First Week of School

Friday. We are just about through the first week of school. It was a little rocky in the beginning. Getting out the door, even when school is a five minute walk from home, is still getting out the door! Showers, lunch boxes, and forms to turn in...we are not strangers to this routine. Getting lap tops and power cords packed and transported was a new event. But we did it and my three kids and the other 20 kids who make up the Oh Institute (oh-Institute.org) were all present for the 8 am meeting.

The school is on the second story of a beautiful West Indies style building in the center of town. The interior used to be an architect's office and it is as cool as you would expect. There are five main areas in the space. One "side" is for the middle school (about 10 kids) and two more not quite middle schoolers who slipped in with siblings. The other side is for the high schoolers, about 8 total. The perimeter of the room is lined with a desk-height counter top, beautiful wooden counter top with a clean modern look. The kids have office chairs, the cool black mesh ones you see in the CEO's office. The space has window along one side that look out onto the town hall and the little post office. The rest of the room is lined with clean simple white shelves that are home to globes and really really groovy graphic art.

The middle school and the high school are separated by long heavy white curtains hung on cool modern metal wire rods, think Ikea. The other areas are a kitchen, a small library and language room, a conference room and a lounge. The lounge has sleek modern couches and a very high- tech white board. This is where they hold morning meeting. The white board allows them to view any necessary or interesting media from anywhere in the world..like professors from colleges at Duke or their regular classroom teacher who might be at home or in Central America that day.

Needless to say, its not like school when we were kids! All the kids work all day either alone with their lap tops or in small groups with a teacher. The groups mix all ages and include everything from technology training to role playing social skills. Field trips are also on the agenda...some the kids will ride bikes to and some will require a passport!

I love it for the education and the unique experience but I also love it because everyday I can make the kids lunch at 11:45am and when the town hall liberty bell strokes high noon, I am sitting outside on a beautiful patio having lunch with my kids, their entire school, and several other parents. Pinch me!

The Ocean

I have not even mentioned the ocean since I started this blog about beach life! I have been there several times since we arrived just under two weeks ago. I have been there for sunset which is indescribable. For the past two years while vacationing here, sunset has been, for us, a sacred time to be on the beach. My husband and I, rookie tourist then (and now!) would take our portable beach chairs down to the sand 30 minutes before the sun starts its rapid decent. We would hike through town carrying our beach chairs on our backs. You know the kind, backpack straps, blue canvas seats, wooden recline-able arms, major geek vacation gear. The whole family has matching chairs plus the bonus portable cooler. Very nice (wink).

As we walk through town alone, our two daughters are uninterested and our teenage son won't be caught dead anywhere near the backpack chairs, we are happy and relaxed thinking about the light beers we will drink at the beach. My husband carries the matching cooler. We walk the boardwalk until the stairs carry us over the sand dune and deposit us on the beach. Pick a spot, any spot, they are all good and have the same view. And that is all we do sit, watch, hold hands and marvel at the intensity of the beauty.

Everyone should see this kind of beauty once a day. Why is the planet designed so only certain places have the benefit of this specter? Aren't all creatures equal in the eyes of Mother Earth? Aren't we all offspring of Mother Nature? If you ask me this seems like playing favorites. The reds in the sky are so dark and so brilliant that it starts to look black. The ocean almost turns to Mercury, thick and shinny moving in slow heavy waves. The sand is so fine that if you walk without picking up your feet the friction creates sparks, real sparks you can see after the sun sets and its dark.

The next morning, a mere 11 hours later, the sun rises with equal beauty. Mother Earth, you have really out done yourself.

Pictures from our balcony

I thought it was time to show some pictures of where we are. This is a picture from our balcony. Our building looks very similar to the white building across the Green. We are in the top center loft so our balcony looks like the one you see in the center of the white building.

From the inside we go up an elevator to our hallway, like a hotel or an apartment. The doors lock automatically when the door closes, like a hotel room. However, unlike a hotel, if you lock all the keys in your unit you can't go down stairs to the front desk for an extra key...there is no front desk.

Now as much as we tried to teach the kids about the importance of having a key when you leave, getting locked out was sure to happen. Giving an extra key to a friend in town was one of many things on my to-do list, right behind unpack, find toothbrush and get kids registered for school. So when I walked right out the front door and the heavy wooden door with a substantial metal door handle and a very secure lock started slowly closing while I looked down at my hands and inventoried two dog leashes and a cell phone, I had a very bad feeling. CLICK. Yeah, I locked us out. Bob road around town on his bike (car keys in the loft too) to try and find an extra key...maybe security? No luck. I decided to get a latte and walk the dogs, what else was I going to do?

As I rounded the back of the building I saw a man painting the third floor shutters, near the third floor balcony. He was standing in a rectangular platform that "fenced" him in. The platform was hoisted up by a lift, a lift that you could drive around to my side of the building!....are you thinking what I'm thinking? Is my balcony door open? It must be, I'm out there every five minutes surveying the beauty and charm of my new reality. "Excuse me, sir".

Needless to say, he is now my hero!

first day of cross country

I guess we had to move all the way to Florida to get my girls to start running! Since we are enrolling in a little private school in Rosemary Beach with a home school classification we became eligible to sign up for cross country at an amazing little charter school call the Seaside School.

I will post more pictures later this week, but the setting is like a Hollywood set. Beautiful green lawn, anchored by a permanent white tent structure built over a wooden deck. The kids meet under the tent and are coached by an amazing man who loves running and loves teaching kids to love running. After a few housekeeping comments we did a warm up run around the school/town, then the "pink course" named for the coaches map which is highlighted in pink.

The course starts at the tent and the surreal, picturesque route just gets better from there. We cross the road and enter a gravel trail that must be crushed sea shells or something that magical. We cross under an arch of whimsical tree tops that provide a light canopy that shades us over the entire path. Water...I guess a lake or bay runs along the course. We run from bridge to bridge, crossing over the water like an army of angels producing a symphony of thunder that echos from the wooden bridge. The water, complete with Lilly pads and lotus flowers, is completely still and serene under the turbulence of 0ur middle school soldiers.

Who runs here, who lives here? The sky is partly cloudy today so the light is filtered. As a runner of many years, and a route snob from Minneapolis, I am silenced. I think with anticipation of Beth's visit in November and our run in this Paradise. I study the map to calculate how many miles we can eek out of this haven. I am so grateful to be here and have this experience.

Picture of post-cross country practice. Refreshments at a nearby Seaside airstream, shaved ice, nice hang out.

First blog!

Ok after several attempts to get help setting up the blog, I had to go solo and hack thru it on my own. It wasn't very hard but I'm not sure where these words will end up!

We have been at the beach for one week today. It feels longer since so much has happened and our life is so completely different. Going from a large planned community in suburban Texas to a small beach town in the Florida panhandle gives me a few thing to write about.

First the nuts and bolts...do we fit in our new place?

Lots of people have asked how the 1,500 sq ft loft works for our family of five (me, my husband our three kids and two dogs). After living in a large house with a two car garage and a big back yard, I was a little unsure. So far no problem. We all fit ... well, we all fit minus lots and lots of stuff we left behind in Texas, (a whole blog of its own later about getting rid of the stuff ). But for now know that I sold, donated, and trashed like a mad women in preparation for this move. I have to say other than drawer space for the clothes I never wear, I really don't miss it at all. (The clothes I do wear still hang on a chair, a hook or the side of the tub just like they did at home!)

The third floor loft has high ceilings and lots of windows which make this place feel pretty open. The bedrooms are smaller and the girls share a room with a triple bunk that they seem to love so far. The first night here they had three friends sleep over!

The no garage is new. My bike is in a public bike rack outside the entrance to our three story loft building, unlocked. Every day when I bring the dogs down to walk them on the "common" or "green" across the street from my place, I look for my bike. Like a miracle, every morning, it is there right where I left it! My kids rip sticks are strewn across the sidewalk or in the hall way of our building with about four extras that belong to their friends.

As promised, well as I promised myself, I can vacuum the whole place in about 15 minutes. I have to admit I've only done it once. So it looks like house keeping really will be a lot less work...good more time to blog! Pictures are coming but first I have to figure out how to get them on the blog with the words...how do it know?