Here come 2 fun events! The Harvest/Halloween Festival and the fall camping trip.

On Sunday, October 28, we will be at the school's festival. It has been known as Halloween festival, harvest festival, and one other that I can't remember. It changes somewhat depending upon the parents taking charge during that particular year. We've had a teacher reading tarot cards, a 'jail', cake walk, a haunted house, and other fun thing. We did a Beanie raffle a while ago. This year my son's class is decorating and 'putting on' the haunted house!

Then, 3 days after that, the class leaves for a 3 day camping trip to Santa Cruz Island. Santa Cruz is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. There are bald eagles trying to take the island back from the golden eagles (the way it was for thousands of years before the cattle ranchers came) and the island foxes are making a come-back, too! The ranchers brought pigs who attracted the golden eagles, who then started eating the cat-sized foxes, who almost went extinct. The bald eagles do not eat the foxes or the spotted skunks also on the island. The pigs had destroyed many of the native plant species, too. In a controversial move, hunters were brought in to kill the couple thousand pigs so the golden eagles could be shoo'ed away. So far, the plan seems to have worked.

I've never been to the islands and I'm really glad my son will now have been on 2 of the 4 closer islands. They're beautiful and there are 10,000 years of history out there.

Next week we have our first of the year's 2 parent/student/teacher conferences. We mainly set goals at this conference. I always look forward to this one, since it's around Halloween and it's a fun atmosphere around school!

By contrast, my high school senior son, who attended OAS since kindergarten through 7th grade, will be graduating. It's time for enrolling in city college, applying for grants and scholarships, and thinking about a 4 year university, UCSB perhaps, after 2010. Yikes! I can't believe I wrote that!