Finishing Strong (or trying to)

The last month of school is always crazy, exciting, fun, overwhelming.  Everyone's trying to fit in last minute this and that, I'm trying to go out with a bang our last weeks of preschool, we've got sports, the pool opens, there are field trips and field day, and so on.  This year is no exception.  It's been a lot of fun and we have so much to be thankful for.  In May I am often feeling gratitude for the new/closer relationships I've developed throughout the school year with the students in my preschool class, the kids' friends, the students in whichever class I've volunteered in that year, my coworkers, teachers, friends, other parents, and this year, the Chinese kids I teach as well.  I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know so many new faces and there is a bittersweetness, as I won't see some once school/work ends.

Happenings since I last posted…

Pretty weather= flying your homemade kite

 Getting passionate about our new school board candidates.  Julia insisted on writing her vote for her friend's mom on the postcard.  She thought she was running for president and then said, "Oh yeah, I guess Lucinda would have told me sooner."

Sleepovers are the constant yearning of our kids these days…our weekends often revolve around their social time these days!

Lacrosse, lacrosse, and more lacrosse.  We are finishing up a spring league and starting a summer league at the same time.  Loving watching the boys and thankful for friends joining them to cut down on the driving and make it more fun too!

End of year means the little ones at preschool visit the big playground so I get to see Allie here and there.

Loving our yard and all the blooms.  Julia loves picking the flowers and putting them in her and Allie’s hair.

 Science night at Cameron Park!  Just me and the girls while the rest went to lacrosse, but we had a good time and enjoyed seeing some friends too.

 Mile Run Showdown for Gray.  He was in the top 15 boys in the school so he got to run in this final race.  Speedy.  Love seeing his friends by his side to cheer him on!

 Eno River visit and even Raven got to come and try to drag Matt around when she spotted a fellow canine.  Meanwhile, Joshua was enjoying two birthday parties in one day!

 Allie and a friend at church playing the piano.  We also had a nice potluck lunch and enjoyed being out in the beautiful weather and catching up with friends.  

 This past week, Gray and I got to go on his 3 day 4H camp field trip.  I was mostly looking forward to this because Matt had a good time last year and because I was tired of getting up so early and managing everything at home.  It did not let me down!  We had such a good time and were sad to see it end.  It was really interesting going to all of the classes.  I learned how to measure the height of really tall trees, how to use leaves and a classification book to identify trees, how to use a compass, classification of bugs, and more.  I think as a preschool teacher I have grow to love learning even more and I was often thinking, "I'm going to teach that to my students!"  I had time to chat with parents a good bit too on this trip.  It was good to catch up with friends I've known a few years but don't see for more than a few minutes at a time these days.  I met a few new parents and got to know Gray's teacher as well, as we shared a cabin and lots of laughs this trip.  

Our cabin held girls who were mostly from Gray's class, some of which I knew and some I didn't.  They were characters and I loved hanging out with them and watching their little personalities come out.  One brought three hairbrushes and spray that the girls insisted had made their hair grow after the first night there!  There was A LOT of hair doing in our cabin.  One was so calm and collected that she expertly squeezed out and extracted a huge and deeply buried splinter from her friend's foot that I couldn't get out.  One was always making little jokes and making everyone laugh.  A couple would get scared at night and end up sharing a tiny bed.  One girl I knew from Kids’ Night Out but haven’t seen as much lately.  She came quite often when she was in kindergarten/1st grade so it was neat to be with her and see her all grown up.

I didn't sleep too well with all the snoring, coughing, metal water bottle dropping on the concrete floor, but it was still nice to not have to wake up so early.

During the day, I was with a group of 17 boys and girls from Gray's class.  Gray loved the classes, especially the bug one and ones that required math.  The kids were pretty good and I got to know a few boys that enjoyed walking with me from place to place and talking my ears off.  I also met some new kids at meal time, when we were encouraged to sit with a variety of children.  There are some stinkers in the group, but they are still pretty nice and fun kids...just can't stop talking/moving/making chaos wherever they go.  It was nice to hear from the counselors how much they enjoyed our school's visit and that even the troublemakers were pretty respectful kids.  

The counselors also often mentioned how fortunate our school is to have so much parent support because other schools would like to do overnight trips but don’t have enough parents to come.  This reinforces my belief that using our resources well includes supporting our public schools so all kids can get a good education and have a bright future.  Should those of us parents that are better connected with more financial resources pull out of Cameron Park for schools we think are better for our kids, the school would not be able to do things like send the kids on these experiences, not to mention the stress the teachers would be under for lack of support.  It is hard to be a parent and hard to know what is right.  I am thankful things have gone relatively well for my kids so far, so that it’s not too difficult a decision to stick with our public schools.  

Gray mostly stuck with his best buddies in the group, though it was funny that towards the end he would say he didn’t want to be partners with these two because they argue too much.  Ahem.  Hopefully he was implicating himself as part of the issue!  Anyway, I convinced him to give it a try the last class and they should all just try to control their emotions a bit better.  They managed just fine as we went tearing through the woods trying to find the words to a quote taped on various trees that we had to find with our compasses.  I’m not the “tearing through the woods” kind of girl, so it was good for me to get outside my comfort zone this trip.  Truly, in spite of the bugs and snake worries and lack of sleep, I was just so happy to be there, having little to focus on but nature, relationships, and eating!  What a nice break from the day-to-day stuff.  Big thanks to Matt’s parents for keeping the other kids since Matt had to work.  Everyone seemed to manage just fine!

 And to finish off the weekend, the pool opened so we checked it out.  Some of us from farther away than others.  :)  Allie did warm up to dipping her cup in but it was much too cold for her!  

Next up, I finish my last two weeks of teaching.  Dr. Seuss, Wacky Wednesday, Water Day, FUN!  Going to miss my sweet kiddos.  Gray, Joshua, and Julia have 5 more weeks of school, filled with review, testing, field day, lacrosse, graduation (Gray), choosing next year classes (Gray's doing BAND and CHORUS!), end of school parties and award ceremonies and I'm sure lots of friend time.  We also look forward to a Memorial Day weekend visit from the Moores!!  Good times ahead.

Spring Break, Flowers, First Pitch, and More

We are loving spring around here!  Nice weather, beautiful flowers, working in the yard, playing outside.  Love it!

Spring Break week was so nice.  We stayed home, played with friends, cleaned, went out to eat, etc.  Oh- and I also issues the boys a "sports challenge" in which they would have to complete 10 levels of playing together a particular sport for a particular amount of time WITHOUT ARGUING.  And by the end, they also had to say- gasp- encouraging things to each other.  They had a very rocky start, but by the end of spring break they were doing great.  Now to keep it up...

 Allie loves "helping mom with the dirt".  Over the last week, she stuck with me putting out the entire load of mulch we had delivered and even cried if I told her we had to stop.  She has her moments of typical toddler "help" where she makes everything more complicated but generally she is a great little sidekick and always cheerful about our work.

This weekend was a fun one.  Mama and Daddy came into town Friday afternoon and we headed to Kids' Night Out.  Gray also had his buddy Elisha spend the night and come with us.  Everyone got to bed late, but happy.  They slept in Saturday morning and we had a beautiful day for watching the boys play lacrosse.  Both had some great moments but probably our favorite was this one:  Gray is fighting for the ball at his end of the field and bigger opponent picks it up and takes off.  Gray races after him and is headed down the sideline right by where we are sitting.  As if it was happening in slow motion, we watch him with stick raised and chat amongst ourselves about how he is totally going to hit the guy--hopefully legally as he has had his share of "slashes" (illegal hits that require a time out) lately--and watch as he chases the guy down, about to cross mid-field, which will stop Gray because his position prevents him from going over the line.  He sees his opportunity and slams the other guy's stick so hard he knocks the guy's stick flat out of his hands to the ground.  This doesn't happen too often, but when it does, we are told it's affectionately called a "yard sale".  Gray can really lay it all out there when he plays a sport and he was quite entertaining.  Backstory we found out later--the guy he "yard saled" had just gotten the ball from him and said "Thanks".  Moral of the story:  don't mess with Gray.  :)

We came home and all the males in the house ate and headed off to Raleigh to watch State play baseball.  They had a great time--high scoring game and big win for the Wolfpack.  But the boys' highlight was getting chosen to throw out the first pitch!  Matt says when the person asked them, Gray jumped right on it with a big YES, Elisha also said yes and Joshua gave an immediate no. Joshua did go out with the boys and after some thought, regretted not choosing to pitch also, but still loved high fiving the players, which he recorded on the foul ball he got from the game.  Gray and Elisha each got a ball as well and the happy campers headed to Zaxby's for dinner and came home tired and happy.

Meanwhile, the girls and I had some fun of our own-- an early celebration of Mimi's birthday: picnic at Duke Gardens.  The weather was perfect and it was crowded, but fun to see so many kinds of people there.  Of course the flowers were gorgeous this time of year too.  We fed ducks, watched fish, ate supper, and walked around the gardens.  What a great day we had!

We were sad to see Mimi and GrandGene go today.  Julia did her usual post-visit mope, the boys got busy with homework, I got a nap, and Matt went to play basketball.  Now we're getting ready for another week--end of school is always busy, but exciting as we count down the days till summer break!

Happy Days

We made it through our week of celebrations!  We enjoyed all of the extra good food, family, and friend time and even survived the big sleepover.  Pics from the week:

Easter morning photos before any of the boys were ready.  These two have gotten so close.  Julia loves taking care of her and teaching her.  The night before Easter I heard them chatting away upstairs, Julia quizzing Allie on the true meaning of Easter.  Easter morning before they got up, Julia had already read the Easter story to Allie from her Bible.  She is constantly teaching her things and giving her rewards for good behavior.  :)  Today she taught her that worms wiggle and snakes bite.  There is always a test at the end to check for understanding.  :)

Julia wanted to be a photographer too.

The best of the kid pics.  I have several others in which there is always one who is not meeting the simple task of looking and smiling.  Julia began grumpy because she wanted to hold Allie and Gray *always* gets to hold Allie in the picture.  (Disregard the pics above we had taken 10 minutes prior where she is holding Allie.)  Then she recovered and Gray thought it would be fun to pretend to be sad.  Somewhere in there Joshua threw on a big frown just for laughs too.  I find this type of thing particularly "amusing" when we are supposed to be leaving for church and still have to run by the grocery store on the way.  

We didn't get any of Matt.  He was just ready to go.  

 Out of order, but last weekend kicked off the lacrosse games.  I had to work but then my last class canceled so I rushed over to see the game.  It was so much fun having 6 other families we know there!  The boys enjoyed their first game and came home ready to practice more and improve for next game.  I still cringe every time a kid gets whacked with a stick.  Once Gray got hit on one side and then the other side and then went down.  But the kids don't seem to mind it.  Glad they are enjoying this sport and happy it's another one where they have been able to play on the same team.

 Monday was Matt's birthday.  Somehow I didn't get any pictures of him.  Probably b/c he worked the night before and the night of, so we hardly saw him.  But we had a nice dinner and dessert and gave him gifts and cards.  I loved each kid's card to him.  Julia was so excited about her mystery card and thought I must have given Matt extra clues when she heard that he guessed who it was from.

Joshua had a hard time figuring out what to make but then came up with this idea...

Julia helped Allie make her card that morning before school.  She was going to have Allie do it all but then she got into helping her and decided to add her name too.  :)

Gray spent close to an hour making his card.  He drew out 39 candles and 39 oreos for the cake.  

 Julia had her mile run Wednesday.  I had to work and missed her record time of 8:17!  I was so impressed.  She ran 10:10 in the fall, so she improved a ton.  I suggested that she might be interested in doing more running in the future but she shot that idea down, as her throat hurts when she runs.  :)

 Here she is afterward with our neighbor Eli in the back.  They have 5th graders help count the 2nd grader laps.  He ran out quickly so as to be the first one to choose Julia.  :)

 Also Wednesday, some of the moms put together a shower for Gray's teacher, who is getting married over spring break.  I had to miss b/c of work also, but looked like so much fun!

 Friday was Gray's birthday.  I took the morning off of teaching so I could make his requested breakfast and not be too rushed.  He opened a couple of presents too and loved this book of my Granddaddy's about baseball greats.  He read it on the way to school that morning.

 A little later, Allie and I joined Julia's class for a field trip to Duke Gardens.  I found out last minute that they prefer younger siblings not to come, so I put Allie in the sling so as to be least disruptive.  We were both ready to be done with that by the end, but she did great and it was a beautiful day.  Julia and her friend Karen were so cute holding hands around the garden.

 Friday afternoon, some of Gray's friends rode the bus home with him and the rest trickled in over the next hour.  Then they piled in the truck to head to the park for sports.

 This new gaga ball pit was just installed the day before.  What great timing!  They had a lot of fun but boy were we tired of hearing them yell at each other.  This group (for the most part) plays very similarly to Gray-- everything is a big deal, worth arguing over, and highly emotional.  Whew.  Glad they had fun but man we needed some chill pills.

 We later had pizza, apple pie with ice cream, and a movie.

 I had to capture this moment particularly for Julia, who is perfectly comfortable in the midst of a pile of boys.  After the movie, we sent them to the garage where they could play awhile and then sleep.  Thank goodness for the loft Matt and his dad built out there.  The weather was perfect for them to sleep there and we could mostly shut out the noise so the rest of us could rest too.  The boys thought it was really cool to have their own space and it was a total win-win.  

 Saturday, we had our own Easter egg hunt in the yard.  Joshua was with a friend, but the others enjoyed it.  They didn't mind that they had to go into their old candy baskets to get stuff to put in them.  Plus I added some cereal, though a certain little one wasn't not very excited to find the cereal eggs once she tasted the candy!

Fun week, but I'm thankful for less eventful days for the rest of Spring Break.  Today we just enjoyed being outside playing and gardening.  Hoping the weather keeps up like this!  Have a good week!