Holidays in NY

I can't believe there are only two weeks until the holidays. Working in a school, I get some great vacation including a week and a half for Christmas and New Years. Work has been very busy the past couple weeks as I've been working on the Winter Newsletter that I just sent out last week and holiday gifts for the advisory board and our major patrons. As silly as it sounds the Holiday Gifts are very important because most of our patrons and advisory board members volunteer their time and it's the only opportunity we have to really honor them and their commitment to St. Mark's. That being said, holiday gifts are extremely time consuming. Kids under 12 seem to take a lot of time to do just about anything. So the plethora of pictures that needed to be colored and thank you notes that needed to be written took a surprising amount of time of effort. But I think the scrapbooks I made with the students were well-received and really did feature the students' talents because that's what we're all about. Looking ahead I'm completely shifting gears as our next task is Registration for the next school year. As always, day to day life in the school is very exciting especially as the kids get anxious for Christmas break. Although holiday shopping in NY actually sounds like a nightmare to me with the extraordinary amount of people browsing, I did get a bit of holiday cheer when I chaperoned the 5th grade field trip to see the Rockettes: A Christmas Spectacular. I'm looking forward to the Christmas Pageant that our second graders put on every year and the upcoming winter concerts next week!