Yesterday morning, when I picked Esme up from preschool, I saw gasoline for $3.83 a gallon. My little needle showed me I still had about a quarter of a tank, so I thought: "I'll wait. It can't get worse than $3.83, maybe it will get a bit better before I run out of gas."
Yesterday afternoon, when Esme and I went over to the elementary school for the second grade Marketplace Day, I saw gasoline for $3.99 a gallon. All the stations raised their prices around noon. $3.99. *Gasp.* Remember Operation Desert Shield, in the fall of 1990? That's when I got my first car. Everyone, me included, was SO astonished that gas cost as much as 99 cents a gallon.
Batch those errands, folks. We'll be riding our bikes to town this summer - at least the high gas prices will keep us buying things locally...
General Motors is forcing retirement on many of their high-level, high-seniority employees - Dad's retiring. He has about a month of vacation yet to take, so he will be actively working about one more week. He will still be officially employed by GM on his fortieth anniversary with the company next month. "Retirement" is a funny word to describe all the manual labor that Dad will undoubtedly be doing, but I think he has been waiting for this day for a long time. For our part, we will sure be looking forward to getting together with him more often.
The second grade Marketplace Day at Aidan's school was so much fun. What a lot of work those kids did! Here are some of the goods we saw for sale: bracelets, books and magazines, candy of many different kinds, popcorn, root beer floats, pet rocks, decorated bags, WebKinz beds and chairs, homemade WebKinz cards... But not only were there goods for sale, there were also services! You could have a massage, have your fingernails painted, play several different kinds of games (with prizes), have a design painted on your face... WOW!!! There are sure a lot of talented and imaginative kids in the class of 2018!!! Esme and I had $20 in Elementary School Bucks, and it went pretty quickly. Aidan and Mason made fifty chocolate Happy Pops, and each of them took home three, so they sold 44! Good job, boys!
The sprinkler system is fixed, but fortunately for our water bill, it has been raining on a regular basis and we haven't needed to "sprink". Everything is so very green and flowery this spring!!! I'm not sure what it is, but other Byron Centronians have noticed it too - everything that's blooming is blooming like it never has before! It's super beautiful around here this year.
Aidan has only 16 days of school left before summer vacation; Esme has only five. Each of them has one field trip coming up - Aidan's class is going to see a Whitecaps baseball game and going bowling, and Esme's class is going to the zoo. I had a parent-teacher conference with Esme's teacher yesterday, and she is doing REALLY well at everything except following directions. Hmmm...that is also what Aidan's last report card said... These two often seem to think they know better than the authority figure what they should be doing. Straighten up, children!
I am looking forward to a summer of sleeping in...all the way 'till 7:00 a.m., probably. Esme still sometimes sleeps in really nicely when she doesn't have school - today she didn't get up until 9:15! But Aidan, no matter how late he stays awake, is always up at the crack of dawn - which in summer is pretty early.