The kids’ school listserv offers a very easy way for parents to communicate with each other, and for the school to communicate with parents. Each classroom can send messages just to its own members, or messages can go school-wide. How wonderful!

And then there are the parents who think it’s a social network and use it to promote their pet causes or private events that “might be of interest to other parents” but have nothing to do with the school.

“Come to this wonderful Cub Scouts thing two cities away that my family will be at!”

“Save the local market from the evil developer! Sign this petition!”

“There’s a really interesting workshop on Rainbow Looms going on downtown next week!”

I don’t want to be the jerk here (though I do kind of want to be the jerk), but I am extraordinarily tempted to start a snarky listserv war.

“I think it’s very important that we decide if we, as parents, are Star Wars or Star Trek fans, and no, you cannot be both!”

“If we all go in on the lottery together, we could buy like 1000 tickets! We would definitely win!”

“Wanted: A new or gently used juicer. For sale: a gently used blender that my wife says “definitely looks like a juicer, but obviously isn’t which you would have noticed if you’d read the box”.”

I guess what I’m saying is: Don’t be the parent who sends a message to the entire school that begins with, “I know this doesn’t really concern the school, but…”

I thought about writing a summary of our year, but instead I decided to use all of the technological shortcuts available to me as an American in the 21st century. So here’s a slideshow.

Back in, my goodness, 2010 where does the time go oh hey look I haven’t written anything on this blog since August, we paid a visit to Santa, The result was my favourite picture ever.

We’ll never top that one. Nevertheless, we’ll keep going to visit Santa, chasing that Dragon of the Perfect Moment year after year.

Happy Everything to you, dear neglected readers.