These fabulous pictures are part of Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday HQ.

Check out more of High Impact Mom’s Wordless Wednesday Photos too!

Clue #3: You’ll find the next clue where I try to break through.

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