October? Or July?

It's the 5th. Yesterday it was 75 degrees outside, and the day before it was 93. Um. I thought this stuff would be over by now? According to the calendar in my yard - my big, ever shedding water birch tree - it should be fall by now. So goodbye to the 93 degree days, right? We actually had our furnace on on Saturday, and Then Monday turned the air back on. What is wrong with this picture?

Yesterday I went to talk to my daughter's kindergarten teacher. Lovely woman. She's very sweet. She's only in her second year of teaching kg, and truly loves her job. I, I'm afraid, am going to become her least favorite parent. Either that or her most favorite.

Yesterday I went in to talk about halloween, and our lack of support for it in our house. I actually dread the whole month of October, because I simply cannot stand halloween. It is a horrid day. Do not get me started into why I hate it. I just do. There are not many things that I am passionately opposed to in life, but halloween and santa are two of them. Two of my soapboxes, and fortunately or not, this is the first year that I've had to think about how to explain my lack of enthusiasm for these two cultic icons of our society.

So I went to have conversation with her teacher, and was able to sanely explain my position, I think. I have to learn to be a bit flexible. I have to learn that even though I have such extreme convictions about this day, if I don't want to isolate my child from her peers, making her feel as left out as I did as a child, I will have to bend a tad. I will have to make some exceptions. But, like I talked about with the teacher, if you're going to color a jack-o-lantern, isn't it just as easy to color a pumpkin? If you're going to play a game and one side is the pumpkins and one is the witches, wouldn't be just as easy to have one side be pumpkins and one side be, say, apples? Or scarecrows? Both equally a fall item, but not a halloween item per se?

So I think we came to some agreements. I'm just asking her to send home an itinerary of upcoming events, and just let me see what's going to happen. Let me see, and that way, I can make any explanations with L that I need to. We can talk about them when she gets home, or before she even goes in for the day. This, I think, will have to do.

MOPS is going fairly well. As the new newsletter writer, I've come up against some stumbling blocks within our sponsoring church. I want to change things up, make them more applicable to moms as a whole, and not just specifically church members, yet keep Christ as the center, and I'm having trouble with it. The church basically likes things how they are, and doesn't want me to change them. I have talked with our coordinator about this, and she understands, but at the same time, there's not really much she can do about it. I just have to learn to follow their guidelines, make changes where they are approved, and swallow my frustration at the rest of the resisitance. It's a God thing. It's his work, his words, his ministry, not mine, and if it's going to glorify him, then I can't be the one behind the wheel trying to force things to go my way. That will not be productigve in the least.

I just took this of my youngest. My living room was entirely too quiet, so I walked in to see what the lack of hubub was about. My daughter was lying in front of the dog's cage, letting him lick her fingers. She's all dressed up in her barbie gown, talking to the puppy. So sweet.