The beginning, the middle, and the end my friend...

Can you believe the year is halfway over already? The first six months of this year have zipped by so fast I think I may actually have whiplash - yeesh.  Summertime is good though; school is out, so it means extra time to work on the non-profit stuff and more time to work with the horses. Of course you know that's the best part :o) For those of you outside the educational system that may have raised an eyebrow and thought, "Must be nice to have the whole summer off...", take my word for it; it is absolutely earned. As an educational interpreter, I see what teachers go through [put up with] during the course of a school year and it is not pretty. For every teacher that is splashed across the headlines due to misconduct, there are hundreds more out there that are trying their best to overcome ridiculous obstacles to teach: apathetic parents and absent students (not to mention gigantic budget cuts). I have yet to figure out why the Obama administration didn't blink at bailing out the banks (and weren't they just a bunch of irresponsible idiots with the money they received?) but school systems across the nation are left to fail. I just don't get it.

I've submitted a monster grant proposal for the money we need for facilities. Since this was for all the marbles (not to mention the culmination of three years of very hard work) I'm somewhere between seriously excited and throwing up. Feel free to pray for our funding - I sure am! We have raised enough to cover our liability insurance for the next year - hooray! - so now we're focusing on operating expenses. Aside from building the necessary facilities, opening to the public is only a small part of the fundraising issue: Gotta be able to sustain and maintain, don'tcha know :o) I have three more grants in the works (consider my eyeballs perpetually crossed), and several fundraising campaigns underway too. Don't worry, I'd be willing to bet you'll hear all about them in the next few weeks (did I scare ya? *Grin*) Now I just have to finish filling out that gazillion page questionnaire for the insurance company...

It is the end of DD's years in high school *sniffle* she graduated last week. She'll be off to community college with a new interpreter in the fall. She is going to study her passion: Woodworking (these are some big life changes ahead!) Now that my student/daughter has graduated, I'm leaving high school as well. I'm going to go back to interpreting in elementary school; fifth grade, to be specific. I anticipate a little bit of culture shock there, but I'm kind of excited too (they do lots of reading - Yay! :o)

...And...

LOOK-LOOK-LOOK! No it's not giant gophers gone wild, it's DH and our favorite construction volunteer Ron getting the backyard ready for the patio. This is the last step [other than the liability insurance mentioned earlier] before we can have visitors. We may just be ready to roll before the end of summer...I'm SO excited!! We're finishing up the demonstration/petting area too, which is across from the patio and just to the left in this photo (I'll try to take some pictures for next week's post). The times, they sure are a changin', WOO! As always, thanks for reading this far and I will see y'all next week...