The 25th Hour ~karenjcardoza.com~

Patriots initial Training Camp dates/times announced.  They’re moving away from the usual morning/evening session alternating with a single afternoon session, at least for the first week. Not much time between for those people wanting to go home between sessions. Of course, they may just hope that people stick around and spend lots of money at Patriot Place.

July 30: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

July 31: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

August 1: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

August 2: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

August 3: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

August 4: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

August 5: 9:30am – 11:15am; 3:45pm – 5:30pm

A week from today, I’ll be FREE!!  School will be out for the summer.   I may end up working part time doing ESY (Extended School Year) services for my kids but I’m not sure yet and I’m still waiting to hear if it’s going to happen.

It’s been a VERY emotional few weeks with some personal issues in our family so I’m really looking forward to a change of pace. I look forward to my Summer Life… taking my dogs for walks, reading for pleasure, enjoying nature and recharging my batteries.

I’m glad to say that I finally got my garden planted and thanks to Al for helping me extend the garden this year. I usually end up with a nice crop of vegetables but they’re usually too crowded in and it’s hard to harvest. The extra space make things much easier and will allow me to plant even more.

I look forward to relaxing a bit and doing more of this:

Home from the Rendezvous and once again had an excellent time!  The weather was very warm during the day but cold at night. Of course we had lots of work to do to set up but once it’s done, there’s lots of relaxing and chatting with friends. Sharing good food, drinks and lots of laughs is what it’s about. Nobody wears a watch… it’s not period correct but time doesn’t matter anyway. The cannon booms at 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM but other than that, we had no idea about time for the entire weekend. (Of course, if you plan on attending any of the events you need to know what time it is but for us, there was no need other than to attend church on Sunday morning.)

It’s great to go around and look at things for sale on Traders Row and I love to see everyone’s lodge set-ups and clothes. There are so many different looks there and each person is unique. We only go for the weekend because I of work (and kids and dogs!) but it’s not long enough for me. I would love to go for the entire time if I could. Of course, we’ve had nice weather when we’ve been there and once we left this year, we seemed to have taken the sun with us. It rained for the rest of the week once we left.

Our crew has made plans to get together monthly to do the little projects such as repairs and creating the things that we’ll need. I made a new outfit for Al this year but I plan on sewing all year so I won’t be rushing at the last minute next year. (I’ll be keeping my eye on the sales all year as well.)  I’m pretty set for clothes but definitely need more warm things. Once again, we froze the first night. (Hint for next year: put the stove together on Day 1 unless it’s super hot!)

I love the fact that I store my photos online so I can upload and share ASAP but I’ll be printing out my album for this year some time this week. There’s been so much going on since we’ve gotten back, I’ve had little time for anything.

The entire 2009 Album and Slideshow  is here!

Additional Links:

National Rendezvous and Living History Wikipedia Entry

Mountain Man Rendezvous Sites

Living History ReEnactments

National Living History Foundation

Original High Plains Primitive Rendezvous

NRLHF Eastern Primitive Rendezvous

Pacific Primitive Rendezvous

Ready to Rendezvous! 

Check back here for the scoop about our Rendezvous and to see the pictures!

Look what happened, overnight!

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted and it’s because I’ve been very busy with school things and real life. My time online has really been dwindling and I jump on and off to check email, Twitter, and Facebook statuses but I’ve been doing a lot of reading and trying to get outside to take the girls for walks. (I even ran Lincoln Woods last weekend so I’ve been getting back into that as well.)

This is the final week that I can work on the State Alternate Assessment for my kids and I’ve been going full force since April vacation. I’ve literally been going in early every day, staying late, and working through EVERY prep period and planning period for the last month. It’ll be close but I need to have it ready for pickup Wednesday night when I leave school.  This week is going to be hairy as I already know that I’ll be alone tomorrow ( Assistant is sick…) so I’ll have to keep my kids and won’t have a prep to work on it because they can’t go to gym and music alone. I have quite a few medical appointments to attend as well, so there won’t be much after school time available. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to eek it out.

It was a busy weekend with going out to dinner and to  see Foreigner (blast from the past!) last night with friends and spending today at the Special Olympics with my kids. This is the first time I’ve been online for more than 30 seconds today so I dropped this quick post at the last minute. I’m really hoping that with the end of the Assessment comes time to get back to more social media interacting and new media creation.  Until then… see you on Twitter or Facebook and wish me luck!

Vacation week is almost done and it has flown by. It’s been an extremely busy week with appointments every day. I planned on working on my #$$@%$## Alternate Assessment (separate blog post coming at some point about that…) but I literally didn’t even have time. The weather has gotten warmer each day and the weekend is supposed to be quite warm. Cleaning out the garage, working in the yard and driving to my brother’s to pick up my car is on the agenda for Saturday.

I’m really going to be behind the 8 ball until the assessment is due May 8th because I’ve got lots to do before that. In addition, the medical issues in the family have not been resolved yet so there are many appointments lined up. I’ve also got to dedicate some real time to working out in order to drop some pounds for my own health.

At least I’ve been able to get lots of reading done this week due to the wonders of audio books. I’ve been able to read while walking, cleaning, and running errands. I still love to read print books but the audio versions allow me to multitask and whittle down my TBR (to be read ) pile.

When I go back to school for the final 45 or so days, I’ll have lots to do and many decisions to make about what I’ll be doing this summer and which direction I want to move into in terms of my future. I have AT LEAST 14 more years to work until I can retire at age 59… more if I stay past that but I still would love to retire now…. sigh… Just goes to show you that you really can’t change who you really are and that deep rooted hopes and dreams may be suppressed but they’re always there no matter what. (For those of you who don’t know me well, you may not know that all I ever wanted to be was a stay at home mom, but it just never worked out that way….)

Without getting into much detail, I must say that the past few months have been a blur…. We had a medical scare here and while we still don’t have all of our answers and know exactly what was wrong, we now know that some serious, scary things have been ruled out. With the coming of spring and the good news, it’s time to get back to a normal life and schedule here. I’m hoping to be able to finally get a good night’s sleep without spending hours tossing and turning. I’m so ready to finally wake up rested for a change.

Tomorrow will be Day 130 at school, with 50 to go!  It’s that time of the year that I have lots and lots of paperwork and various individualized plans and assessments  to do for my students. In order to make it, I’ll be staying at school late and bringing work home a lot. April vacation starts on Good Friday, 4/10, and I’ll likely be working every day  on it during the following week.  I’m not going away anywhere and I have an appointment every day but the agenda will include  school work, working out, and yard work. I’m really hoping to have a good chunk of work done before vacation starts so I can do some relaxing too.

I finally was able to get my Pats website updated this week, after spending time fixing the bugs that prevented me from automatically updating. I also banged out a real quick Podcast after school today and hope to be more consistent with the draft approaching. The one thing that I’ve managed to do a lot of these days has been reading.  Since I’ve not been online much at all, I’ve been banging out the books!

I’ve also been able to go to the gym quite a bit, have been working out at home and after school with coworkers, and may run a 5k this weekend…. we’ll see how it goes! Meanwhile, despite the craziness in my life of late, I’ve personally been trying to take very good care of my health and balance it all.

It feels good to be back….