First Grade Assembly

May 2016

One of the things that I fell in love with when Matt and I toured the kid's school was their assembly space.  It's a big, beautiful bright room that they keep decorated with wonderful art projects made by the students.  I remember walking into that space last year and just being awe struck by the beauty of it.  

They use the space to hold an assembly each week with the lower school or the middle school.  They call out the kids celebrating birthdays.  They discuss current fundraising projects or service projects.  They discuss areas of character development.  They pray, say the pledge of allegiance, the school creed and always end the assembly singing some songs, including Let There Be Peace on Earth.  Additionally, all the different grade levels take turns performing.

On the very last Friday of school, at the very last assembly of the year, it was FINALLY the first graders' turn.

Boy was I happy to have a little bit of time in my day and be able to sneak away for a few minutes to attend.  

They had recently updated the art in the room so that students work from THIS school year was displayed.  Peter's art would finally be included.  Out in the hall near the library their was a nice display of their ceramic bird project.

He tells me it is a "Golden Finch" which I suppose is his way of saying goldfinch and show that perhaps there is a little too much Harry Potter floating around this house.  Ha.

Regardless, I have no idea about birds one way or the other so if that's what he says than I suppose it must be.  I wonder if they were given a bunch of bird types to choose from or how that worked.  It seems like there must have been quite a bi of research put into the project, or in the very least some sort of lectures as he is frequently spotting random local birds out the car window when I drive and telling me what kind they are.  

That's one of the trouble with 1st graders actually.  You never really know what it is they are doing at school even when you ask them directly because they can never remember.  But then later all this random knowledge comes spilling out of them and you wonder if it's accurate and in what context they learned about that anyway?

 I just googled a goldfinch by the way and this is what I got.

Not too far off....

Anyway, the First Graders also had snow people pictures on display.  Well, pictures of people in the snow, that is, NOT like, people made of snow or whatever.  There were People sledding and Painting and throwing snowballs and things.

Here is Peter's.

So that was nice.

It was also nice when the first graders did their little performance.  They sang and did kind of a little presentation on gratitude.  

Here they are.  Peter is in the front row on the far right in the red shirt.

Pretty sure he was waving at A.J. in this one.  

Here's a short video.

Lucy's Spring School Pictures

May 2016

At the end of April they took school pictures of Lucy and all the other kids at preschool.  This was an unexpected bonus as everybody knows I'm basically a sucker for pictures o any sort where my kids and family are involved.  We got the pics in May though, so that's why I'm posting this in May.

Off topic but-- It turns out they also take little cap and gown photos of the kids who are graduating and moving on to kindergarten.  How cute is that?  I don't know if we'll be here that long or how long Lucy will be at this particular preschool, but it is something maybe to look forward too.  Because obviously if we can swing it, we would like to move her to the big kid's school for PreK like her sister.  But with her birthday falling as it does, it's sort of weird. The cut off for public school Kinder is to be 5 by September 1, but her birthday is the 3rd.  What this means is, assuming we are still here (because at this point I don't know what else to assume) she would likely go to her current school for two more years and "graduate" with the rest of the 4 year olds, only to then enter Pre-K again at the big kids' school.  

Hmm.  That is something to mention to the director as she gets older if she stick around here.

Anyway here are her photos.  :)

I had a bit of  time getting her dressed that morning.  I wanted her to look nice but she has pretty strong opinions about what she wants to wear each day and a lot of the times makes really questionable choices about what goes together.  This day when I told her about pictures and suggested we choose a nice dress she kept wanting things that didn't really fit any more or her Christmas dress.  I'm sorry, but her Christmas dress is lovely, but it wasn't what I had in mind for SPRING photos.

In the end, we settled on her somewhat new "horn-icorn" shirt that I'd picked up at Target about a week earlier as she seems inexplicably to go through a lot more clothes when she goes to school every day.  She LOVES tutus so I pulled out one that actually matched the shirt and a pair of peach-ish cropped leggings (that we not actually intended to go with that shirt at all) to go along with it so at least she was nice and girly.

On the CD that I ordered with her pictures there is also a nice composite of all the teachers and kids' pictures together and OH MY GOSH you guys.

But. 

Just.

As it happens there is another little girl at this school named Lucy.  I try not to let it annoy me because I worked really hard to pick classic names for my kids that aren't very common any more, but it is what it is.  In any case, the other little girl is Lucy L. and I guess has been at school for some time before us.  So then, in the composite photo the kids are down  alphabetically so that Lucy L. and my Lucy K. are next to each other and then WOULDN'T YOU JUST KNOW that the other Lucy is wearing the EXACT SAME FRICKIN' SHIRT.

Although to be fair she probably calls it her unicorn shirt like a normal child but so help the person who corrects my Lucy on that one.  

Because that is the absolute cutest thing any child has ever said ever.  

Matt thinks it's hilarious.

"Apparently little blond girls named Lucy just like hornicorns." he says.

Oh, I didn't mention the other child is blond too?

Right.

It's probably the dumbest thing I've ever wasted my time being annoyed about so forgive me.  It looks like they planned it or something.  Ugh.  

Oh well.

At least my Lucy still calls them hornicorns which I still don't know where she got that from and I don't even care because it's the best.  

So.  There.

First Grade Publishing Party

April 2016

One of the big projects in First Grade at our school is a non-fiction "published" writing piece.  The kids worked for several weeks, on several drafts, on their project which was supposed to inform the reader about a topic of their choice and hopefully convince them to try whatever it was the kids had written about.

Peter, oddly enough, although I can't say that I am surprised, choose to write about Minecraft.  

Never mind the fact that at this point Peter didn't actually have the ability to play Minecraft.  He'd been asking about it for months.  He'd brought home and poured over multiple strategy guides from the school library.  He'd even acquired a few small toys to fiddle with.  But his only actual experience with the game had been once when Matt sat down with him once shortly after Christmas and played a trial version on our X-Box with him for maybe an hour, but that was really it.  

All that to say that why on Earth this was the topic he choose is completely beyond me.

I wold have thought he'd have written about something he actually had lots of experience with.  You know, like soccer, basketball or baseball.  Pokemon.  His Battleground game.  His Battleship games that he'd been toting around the house begging anybody he could find to play with him for months. Chess.  Legos.  Heck, I don't know.  Riding his bike?  I can think of literally dozens of topics that he had extensive knowledge he could write about that would have made more sense.  

But what do I know anyway?

Nobody asks Mom.

Certainly not Peter anyway.

And I have been advised more than once over my short years as a parent so far to let my children do their own thing. Follow their own interests, make their own choices and deal with the consequences of their own mistakes.  I'm not saying this was a mistake.  It was him choosing to write about something that interests him.

Just maybe wasn't the topic choice that made the most sense is all.

Whatever.

Thankfully, due to a great deal of help and encouragement, hard work and probably prayers from his two wonderful teachers, Peter finally did get his book done in time for the "Publishing Party" when the kids in his class were going to present their works to the public.

Peter's book was very well done.  

It wasn't the neatest thing he'd ever made, but I reminded myself of his age.  I also reminded myself of some old writings I found in a box of my things awhile ago from when I was in 2nd grade.  I have vague memories of writing that well researched report on Polar Bears back when I was 7, but I also have memories of being shocked at how messy my very best effort looked to my grown up eyes.  As a teacher I see little kid school work pretty often.  I know it isn't fair to expect better from my own children, but for some reason I sometimes do.  But like I said, I made myself be realistic with him.  

He worked SO hard on his book.  

He was so proud of his book.

And he's six.

A little bit messy or not, it was amazing!!!!!  He'd written pages and pages about how to play the game.  He'd written about the different characters and the strategies you should use.  He'd drawn pictures.  And more importantly, he was proud of the work he'd done.

Of course, after we looked at Peter's book we were supposed to visit with the other children and read their work.  I looked at a few but Lucy was being fussy in her stroller (although now that I write that I can't or the life of me figure out why she was home with us on a Friday morning and not at school.)  Anyway, so I looked at a few kid's books and then chatted with the teachers and a few other parents.

Meanwhile, Matt visited nearly every student's desk.  He read through the books and made lovely compliments.  He made the kids laugh.  It was a little bit odd and a little bit adorable actually. 

Lucy's Friend's Birthday Party

April 2016

As I've previously mentioned, Lucy started attending Preschool (which is really Day Care for her, except that it's a center for children ages 2-5 so there is a good amount of structured learning activities through out the day) in mid-February not long after I began working again.  It has been very good for her.  She has come out of her shell quite a bit.  She has so much more to say in general.  She spends much more of her time actively playing instead of sitting in front of the TV.  She also takes a nap almost every afternoon, which is something she really has not done with any regularity since we move up here last summer.  She has even made some real friendships, with children her own age which is, honestly, something she was really needing.  

It was probably only after about 2 or 3 weeks that at drop off another young girl there recognized her as we were both walking in to drop off together and proclaimed,  "Yook Mama, it's Yucy K!  YUCY K!!!  Mama, Yucy K is my fwiend!!!"

(Haha, I love the way 2 and 3 year olds talk.)

Yucy K.

Dat's my girl.

Lucy that morning, for the record, was right in the middle of her adjustment period in regards to school.  There had been 2 solid weeks of her loving it, and then there began a long period of her getting used to her new reality.  She still had fun at school every day, but she was tired in the morning and it took some getting used to for her to wake up early enough every morning to eat breakfast and be ready for school by 7:30 every day.  She'd cry in the morning about wanting to go home with me, or in the very least, not have me leave her there.

I suppose that is normal.

A.J. certainly went through a long period late in her twos and early in her threes when she threw a fit when I left her at preschool.  I'm fairly certain A.J. never, ever, not once stated anything remotely having to do with her wanting to stay with me.  She just didn't want to be THERE.  Looking back on it, I think she was reacting to the structure of preschool where she was, in large part, expected to do certain activities at a certain time.  A.J., being very much a free spirit, had been known to want to do things on her very own time from pretty much the day she'd been born.  So it was a big adjustment for her as she's learned to work on another person's timeline.

It was much the same with Lucy.  She was used to being at home nearly all the time.  She was used to being with me, or her sister, or in the very least, with her trusted nanny from the year before.  It took some time for her to adjust.

It was hard on her.  It was very hard on me.  

But we got through it.

And I'm not really one to give advice to other parents because honestly I'm just making it all up as I go every day, hoping desperately that I'm not messing up everything too completely.  

But.

I can think of so so so many parents who consider day care or early preschool to be, well, terrible.

I got a lot of flack for putting A.J. in part-time preschool when she was 2 1/2 and I was getting it again when I put Lucy in because of financial necessity. 

I also can think of a lot, lot, LOT of parents who pull their kid out after trying preschool or something similar after just a few short days or weeks because it gets "hard." 

I'm so glad I didn't give up with A.J. or even Lucy as it got hard.  Because ultimately, after that adjustment period.... which was admittedly pretty darn rough for awhile for both of them and me, they BOTH ultimately loved those early school experiences and learned a great deal and made great friendships and it was great for them and,honestly, for me too.

So take that for whatever it is worth.

No judgement.  No advice.  

But sometimes we think we are doing what's best and it turns out we are wrong.  And other times we find ourselves doing something we don't really want to do and it turns out to be really, really right.

Getting back to the point of the story.  The little girl who recognized my youngest daughter that morning turned out to be one of Lucy's best new friends at school.  She's a few months older than Lucy, but a little small for her age and therefore was getting along very well with my kid.  I found all of this out, of course over the weeks that followed as Lucy began t tell me more and more about that girl from that morning.

The teachers filled in some bits too.

And as time wore on, I found myself handing my crying or whining child off to one of the caregivers at drop off less and less.  Instead, I helped her wash her hands and stole myself a quick hug and kiss and she hurried off to join the other early morning arrivers, including, most mornings, her little friend who she usually joined to play or color with at a table.

Then Lucy's friend had a birthday party.  And even better, it was on a weekend we were free and able to take her.

I left the older kids at home with their Dad and took Lucy myself.  I was eager to see how she behaved around her peers from school with me "around" for security, but without her siblings to "run the show."

It was a great party.  They had at at a little playground I never even knew existed.  She ran around with her little friends from school which apparently are pretty numerous.  Turns out she doesn't just play with one or to buddies as A.J. was likely to do around her age.  She's more like Peter was, actually, playing with a variety of friends, in variety of activities.

I took the opportunity to snap loads of pictures of my girl while I helped her play between chatting a bit with the other parents.

On the tire swing.  This was wildy popular.  Lucy is with
the birthday girl and another boy who's name I didn't catch.

Another one.  They screamed like mad as they swung
back and forth, loving every moment of it.

Again, much like Peter at her age, she is fearless.  I'm never sure if it's her natural way
or if she just longs to be bigger like her siblings.  In any case, there is no playground obstacle
to big or scary for her to attempt.  When she got stuck, she simply requested that I help her.  

At some point, all the moms decided the kids should eat.  There were a variety of sweet little sandwiches and treats to nibble on.  Lucy sat down with a few of her friends and the birthday girl and concentrated her efforts exclusively on the sweets.

Then she found the bubbles.

One of her little friends settled in the shade under a tree.  Lucy went to join her and they sat together sweetly for a time, trying like heck to make those bubbles work for them.

It was such a fun time.

Playing on the little bouncy teeter-totter with yet another little friend.

It's weird the way things turn out.  I was so hesitant to put her in school already but we got to a point where there wasn't a choice.  It was a tough decision, and it took some time to get used to.  But I am so, so, SO thankful for the school she's at, the friends she has made and the growth Lucy has made as a result.

Mini Team Bowling Party

March 2016

Somewhere in there, A.J. Mini Company had a bowling party.  It was her second time bowling ever, althought the last time she was 3 so I doubt she remembers.  Honestly, she is terrible at it, even with the ramp to guide the ball and the bumpers up.  She was more interested in the coloring pages they gave out and the cupcakes anyway.  Haha.

Christmas Ornament Inventory Part 4

Coming to an end of this walk down Christmas Memories Lane, I am left with a bunch of random ornaments, that don't necessarily fit with anything else.  Not to say that these aren't just as special as any others, they just don't categorize as well.  

Up first, one from high school:

It was my senior year.  My great friend and I had been squad leaders in Flag Corps (Marching Band) that fall and had been friends for the three years that we'd been there together.  We'd shared so many great memories including our trip to Disney World the year before.  We both loved Christmas and for whatever reason we decided to decorate our Band Banquet table accordingly.  She brought in a mini tree and decorated it with ornaments that she'd bought for all of us.  She knew I loved the Muppets, so she got this Kermit Ornament for me.

Kermie!

 I am forever wondering where she found it.  It was, after all 1995.  The Muppet Christmas Carol was years before.  The disaster of Muppet Treasure Island was still a few months away.  The Muppets were less than at the height of their popularity.  More of a cult thing at that point.  My cult, a bit, actually.  Definitely still many, many years from their rebirth in successful movies just in time my own children to enjoy.

So, to this day I have no idea where she found that ornament for me.  But I love it still.  I love it because of who gave it to me, and because of the wonderful friendship it represents.  She was my best friend from high school although I never gave her enough credit for that and then when we graduated she went a different way.  We stay in touch, of course, as best as we can, especially now with Facebook and everything.  But where the vast majority of my friends and I kind of went one direction after high school, travelling together in a big, safe, pack of friends bound for in-state colleges, she went off to college somewhere else.  The distance that grew in our friendship because of that is something I'll always regret.  I'd fix it if I could.  But now I am the one that is far away.


Speaking of college.  I bet you can figure out when I got this next one.

Yep.  The good old Horse Shoe.  Ohio Stadium.  Complete with TBDBITL doing Script Ohio on the field.  As a huge Ohio State Football fan, an alumni of that school and also that band, obviously you can imagine why this ornament is special to me.  Go Bucks.  (Cymbals, and the rest of J-I Row would be rounding out the left side and bottom of that big O, by the way.)

Another pretty old one.  Heck.  Let's call it a classic, even though that's a bit of a stretch.  Back in the early 2000's these marshmallow ornaments were kind of a rage.  I bought this one in San Diego one of the first years we we there, um, the first time.

I burn 4 u.  Hahah.

Clearly I was young and silly-in-love with my new husband and I found those sorts of puns necessary and hilarious.

The next one I purchased at the same time.

A sailor snowman

Pretty obvious.  Matt was in the Navy after all and as weird as it is to think of it now, back then I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be a Navy wife.


I have a love/hate thing going with this next one.

I got it at the Exchange when we were in Japan.  Our stash of ornaments at the time was really limited and I was trying to stock up, but the things they had were pretty limited as well.  I did end up getting some cute Nutcracker ornaments and some colorful glass ones that were pretty that year too. I also got this Aircraft Carrier one, because at the time, Matt was on a carrier.

I don't actually like it that much though.

I haven't even actually put it on the tree for many years.  This year the kids saw it and insisted so it went out again.  Meh.

This next one was probably purchased at the same time.  I think.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  (I don't really remember.)  This one has "sat out" for the last several years as well.  It's back now because the kids saw it in the random bag of broken, unwanted or just generally kind of crappy ornaments and insisted, again, that I get it back out.

A lighthouse

I was going for the navy/nautical thing again, I suppose.  When we were overseas, in a foreign country, it as hard to live my own, separate from Matt's career, life.  Even when I had a job, it was on base, working for the families of sailors, so I guess at the time, I had sailors on the brain.

You're supposed to stick a light or two in the bottom and make it glow, but the LED lights we have on our tree now are too big and don't fit.

Anyway....

My one friend, the one who had an entire bin of ornaments from her childhood, had it.  She had the whole serious of Mischeivious Cats actually, but I only had eyes for one in particular.

It looked just like my beloved first cat, Britney.
I even used to tie a pink ribbon around her neck like that when I first got her.
She also definitely used to paw at the ornaments whenever she was around a Christmas tree.

Britney passed away while we were in Japan.  It happened just a couple months before we were going to come home actually.  I was devastated.  And I kept teasing my friend that I was going to steal her Britney looking ornament to remember my cat by.

That year for Christmas, my friend tracked another one of them down on eBay and gave it to me.

Now it is a nice reminder of my long lost first kitty, and also of that wonderful sweet friend who gave it to me.

(Makes me think it might also be time to get another cat.  I wonder how much Molly would try to eat one?)


This next one is another favorite.

The Hotel Del Coronado

That year that we came home from Japan, we finally got settled back in San Diego just before Thanksgiving.  As we had just been in Ohio a few times in the fall, during our transition, we made no effort to go home for Christmas.

Instead, we went with some friends out to the amazing historical hotel on the each in Coronado and enjoyed their wonderful Christmas Eve buffet.

I bought the ornament as a souvenir.

(We went back the following Christmas too.)

It was around this time that I started really collecting Hallmark ornaments.

This Noah's Ark is fun.  

A ridiculous little Santa.  I think it was a with purchase one year.
 I'm still searching for that one, "really good" Santa ornament.

Snoopy.  I suppose this was one I bought early on in my collecting because
somewhere deep down I'm still kind of jealous of my brother's Snoopy ornament.

These ice fishing penguins are cute.

I bought this one year when we were visiting Matt's older brother in Seattle.
That was before I lived there for awhile and kind of grew to strongly dislike the city.  Ha.

I bought this the year Matt was in Iraq.  Though he was able to come home for Christmas, the sentiment is obvious.  

This sparkly glass Shamu  was from our trip to Sea World that year while he was home on leave.

This Disney one came from the kid's first trip to the park for A.J.'s 1st birthday that same year.

That year, because we didn't have any of our regular ornaments from storage, I bought a
big pack of cheap ones and then the kids and I made some glittery pine cones to fill in the gaps.

We also made some cinnamon ornaments that year too.

There are several dozen of these still.  I only put a few out each year, because they smell so good!

This view master one is fun.  My brother and I loved our view master  when we were kids.
Peter thinks these are binoculars.  

I love this simple Nativity one.  I always put it right smack in the middle, front
and center to remind the kids what Christmas is really all about.

I picked up this sleeping angel on year to keep my other little angels company.  

I can never remember what year I got this one, but looking at it now I realize it says 2009 right on the front so I guess it was the  year Peter was born.  There are 3 buttons and it plays Let is Snow in 3 parts.  You can turn the different instruments on and off to hear the different parts.  

This one is so cute.  It makes me crazy every year though, because it weighs
A LOT and it's hard to find a branch that will support it.  

So, that's really it.  There are others, of course, but these are the good ones.  :)  

And just think, if we ever need it now there's a record for insurance purposes.  Let's just hope we never need it.

I'll be back, next year, to write up all about the new ornaments we get for 2016!