Good morning.  I hope everyone in the Lake Harriet community had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.  We are back to school, it is December, and it is going to be cold.  Yesterday I was able to skate around Cedar Lake on the beautiful black ice, but the cold also means that students need to be dressed appropriately for recess.  Students really need to be outside, so we take them out unless the air temperature or the windchill is below zero fahrenheit.  Please make sure your son or daughter has mittens or gloves, a hat, snow pants, boots and any other winter wear you want to send with them (and don't forget to check the lost and found for the summer wear that they left behind).

We just completed a very successful food drive here at the Upper Campus.  Our parent volunteer student council leader was unable to lead the last student council meeting, so I was there in his place.  I was very impressed that the students had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do, they took the responsibility of making the collection boxes and publicized the drive among their classmates.  As the adult "leader" I did little more than call on students to speak. 

At first the food drive started off slowly.  Then, as students started to see food arriving, the momentum increased quickly.  Pretty soon we were running out of places to put the food.  A parent suggested donating the food to the Sheridan Story, an organization based right here in Minneapolis that gives food to students on Fridays during the school day so the family will have enough food for the weekend.  They were excited we called and volunteered to pick up the food right from school.  They ended up picking up two large loads of food (pick-up truck plus trailer) from us before Thanksgiving. Thank you to all the families who participated.