Summer Vacation is Officially Here...Almost

Tomorrow is my final day of teaching summer school. I enjoy teaching (and I especially enjoy the extra paycheck), but I am ready to just relax and spend my 7 weeks of summer vacation at home with Makenna. I have several goals that I hope to accomplish during my time off including:
1. Completely potty train Makenna

2. Work with Makenna on her colors, ABCs, and numbers 1-10. I purchased a DVD series called Preschool Prep about these three things and they say a child will have them mastered if they watch the DVDs every day for 2 weeks. Well, I am going to test these claims one DVD at a time. She LOVES to watch Sesame Street and can recognize and say the letter of the day for the remainder of the day, as well as say the number of the day (no, I am not bragging about my amazingly smart 17 month old daughter), so I hope to be successful in this quest.

3. Finish reading the Twilight series--I know I have only been reading them since December and am only on the second book. Needless to say, it isn't my favorite book series of all time, but I promised some students that I would read them.

4. Make some progress in my goal to have a homemade cross-stitched Christmas stocking for each member in our family by Christmas 2010. At the rate I am going I might have them accomplished by the Christmas of 2030. Here are the links to the patterns I bought. The finished products will be amazing, but they will take hours to complete. And in case you are wondering why there are 4 patterns instead of just three, please recall that I am a planner and I was just thinking if the future and wanted to purchase them at the same time so that they all had the same style.

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8778

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8645

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8806

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8740

5. Complete most (not all) of my Christmas shopping. I like shopping early for the holidays so that I can avoid the chaos of the retail stores and malls during the months of November and December. I have already purchased Justin's large gift--it is so large that is was a combined birthday and Christmas present-- and I also have 4 or 5 gifts for Makenna, so I am off to a good start.

6. Have a good relaxing vacation in Vegas. We leave 3 weeks from Sunday and I cannot wait. We have reserved tickets for 2 cirque shows (Mystere and KA) and we are planning on taking a day-long excursion to the Grand Canyon. We will miss Makenna while we are gone, but Justin and I are both looking forward to the trip.

7. Learn about a new hobby I want to begin sometime soon. I have begun the process of researching SLR cameras because I want to get back into photography. And maybe if I get semi-experienced with using an SLR I might begin taking some pictures for family and friends because hiring a professional can be SO EXPENSIVE! After seeing some pictures of Makenna that I took, I did have some co-workers ask if I ever considered taking pictures for others. I had never really thought that my photos were anything special, but their encouragement prompted me to want to upgrade to a nice camera. I will keep you posted on this new quest of mine.

Wow. That is a lot to accomplish before I return to work on August 12th, but I like having goals to meet so this list should prevent me from getting bored during my time off.