Teachers’ Strike

The Chicago Public School district is the 3rd largest school district in the country. The strike went on for 11 days. We heard rumors for weeks and then on October 17 it started.

These are some things that the teachers were striking over.

Driving around in the morning we would see teachers picketing at their schools.

Cars honked to show their support.

One day a ton of teachers were picketing downtown and we could see them from my office.
At first we kept Makai at home, but with everyone being home all day, every day, we were going crazy. Then we took Makai back to his old daycare so he could be in a preschool class. As much as everyone there loved seeing him, there was only room in a younger classroom and it was costing us about $75/day!

The hard part was that you would not know until 9pm or later each day whether or not school would be on or still out the next day. We finally had my dad come down and hang out with Makai for a few days.

Finally an agreement was made!


Makai’s teacher was excited to see all the kids and get back to work!


Finally kids were back in school. Hopefully we will get everything promised!

Update:We found out the make up dates. We’ve already got airfare for 11/27, which was supposed to be part of Thanksgiving break. Oh well!

New (to us) Car

Dallas has had his eye on a 2011 Land Rover LR4 for quite some time. 2011 because in 2012 they changed the engine. He liked this car so much he had someone at the dealership keeping an eye out for good 2011 trade ins. I did not really want a new car. I like not having a car payment. Dallas convinced me just to drive the Land Rover and see what I think and if I didn’t like it we would leave.

One came up and we went to look at and when we got to the dealership, it wasn’t there.

Then another nice one came in. I’d had an odd day. I arrived from a work trip late the night before. I had to get up super early (6:30 am) for a work call. I had an off day where I gave some people a piece of my mind. When I got to the dealership I knew about what I was willing to pay. I gave the LR4 a drive and I actually really liked it. When we talked numbers, they worked with us to get it into the range we needed to be in. And then we had a new car. Just like that.

Two days after we bought the LR4, I was dropping Makai off at school and accidentally pressed the CD eject button instead of the flashers. This CD popped out!