Geographical, age and gender

I'm working on mailing labels, and counted up some things:

27 moms (which is a count of how many families are represented by at least one person)
13 dads
1 grandmother
3 adults who were unschooled
(Rose Sorooshian, Marty and Holly Dodd; Kat Fetteroll can't come after all)
14 children of compulsory-attendance age
11 younger children (three are babies)
2 are the boyfriend of Holly and girlfriend of Marty and will be there some of the time, I hope

That makes 71.

Geographically, three countries are represented and sixteen states, including all four "corners" and the middle! Quite a good spread.

Canada/Ontario UK/England US: Arizona California Oregon Idaho Montana Colorado New Mexico Texas Nebraska Iowa Wisconsin Michigan New Hampshire Massachusetts North Carolina Mississippi

Gratuitous photo and link

Checklist

Reminders...

Thursday night singing; acoustic instruments or just vocal.
Think of a song even little kids will like if you can, and perhaps something with a singalong part. We'll go around in a circle, and people can play, pick (request a song others might be able to lead on your behalf) or pass. Or people can choose to hang back and not be in the circle. Sing from a distance, or just listen. I figure it will last between an hour and two.

Holly took a picture of me singing the other night:

We won't have lights and mics and stuff...

so... maybe some of these things...

a song
warm clothes for nighttime or outside
less-warm clothes for daytime and inside

if you colored a logo for the conference, maybe bring it (maybe send me a photo in advance)

snacks to share (holiday gift food you might not want would work)
food for your room, maybe

IF you intend to be outside much, sunscreen (due to elevation and climate, sunburns are a danger, especially in the combination of sun and snow, such as with skiing)

If you're used to a very humid climate, bring lotion, lip balm, moisturizer.

Drink more water than usual. If you have a favorite water bottle, you might want to bring it.

If you have a favorite string, lanyard, ribbon or a long shoelace you might want to use to hold your name badge, throw it in your luggage. I'll have string, ribbon, and a few other kinds of strings for people to choose from, too. You don't need to bring your own string.

Camera, extra batteries, chargers
Phone, charger
Computer (if you do that sort of thing when travelling), cords, chargers

If you bring toys, keep noisy ones in the hotel rooms. VERY QUIET ones can be used or shared in the room adjoining where the speakers will be. We'll bring some from here, for general use, too.

We'll bring games; please don't bring games you would be very bummed to have scattered or lost. You can use ours.

Are there things you think need to be added to that list? Please add suggestions in the comments below, or e-mail me with reminders of what I'm forgetting.

Julie Daniel

Julie will be attending with James (her husband) and Adam (our first Saturday morning speaker). Looking for something this morning, I came across something I wrote two years ago about Julie.

Julie Daniel



Holly took the photo during "the Duck Tour."


Julie (and her family) organized the Learning Trust — Trust Learning Conference ("the LiTTLe Conference") in London last summer where Schuyler, David and I spoke (and others), and is tentatively / seriously-probably planning another one for June 2012, also in London. You can listen to my presentation from last summer and follow along with my little power point pictures (though you have to go "next" by yourself) here, if you want to: The Past, The Future and Now

FOOD!

Oh no. I finished the page on food, and it seems I didn't say so. :-)

So I've added a tab above to a copy of it, but the "original" (which I was keeping kind of secret, without intending to) is linked from this FAQ page:

http://sandradodd.com/all/faq

If anyone here has questions, either leave a comment below or e-mail me and I'll try to clarify. Target has "real" groceries now—vegetables and eggs and all.

In addition to that food outside the building, the hotel provides some sort of breakfast to guests, and Keith reminded me insistently on the way to Texas the other day that we should really keep something out all the time for people to eat so nobody is very hungry or has to leave the room if they'd rather stay and talk. So Keith plans to have donut holes in the morning, and nuts, fruit, cheese and crackers out other times.

If any of you get Christmas sweets you don't really like, bring them! (I like fruit cake.)

Chris Sanders and Renee Cabatic will take care of keeping coffee going. If anyone has favorite tea or hot chocolate mix you'd like to donate to the snack table, it would be welcome. We'll bring sugar, milk and cream. If you want non-dairy or non-real-sugar, bring it!


Click for more info.
I'll make some.

A most important half hour

On Saturday of the event, I'm going to stop talking at 11:30 so people can get things out of their rooms by noon, those who are leaving Saturday afternoon, and so we can say goodbye to them. Some people will need rides to the airport about that time and so people from my family might be off driving.

We will need to vacate the big room and the room where the younger kids' toys are so it can be re-set for someone else's New Year's Eve party. We're keeping the south room, where the games and older kids' things will be, for our Saturday night room, so anything that's ours can be moved to that room, to be dealt with in the afternoon.

I'm deputizing everyone to help that happen smoothly. Don't let me speak past 11:30, no matter how much I might hint or beg.

---

Gratuitous image: Marty, tumbleweed, mountain; in the parking lot of Central New Mexico Community College, when his jeep wouldn't start and I rescued him with jumper cables. Tadaaa!

Nice note from Pam

In an exchange on Facebook:

Pam Sorooshian 10:19pm Nov 11
I'm SUPER excited about ALL - the gathering in Albuquerque. I think it is going to be deeply thoughtful and sweetly fun and probably will challenge our thinking, too....I know enough of the people coming to have a sense of what to expect!

Ten dads, so far

I'm not talking biology; some might be step dads or even less formal significant-others, I didn't ask, but there seem to be ten adult males scheduled at the moment to be here in December. So just in case someone's been worried about that aspect, of the 54 people that I have on my list (a few more have muttered about coming but haven't confirmed), ten seem to be men of the dad-age. :-)

In case anyone would like to pass on some writing by and for dads, I have a collection: SandraDodd.com/dads

And so that each post will have a photo, here's picture of James Daniel, who will be here, his wife Julie, and their son Adam, our 9:00 Saturday morning speaker: