Horizon Science Academy Visit

My visit to Horizon Science Academy Middle School in Columbus was great. The students were awesome! They were so polite and attentive and asked great questions. I had a wonderful day with them. A big thanks to Miss Caroline Clarke, seventh grade English teacher, who coordinated the visit.
I went from there to my sister's near Akron. After spending the last week baking cookies, going to Focus Photo Club, and preparing for my school visit, I was exhausted. I went to bed at 8:30 and slept till 10:00 the next morning! I NEVER go to bed before midnight!
Kay and I spent the next few days Christmas shopping (although we did manage to find our way into several scrapbooking places...). We drove home on Wednesday. The predicted rain in the morning, changing to snow by noon in Greenville. I was concerned about having to drive on icy roads, so we left at 8:00. The weather was really strange - bright sun, a rainbow, black clouds, torrential rain for a few minutes, lighter rain, more sun, etc. It was dry from about Springfield home and it didn't start to snow till we were about seven miles from Greenville. There was little accumulation, but we had 50 MPH winds, with higher gusts. So I didn't go to the Photo Club Board Meeting that night in Dayton. I don't like driving a van in winds like that, especially at night.
Today at 1:00, my Greenville graduating class is having a luncheon. Those are always fun. We usually have around 20 people. Kay is going with me. She was three years behind me, but knows most of them. We're going to dinner with my friends tonight at Longfellow's, then I'm going to a Crop at the ARTifacts scrapbook store. I'm going to try to scrap my pictures from the Photo Club trip to the Indianapolis Zoo in October. Kay's staying here and wrapping Christmas presents. We did that last night, too. She's probably staying till Tuesday, then I'll take her partway home to meet her husband, Randy.

Busy Week and Another School Visit

I've had a very busy week. There were 13 here for Thanksgiving. Eleven were family and we invited two friends. My sister came the night before to help me with preparations. Everything went well, but it took its toll on my back and legs.
As soon as I recovered from Thanksgiving, I started baking cookies for refreshments for Photo Club on Thursday. There will probably be 75-80 people there and, of course, no one eats just one cookie! I've made seven kinds so far and have two to go. I started doing refreshments for the Christmas meeting when we had about 30 members, and after about fifteen years, I'm still doing it.
Photo Club is Thursday night and on Friday I have to leave about 5:30 AM to drive to Columbus, Ohio, where I'm doing six presentations for the Horizon Science Academy, which is a small middle school. I'll be talking to each grade separately in the morning about writing and publishing a book. In the afternoon, I'll do a program on Pioneer Life for the sixth grade, adapt it for a small group of seventh graders, including an activity, then speak to the eighth graders about some of the Colonial heroes I've written about. The afternoon programs are all new, so I hope they go well. I've made PowerPoint programs to go with them. It should be more interesting than talking on the same topic all day.
When I leave the school, I'll go on to my sister's house, near Akron. We'll spend the next few days doing our Christmas shopping, then she'll come home with me on Wednesday. We'll stop in Dayton for the Photo Club Board Meeting. Her great-grandson, Carson, will be five on Sunday, Dec. 13, so she'll come for the party. On Monday I'll probably take her partway home to meet her husband.
Then I'll get busy with the Christmas tree, decorations, etc.
Oh, as an afterthought, I enjoyed the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster and sold 30 copies of my book, Heading West: Life with the Pioneers.