Dinosaurland!

 Once we left the caverns, we were only 45 minutes away from Dinosaurland!  How do you not stop by Dinosaurland?!  It's cheap admission and homemade creatures were drawing us in.  Let's just say, you get what you pay for.  Some of the statues were in major need of repair and a little TLC but the kids didn't care.  And Jason is going through a hardcore dinosaur phase right now, so this was right up his alley!

Hanging out in the shark's jaws

The mammoth was one of the better looking creatures we saw.

Jason was so cute in this pic!  As soon as I took the picture, he pointed and said "Look at the meat eaters, Emmy!"

An epic battle between carnivore and herbivore!

Love the family portrait next to the gaping wound!  This one  might make it to the Christmas card! (Just kidding.  I told Tim that he had to take one pic of me during the trip or no one would believe that I came along.  The trials and tribulations of always being the photographer!)

More death and carnage.  But the kids loved it!

Holding hands claws with the omniraptor.

King Kong needs to get his face worked on but the kids liked sitting in his hand!

Day Trippin': Luray Caverns

We were first in line for the 2nd group and the kids kept checking down the staircase to the caverns.  So excited!

 Tim and I had a whole (hot) weekend and knew we needed to entertain the kids somewhere nice and cool (so basically, nowhere that included being outside).  We're a family of gingers for goodness sake--we go up in the flames with record temps like these!  We headed off Saturday morning to a place where it is 54 degrees all year long--Luray Caverns.  We got there early per the recommendations I read online and barely waited 15 minutes and were the second tour group to head into the caverns.  When we came out 2 hours later, the line wrapped the building!  Glad we didn't plan on getting there late!
The tour was just long enough to make the admission fee worth it but not so long that the kids dissolved into whiny disasters.

Love Dream Lake!  The reflections make it look 8 feet deep but the deepest part is only 20 inches.

The kids threw pennies into the wishing well part and Jason kept saying his wishes really loudly as he flung his pennies:  "I want to be a lion!  Uuuuuuhhh, it didn't work!  I want to BE A LION!"

These sheets are only 1/8 of an inch thick and light shines right through them.  The middle section looked like bacon!

Some random love hugging while listening to the organ play music.

Christmas tree!

The car and carriage museum and toy museum are included at no cost (because who would really pay more for these experiences?!) so we visited both!

Updating the Library: My Summer Mission

 What does "vacation" mean?  It certainly doesn't include going into work everyday.  But that is how I have chosen to spend my summer vacation.  Now that I've officially been transferred to the position of Library Media Specialist, I anxiously waited for the previous librarian to undo the hoarding that occurred in the library and her office.  Once the space was cleared of all personal items, I jumped in with two feet (and several volunteers) to start bringing the library up to 21st century standards.  
My first order of business was doing a thorough weeding of the fiction collection.  Caroline, friends, and I went through the entire fiction section book by book and pulled out every book that hasn't been checked out in 8 years.  That was my cut off--8 years.  We pulled over 500 books.  Not surprising since our fiction collection is close to 8,000 books!  Once those books were gone, we started genrefying the collection.  The girls and I placed a colored dot sticker on the spine of each book to signify which genre it belongs to.  I broke up the collection into 11 genres:  historical fiction (yellow), realistic fiction (blue), awards & classics (silver), science fiction (pink), fantasy fiction (purple), sports fiction (orange), animal fiction (neon green), humor (white), mystery (red), scary fiction (black), action/adventure (dark green), and graphic novels (brown).  Which genre do you think that KGMS students read the most?  If the collection is any indication, then KGMS peeps are in love with fantasy!  I darn near ran out of purple sticker dots!  I'm pretty sure that I can "forget" to order more fantasy books for the next 5 years and my collection will still be impressive.  For now, genrefying has shown me that several of our genres are severely lacking:  sports, humor, and graphic novels.  Those will be the books that I focus on when completing my purchase orders this year.  

Added a "staff picks" display so that the teachers can put up a suggestion or two!  

I know that Messi isn't a fictional person, but I needed a sports poster for my sports fiction section.  I made the orange polka dot border above and below the poster to coordinate with the orange stickers in this section.

I added the welcome letters above the office door and windows, made the curtain fabric strip valances with a healthy donation from Carrie, and the circulation desk is original to the school from 1968!  I just moved it back about 7 feet (it was protruding waaaaay too far into the room) and I added gray trellis patterned contact paper to the panels on the front.  The pennant banner was on clearance at Hobby Lobby for $2 and the contact paper was at Family Dollar for $3 a roll--score!

We already had the 2 navy blue chairs, so I added my old blue couch, a rug on clearance from Walmart ($27) and 2 Lack tables from IKEA--only $7 each!  I laid out a nice display of magazines on the coffee table, hoping to entice my reluctant readers with some "Girl's Life" and "Sports Illustrated for kids".

The endcaps of the tall bookcases looked like a lion had scratched them to death.  So they got covered in gray contact paper and I added bulletin border and vinyl quotes.  The middle grouping is all IKEA except for the aqua stool (5 and below) and the rug ($25 at Walmart.com).

I have started to put all the books into their correct locations on the bookcases.  This first set of bookcases will house the realistic fiction.  Notice the blue dots on the book spines.  Also, I made signs for each section and cut out border in the section color.  I'm hoping it becomes second nature for the kids to know the dot colors and their genres so that they are comfortable checking out the purple or pink or blue section because they love to read fantasy or science fiction or realistic fiction.  The old setup was 5-20 books on a shelf with a bookend.  I decided to do more of a "bookstore" set up with every shelf having 1-2 books turned forward so that you can see the covers.  

This is the whole realistic fiction section.  I decided not to put any books on the top or bottom shelves.  No one wants to stretch up or squat down to get a book.  Kids won't do what's hard, so put the books at their level and they might just actually check out a few this year!   It's come a long way and there is still sooooo much more to do!