And so it begins...

Today was such a wonderful and exciting day. We closed the loan and in doing so we brought our new partner into the business. She has been a friend of the school since we opened our doors in 2005. Her daughter Maddie was in our first Preschool class. She is currently the Director of Exceptional Children's Programming for one of the counties nearby. Wendy will be our program manager and also charged with growing the program to include children with special challenges. We could not be happier to have her as a part of our team.

Tonight we auditioned our new chef. He prepared a "children's tasting menu" for us to sample as our celebration dinner. He prepared the following menu for us:

Chicken salad with bechemel sauce on home made foccaccia
Coq au vin over heavenly mashed potatoes
Chicken pot pie sans pie with home made baguette
Vegetable lasagna with home made pasta
Cracked barley as an alternative grain Bran and raisin muffins

The meal was so much more than wonderful. We will introduce you to our chef by name as we get a little farther along in the process and he has given notice at the foundational restaurant where he is now employed. We are planning many offerings for you from our kitchen and are so excited about the possibilities having a kitchen, chef, and garden will bring us. We will keep you posted as the plans begin to take shape.

In the next week, we will begin working with our project manager (see below) to submit the final building permit for the new campus as well as planning the curriculum, budgets, staffing, admissions....Needless to say, plan on seeing us hunched over our computers, bleary eyed but giddy!

We thought that it might be nice to introduce you to our team briefly as a conclusion to this first blog entry. You will be hearing many of these names in the weeks to come and we thought that you might appreciate a point of reference.

Our team:
Project Manager (PM)- Shannon Dixon, Granite South Commercial Construction General Contractor (GM)- Mark Striebel, Davidson Jones Architect- David Clinton, MHA Works Engineer- Cara Lacey, John R. McAdams Company Banker and Advocate- Pegi Brady, BB&T Attorney and Advocate- Marty McConchie, Maitland Law Boon Trot, Licensing Coordinator, North Carolina Division of Child Development

We can't tell you how much we appreciate and value each of these people. They have been friends, advocates, mentors and teachers. We would not have made it through this process without them. We have so much gratitude for each of them.

It is also really important to us that we acknowledge a few others who have truly helped us to get to this place. The following people have offered us financial and emotional support and we count them among our greatest blessings:

Mary Swanson
Fred and Sandra Adams
Mary Stoll
Joanna Milano
Our husbands - Jim and Steve
The Meunier Family
The Goulet Wade Family
The Lee Family
The Lesemann Family
The Little Family
The Petzold Family
The Korelich Lindblom Family
The Peterson Family
Denny Wilkerson
Margaret Hauth
and the Town of Hillsborough as well as the County Commissioners,
and Eric Peterson the Town Manager
and all of the staff and families at the Little School.

We are so grateful!
Christa and Jennifer