Shelves and More Shelves..

July 16, 2009
Well... the shelves are here.. The truck arrived and WOW! When the accordion door to the Uhaul opened....it was a moment that I will NEVER forget. This moment made everything feel real, and I do not think there was a dry eye in the parking lot. I was amazed. Farrell Eaves and Mike Vaughn spent hours, days and weeks making our beautiful shelves by hand. All the small hands that will use these shelves...Farrell and Mike will never know the impact their work will have on the children of HTM for many years to come. After we unloaded all the shelves, the crews arrived and more work began. Family, friends, faculty and parents of HTM arrived to help out. What a crew! We worked for four straight days and nights to finally deliver the shelves into the classrooms on Saturday. As the shelves were being moved to the classrooms, family and friends, were planting flowers, painting church walls and adding mulch to the grounds. I thank each of my wonderful, special family and friends who have dedicated weekend after weekend to help with HTM. We are almost there... now, the Montessori work begins. Time to "prepare the environment" as Dr. Maria Montessori states. Now, for my true passion.... preparing for the children.

Open House- July 25, 2009

So, I am a little behind on the blog, as many of you can imagine why. We had our first Open House in July, and it was amazing. We had our journey posted on a Journey Wall, by dear family friends, the Mannings. Meg and Matt worked together

to write and post the HTM story. The Open House was an amazing moment for me. After all the work throughout the last 10 months, I was able to share my joy and excitement with family, friends, colleagues and most important the parents of HTM. The Open House could not have been more memorable and wonderful. I want to truly thank the parents of HTM for trusting in me and in believing in my dream. It was a great joy to share this day with everyone, and I was lucky enough to board a plane after Open House to NC to meet my new niece, Lucy!

My First Shelf

Ok. so it is not the official shelving yet, but this is the first shelf put together at HTM! This is the shelf that will be used as our dish "hutch", being the place for our snack and lunch dishes! All I missing are the napkins and tablecloths which are being handmade by my mom!

Looks pretty great! Can't wait to get the rest of the room ready!

Montessori Little Things

Just a few photos of the fun Montessori "little" things that I have been collecting!

My Mom

My Mom... where do I begin .....

I have to thank my mom for all her hard work for HTM! My mom, Karla, is like no other mom, she is a great combo of her mother and father. My grandmother, Sally who we were all very close to was a seamstress for years, making all kinds of things with her sewing talents. Mom, taking after Sally, has made all the curtains for HTM, she is working on the vestments, sewing work rugs, making polishing cloths, tablecloths and napkins. And, taking after her father, Carl, my dear grandfather who was a woodworker, Mom has helped with

ANY project that we have come across from putting together all the chairs, building closet shelves in the office, building storage in the classroom, laying

tile for the flooring and "fixing" any loose screw, bolt or nail! She is amazing. Working every day with my mom over the past few months has been an amazing process. I feel very lucky to have my family's support in HTM, but to have my mom's help and to learn from her each day in all of our projects brings me great joy. I hope someday I can teach Maggie and Jane as much as I my mom has taught me. I have learned so much from my mom as I have grown up, but I also have learned so much over the past few months. I have learned that moms are very special people that no matter how old or "grown" up you are.......your mom will always love you and support you!

The Bathroom Shelving, Mirror and Supply Rack that Mom put together AND the beautiful curtains!!

Thank you Mom for all your help...HTM is a special place because of you!

Tree Trimming, Car Windows & Poison Ivy

As you are all reading in this blog, the process of Holy Trinity Montessori forming has presented me with so many blessings. Blessings that are far beyond my dreams! Well, however, last weekend, July 4th weekend provided me with my first "hard" weekend!! I wish I had taken a picture of what happened, but I did not. Mike and I planned to spend July 3rd at the church cleaning up brush, poison ivy and dead limbs on the trees. The property at Holy Trinity Lutheran is so beautiful, but a large undertaking for any soul. It is 7 acres of beautiful "farmland" that has old, large oak trees. The grounds are so perfect for a Montessori school, however the poison ivy and weeds are not! So, my family packed up for the day, headed to the church to WORK!!! Well, after being at the church for a bit, we realized we needed a few rakes from home. So, I went home grabbed the rakes and quickly returned to the church. I got the girls out of the car, took out the rakes, leaned the rake against the left side of the car and proceeded to close the back hatch of my SUV. WELL, when I closed the back, the rake fell and went THROUGH the back window SHATTERING the window!!!!!! I was covered in glass standing behind my car thinking.....I do not think I could have done that if I tried and WHAT JUST HAPPENED!!!!!

So as Mike and I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up glass and TAPING my window we realized we were not going to get much done! We ended up returning later in the day to finish our work.

After we worked the rest of the day and a couple of other times over the weekend, I broke out in poison ivy on my arm, leg and back!!! My mom ended up getting spots of it also! My mom, Karla, has been an unbelievable help through this whole process! So, the weekend ended with a taped window, poison ivy (with a prescription) and trimmed trees!!!

We are hoping to have more luck this next week !!! The shelves are coming... look for more after Thursday..... all shelves will be here by Thursday!

My Logo

Many of you have seen my logo, which I just added to the blog...but I wanted to make sure that I give Chris Veit the credit he deserves in designing my logo. Chris is a great family friend, who sat down with me to hear my vision for the logo. Here is what Chris had to work with.... "ok..no primary colors, no children hands in a circle and no cheesy preschool "stuff", that's about all... oh and can we have a trillium somewhere in there..." and, Chris said.. " I got it " and designed this. Unreal!

Now, there was a story to the flower which is called a trillium. One evening before the HT church vote, we ( meaning my family) were sitting at my mom and dad's trying to brain storm idea names for the school. We were all over the place with ideas about Montessori, Italy, threes( which is a Montessori thing) ect. Mike was on the internet searching, and said out of nowwhere there is a flower that represents the Trilogy..it is called a trillium. We all thought for a minute and went through some names with the trillium. I somewhat tucked this idea in my head... The next week HTL voted and their ONLY request is that I kept HT somewhere in the name, which I was more than happy to do! So, once we had the name Holy Trinity Montessori it made perfect sense to add the flower in the logo. A few weeks passed and I sat down to research the meaning of the trillium, and a Native American Legend popped up in my goggle search. What I found was amazing..

I can't write the whole legend, so you have to google it and let me know what you think. I was very moved and knew that the trillium would need to be in the logo, so like I said earlier... no this, no that.. and oh my what Chris created is beautiful and perfect! My mom and I came up with the tag words, which again was not hard to do.. it says it all PEACE, KNOWLEDGE, FAITH!! So, between, my fam, Mike, Chris, my mom and a great legend I have a logo that I LOVE!! Thanks all! And Chris you are very talented!! Thank you for vision, patience and hard work. I LOVE IT!!