Living the dream

Ask me what I did tonight after we put the kids to bed, and I would reply "I painted bee hives in my basement!" I'm not sure that the fact that I have a basement, and that it's big enough and well lit enough to paint in, adds to the excitement, but the painting of the hives makes the next part of the dream become real.

When we decided that we would actually move, one of our drivers to get here was to live out our dreams. Admittedly, they are slightly different if you ask me or my wife, but overall there's a desire for an outdoors woodsy childhood for our kids, a sense of exploration inside New Hampshire and out into North America and a general ability to do things that we would never get to do in our lives as they were in the UK. We check in with each other to make sure we're still "living the dream", which is a code word for doing things out of the ordinary that bring us joy.

I write this post as there's been a few instances of recently of when I've found myself in "living the dream" moments, some of which were dreams that I had had before, and some of which I didn't know were part of "living the dream" until they happened.

T-ball

Sports start early in America, and they start up quickly. Jake is now old enough to qualify for pre-K T-ball (like baseball, but the ball starts on a tee for you to hit instead of being thrown at you by a pitcher) and so we signed him up for a 5 week taster course. We of course bought him a glove, ball and tee and we went each week. He ran around with a smile on his face, and it was delightful to see him interact with others and take pleasure in a group sport. As a result, we've now signed him up for a team, and the first weekly practice (!) session is tomorrow afternoon, with a game most Saturdays between now and July. There'll be another post just about this whole process, but I'm excited to have him playing team sports.

Playing in the yard

For most of our time in this house so far, it has either been too dark or too cold or too covered in feet of snow to play in our garden. However, we finally seem to have reached the end of winter, and while this week is predicted to be only in the 50s, we had a few days of summer like heat and sunshine at the end of last week. The dream moment happened on Friday night when my wife got home from work with Jake. I had been at home with Sophie that day, and was itching to get out of the house, so I invited Jake to come play T-ball outside. We got all the stuff together, set up the tee and spent a glorious half an hour hitting the ball as a far as he could down the yard. It was at that moment that I realized how much space we have, and how much I love where we live. There was that beautiful golden setting sunlight, a summer warmth in the air and the giggle of my children outside, and if that's not living the dream, I don't know what is.

Teaching with technology

Not every part of living the dream happens at home, and this is one of the moments which I didn't realize I wanted to happen, but was so glad when it did. I'm lucky enough to teach in a school which has provided 1:1 Chromebooks for the students in 3-5th grade, and I've taken up the challenge to see how I can transform their learning using these tools. It's been a slog at times to show them how to use the different apps and extensions, but the cloud aspect and ability to share and collaborate continues to amaze me. Two moments in particular stand out for me: the first was a group of students who were researching a short term project together. Without discussing with me, they had set up one Google Slide show, assigned each of them a topic to search and decided on the format of their own slide as a way of pooling resources. It was such a neat interactive way to take notes, done so independently, that I realized just how far we've come. The second happened on Friday when I was home with Sophie. She was taking a snooze, and I noticed that at that time the students would be in math, working on Google Drawings of parallel and perpendicular lines. They thought it was a bit freaky but also really useful that I popped on their work, commenting in real time from 25 miles away on what they were doing, chivvying them along and discussing the next steps. It's moments like that that make teaching rewarding as you find new and innovative ways to engage students.

Not every "living the dream" moment has to be big, or grand. In fact, I like the fact that a lot of these moments that validate our move for me and that bring me so much joy are the small ones that can be savored and repeated. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait for our first big road trip or our first canoe adventure, but in the meantime, I will be living the dream in many smaller ways just as happily.