A persuasive essay from Eve
4
Last day at the Montessori School
The parents and children are kind and generous.
Today was the last day of school for the children at my Montessori School. It was a day of cleaning up and graduation ceremonies, culminating with a family picnic in the classroom because of the stormy weather outside.
Although I am leaving on my own accord, a choice in which I am confident about, it was still a sad day of goodbyes and farewells. I will miss the families and children at the Montessori School. One thing I really like about working with younger kids is the involvement of the families. In the older grades children take the bus and from school and you can go all year only meeting the parents once or twice. With young kids you see parents (or caregivers) daily. In the Montessori program children stay in the same classroom for three years so you truly form deep bonds with them. Families are also very committed to the program and generally send all of their kids through. As I leave this year I said goodbye to the children in my classroom, the parents, and also the younger siblings that I see each day and who will be attending the school next year. One graduating boy was very sad that I was leaving because he had told his incoming sister all about me and she was excited to have me as her teacher.
I know I will find something even better for next year, but I will miss the connections I have made. I promised everyone that I would be “out and about” this summer, hitting up all the playgrounds with my kids, so maybe we’ll see each other again. It is a small community we all live in.
(I still have a few in-service days of cleaning and preparing for next year, so I’m not entirely done, but it was the final day for the children.)
One busy week
We have had a busy week and a busy “stay at home” weekend and a busy week coming up! It’s the last week of school though, so maybe things will settle down a bit after that. Maybe.
Here are a few pictures of what we’ve been up to lately.
We are loving the Rick Riordan books. We are on book five, “The House of Hades.” Sometimes the kids like to fiddle with things or draw while I read. This is a picture Eve drew of Percy (middle) and Annabeth (left), following Bob the Titan (with Small Bob the cat on his shoulder) through the depths of Tartarus.
Last Thursday the kids had another belt test. They both did awesome and moved up from a yellow belt with a white stripe, to a full yellow belt. I was there for the beginning of the testing, but then I had to leave and go to the spring concert at my school. I was sad to leave their belt test, but I had responsibilities at the concert, and it was adorable. :) Alan was very impressed with the kids’ karate skills.
Can you find Eve and Lex from the back?
On Friday it was Crazy Hair Day in Eve’s classroom. Awhile back Eve and I were talking about her crazy hair and joking about how funny it would be to straighten her hair for the next Crazy Hair Day at school. She woke up Friday morning and said, “Oh, Mom, today is Crazy Hair Day!” Not a lot of prior notice, but we managed to get it straightened and still get everyone to school and work on time. Actually, it was much quicker than I was expecting. Her hair is fine and thin, so the straightener did it’s job quickly.
Half curly, half straight. A work in progress. Maybe we should have left it like that. Would that be extra crazy or just half crazy?
Straight hair. Mostly. I noticed later when looking at the picture that there are still some waves in there. :) I love her face in the mirror.
Who’s that girl?! That hair. That face. That big girl look. Where is my little girl?! Crazy!
By the time she got home it was looking pretty wavy, and after her shower Friday night it bounced right back to curly!
I already wrote about our fun Saturday. Sunday started with a long walk (for me), more garage work (for Alan and Amanda), and plenty of no-plans relaxing for the kids. In the afternoon we had some friends come over to hang out. My friend has volunteered to do face painting for Field Day at school this year and wanted to practice. She invited us over, but I told her I already had five kids at my house and maybe she’d like to come here instead. She and her boys hopped on their bikes and headed over.
It was like a carnival at my house with the kids lining up for face painting. Eve chose to be a lion.
We have a lion, a pumpkin, a pirate, Iron Man, and Lex digging a hole. They are planning to build an underground mansion just for kids. The first step is a very big hole. Two other boys were hanging around too, just not in this picture.
Next week is Spirit Week at school, and the last week of school! Mix-it Up Monday (wear crazy mismatched clothes), Tie-Dye Tuesday, Superhero Wednesday, Field Day Thursday, and Fancy Pants Friday (wear nice clothes for 5th grade graduation and step-up day). Can you guess who in my house is excited and who is not? :) At my school the kiddos are done on Tuesday and I have in-service for the rest of the week. I’m hoping it won’t really take all week. :) Thursday afternoon they are letting me leave a bit earl so I can volunteer at Field Day and maybe, just maybe, Friday won’t be a full day of work. A gal can dream, right? I’d like to say I would relax and enjoy, but likely I’d just spend the time trying to get packed up for Eve’s first track meet, happening next Saturday, 2.5hrs away. Sigh.
Life is busy, but life is good.
Breakfast-in-bed
I love that she signs her name to her own note. :)
Eve wrote herself a reminder note. “Make mommy brekfist-in-bed. -Eve”
She is so sweet. I had a really nice day with her with breakfast, track, and our trip to the farmer’s market. Happiness is.
Happy Saturday!
For the first time in awhile we have a pretty low-key weekend on deck. I woke at 7:30am to find Eve carrying a tray (“the shiniest one,” she said) with oatmeal and hot tea on it. She was super excited to announce that she had made me breakfast in bed! She cuddled in the bed with me for awhile while I ate. She is super sweet!
Once we were all up Alan took Lex to karate while I took Eve to track practice. She is now running in the town rec program and a local AAU program. Next weekend is her first meet!
Running the 200m
Running the 400m
While Eve did her practice I spent nearly an hour and a half walking/running around the track as well! She wants to run in the CHaD 5K this year and wants me to run with her, so I gotta do some training myself!
Eve and I stopped at the Farmer’s Market on the way home and enjoyed cheese and jelly samples and a few purchased cookies. When I got home Alan told me that Mandy was on her way up and they were going to tear apart the mudroom. We have leaks and the floors are coming apart so they are tearing out the floor and starting over.
My dining room for the next few days
While they were hard at work in the mudroom, Eve and I went for a walk to meet our new neighbors. They moved in last week. They have a girl in Eve’s grade, and two boys, one younger and one older than Lex. We took them on a walk around the neighborhood and introduced them to the children in the area. It turns out the older boy is totally into Legos and the First Robotics Lego League (he already signed up for next year’s team!). He brought some EV3s over and the boys are all upstairs building some EV3 battle bots! Eve, and two neighbor girls are upstairs in her room playing dolls.
The girls
The boys (the two new neighbors are not in the picture)
Somehow my house is under construction and I have seven kids in it, yet I am able to talk on the phone with my bestie for an hour and now write this blog post! How’s that for an awesome Saturday afternoon! I’m off now to order pizza because who can cook when there’s construction going on!? :)
And another one gone
Eve lost another tooth today. Top, left canine. World’s more boring post, I know.
Happy 10th Birthday Lex!!
It’s hard to believe, but this little guy is suddenly ten years old!!
Lex’s first birthday. He is so adorable!
My, how time flies! Today we celebrated with presents in the morning, a Memorial Day parade, lunch at Popcube’s house, and a slow, tired afternoon at home. Overall a great day and a great way to celebrate our favorite little boy who is not so little any more.
He’s a balloon guy! I have a very similar picture from his 4th birthday. I’ll try to find it for a “then and now” post. :)
A special birthday greeting for our special ten year old.
Happy Birthday Lex!!
Morning smiles with the birthday boy.
I got a little artistic while waiting for him to open presents. He got side tracked a bit with a book. This big box contains the game Clue.
Waiting for the Memorial Day parade to start. I embarrassed the family by asking a stranger to take a picture for me. Totally worth it! :)
I think my kids are a bit too big for this toy, but boy did they have fun! I have this same picture from a few years ago. I’ll try to dig it up. They were a bit smaller then. :)
An ice cream cake for his family birthday party. Cool Whip and chocolate chips make perfectly excellent decorations.
Lots of birthday Legos. Everything is awesome!
Happy Birthday Lex! I like his choice of shirts for the day too. :)
The candles are casting a glow on his sweet face. <3
Cutting the cake.
This was an “upcycled” cake using the leftovers from Saturday’s karate cake. Lex wanted an ice cream cake for his family party, so I took layers from the karate cake, relayered them, and added some Fudge Tracks ice cream in the middle. Then I slathered the whole thing in Cool Whip. It came out really tasty!
The cake was tasty, but frozen pretty hard. Lex had trouble cutting into it with his plastic fork so he resorted to eating it caveman style.
She’s looking pretty classy. :)
The photogenic side of the family. :)
The ride home from Grandpa’s. Proof that she does indeed stop moving, sometimes, even if only for a short ride in the car.
We were all exhausted when we got home so everyone went to their rooms for awhile. After an hour or so of quiet time we regrouped for a few family games of Clue. It was fun to teach the kids a new game and they both enjoyed the mystery and secrecy of it. Then we ordered pizza for dinner and watched the movie Clue!
Lex got to choose his birthday dinner, so Ziggy sticks it was! I served him on this birthday plate, but he wasn’t happy about it. He transferred everything to a normal plate instead. Oh well. He’s ten now, but still the same boy we know and love!
After the movie, when we were all exhausted and getting ready for bed, I remembered that Lex needs birthday treats for school tomorrow. Birthday treats round three! I think we need to sugar detox again!
I feel pretty fortunate to have such an awesome boy in my world. Lying in bed tonight I said, “Ten years ago right now you were less than one hour old.” Around birthdays we like to talk about “ten years ago” or “eight years ago” and reminisce about their actual birth days so many years ago. He replied with, “Mom, I’ve been wondering, just how exactly do babies come out of the mother’s belly?” Yep, he’s growing up! So we had that conversation tonight, all snuggled up in bed, and we were happy.
Karate Party!!
We held Lex’s friend party this year at their karate dojo. The sempis (teachers) did a wonderful job and the kids had a blast!! The karate studio provides the space, and the table set-up, and I brought the rest.
Happy Birthday Lex!!
The cake. Lex wanted a yellow belt on the cake because he has a yellow belt, and the purple patch is similar to the patch on their uniforms.
The kids started by finding their ninja names (using the letters from their actual names or initials). Some kids had more fun with this than others. Some, I think, thought it was too much work for a birthday party! :)
Like my birthday banner?
The dojo also had a birthday banner!
Goody “bags” (wrapped books, with a cookie attached), cake, and presents in the back row. Fortune cookies, strawberries, gi cookies, Goldfish mix, and carrots in the front row.
The party favors this year were books. My friend suggested it and I thought it was very appropriate considering the birthday boy and our family. I found two different easy-reader chapter books, both with karate themes, and bought six of each. I taped on a karate gi sugar cookie and wrapped it all up with a “black belt” ribbon. I hope the kids like them. In my opinion it’s better than cheap junk they just throw away anyway.
Some “human bowling” aka Rolling Bombs.
Once the kids all arrived they went into the main dojo for lots of high energy games led by the sempis.
The kids all love this game. If you get hit you have to go to the side and do push-ups or jumping jacks.
Then some actual karate! They started with punches.
Power punches!
Then kicks.
Then flying side kicks! For this they have to run down the blue mat then jump up and kick the pad that the sempi is holding. They were encourage to make loud kung-fu Hollywood style noise while running and jumping. Everyone loved this one!
After awhile of karate and games, the kids came into the small dojo for snacks, presents, and cake.
The dojo provided free floating balloons and Alan provided the snack time entertainment.
He is quite entertaining.
It was a very fun atmosphere. :)
Present time. Lots of Legos and books! :)
Right here he’s opening karate nunchuck pens. Super fun! His classmates will have to watch out now!
One of the kids gave him stick-on mustaches and everyone had fun with them! One kid said the mustache on Alan made him look more manly. :)
The whole crowd, some with stick-on mustaches, others with balloon mustaches, and everyone full of silliness!
One happy boy!! (The karate gi cookies with black belts left everyone with black tinted lips and teeth. Not the most attractive look!)
In a throwback to the sawzal party, Alan decided to cut the cake today with a samari sword! Everyone had a good laugh. Then boring mommy kicked him out and used just a plain old knife to do the job.
I cut very large pieces. One kid asked what kind it was, referring to brand name, I believe, and commented that the cake is much more dense than usual. I had to explain the whole “made from scratch” thing. :)
When they were done with cake they went right back to the big dojo for more fun! Time to burn off the cake energy!
Time for some dodge ball, dojo style!
They finished with an “everyone throw the ball at the birthday boy” game. Like the dojo version of birthday spankings. Lex laughed and laughed.
After two hours everyone was hot and sweaty, and full of sugar and fun! It was a great day! We sent each kid home with a little present and a handful of fortune cookies.
Happy almost birthday Lex!
Screen time
We’ve got tons of seating in this house and these two choose to sit on top of each other for computer/iPad time. Silly kiddos.
10?!
Lex’s birthday is coming right up and I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the number. I don’t know why, but 10 just isn’t sticking in my head. Eve and I were at the party store the other day getting supplies and I had her pick out eight balloons. I even grabbed a “8” balloon to go with the “Happy Birthday” balloon. I was just about to check out when it hit me that he is not turning eight!! Duh! We had to grab different balloons and sadly discovered that they don’t make “10” balloons. :( This double digits thing is going to take some getting used to.
Lex goes bionic for his birthday! He built himself a bionic arm with a ball shooter on the elbow and various sensors on the fingers. He’s pretty pleased with his creation. :)
Today, the 17th, was actually my due date with him, ten short years ago….. big belly, but no baby. (I love my blog!)