Last day of school

We made it!  What a fun, crazy year it has been.  This is the last day of school.

 Glen is finishing his last day as a first grader

Grace is finishing her last day as a third grader

Wow time flies!

June Jam

 June Jam is the fun celebration that is held during the last week of school.  The grade levels each have a dance that they share with the school, and some of the clubs also share a dance too.

Above Grace is in line waiting for the Latin dance club to perform their dance that they had learned that year.

 Here Grace is doing a demonstration with a group she was involved with in the mornings.  I believe that the group was doing yoga in the mornings with the kids.

 Here Glen is doing his grade level dance with his classmates.

 And more of the first grade dance.

 Here Grace is doing her dance with her class.

Usually this event is held outside on the parking lot.  But this year there was rain, so it was held in the gym.

Girl Scouts

Grace has been in Girl Scouts since 1st grade.  She started during the second year of being a Daisy.

Then she was a Brownie for two years (second and third grade).

 This year she has bridged (by actually walking over a bridge at a local park) into juniors.  This girl keeps me busy with all of the activities (girl scouts, boy scouts, piano, violin, just to name a few) but I am glad that she is active, and learning new things and good skills for life.

Here she is being welcomed to juniors with her leader Ms. Angela.  I am so glad that we found the troop that we did.  The girls are great and the leaders are wonderful!

Violin

I feel so blessed that the school system that my children have so many different opportunities to offer the students.  I went to the same school when I was young and I must say the schools look so much different.  Grace and Glen are both in dual immersion classes.  This means that they have classes taught in English for half of the day and classes taught in only Spanish for half of the day.  During the Spanish half of the day they need to read, write, and speak only in Spanish.  They have done this since Kindergarten so at this moment with Grace in third grade, she is getting pretty confident to be able to speak outside of the classroom, with people she may see in the community.

One other opportunity the school system offers is violin classes.  For a low price, the students can stay after school one day a week and take violin lessons.  Grace loves it.  This was her final concert.  She is in the yellow right behind the music stand.

Confidence

At my job, Grace and Glen get to stay with me in the morning (along with four of their friends).  The elementary school and the middle school are connected, so the teachers at the middle school bring their elementary school student children with them to school.  The challenge is that the middle school starts about 40 minutes before the elementary school.  So I take the students into a classroom that is not being used and let the kids play, draw, and color before I walk them over when their school opens.

Here Grace is a bit nervous about taking her first SOLs.  So she made her own inspirational poster for herself.  She did end up passing both of the SOL tests that she took.  I am very proud of her.

Wildflower Art Contest

 Through the art teacher at the middle school that I work at, I found out about the Wildflower Art Contest that was being held.  It was for all school ages.  I told that to Grace and Glen and they both wanted to enter a piece of art.

 Glen drew some Fleabane.  He worked really hard on it over many, many days.  We found out that he was one of the three finalists for his age range.

 He got a wildflower book, a certificate, and a bookmark.  He was so proud.

 Grace also entered a picture. She drew Bluets.  She worked really hard at it and all of the special shading that she did on each petal.  She was one of the three finalists for her age range, and she got the same prize as Glen.

 Grace's picture is on the top of the display and just to the left of her head.  Glen's picture is on the top of the display and just to the right of his head.

 Since we had a free entrance to the Skyline National Park, we decided to make a full day of it.  So after the art ceremony we went on a hike to Dark Hallow Falls.

 It is one of our favorite hikes.

 Grace and Glen did really well on the hike.  This event happened about a month before I had knee surgery, so I was not able to hike very long.

 We got a nice distance in, saw some good views, then had to come back.  I hope that now my knee is a bit better, I will do more for the next hike we go on.

A really great day with some wonderful artists.

Easter 2019

To start off this Easter post, we needed to have our pictures with the bunnies.  Thank you Grandma Sue for the bunnies, it is a special tradition that you started.

Grace wanted to also celebrate Easter with her own bunny dress.  I was questioning it since we usually pick her nicest dress to wear for Easter.  But it turned out very cute and she loved it so much.

We then went to Mamaw and Papaw's house where Adam hid Easter eggs for the kids.  He did such a good job that even the adults could not find all of the eggs.

But he remembered where they all were and they had a great time.

There were a lot of eggs to find.

And they were in some very interesting places.

But an Easter egg hunt is always fun.

Happy Easter everyone!

Fishing

 This past summer we went fishing at the park with the Boy Scout troop.  However, we spent most of our time fixing line that broke.  And we certainly did not get any fish.

 Then in the fall we were invited to go to a cabin that is owned by a family in the scouting troop that we are involved with.  They were going to go fishing there.  We could not go due to our schedule.

 So on March 31, we decided to go fishing on our own.  A family friend of ours has a creek running in his backyard and he told us that we could go fishing.

 It was very cold so the fish were not very active.  But we got a lot of practice casting our lines into the creek.  And we had a great time doing it.

 I am so glad that we are able to go out and have these adventures.

Grace Got Glasses

 Grace had been complaining about not seeing the board very well for a while now.  So I took her to the eye doctor.  Yes, she needed glasses.  Her vision is not bad, but did need a bit of help to see distances.  So I took her to America's Best and we got two pairs of glasses.

She is so happy that she had glasses and that she can see.

Auction/Skating

 Today was a busy day.  It started early with the Highland Retreat Benefit Auction.  Since I am on the board of Highland Retreat I was there early.  Matt brought the kids later and stayed to see what was for sale and also if I needed help with the auction.  I did not, but Grace was pulled into service to show off the items that were being auctioned off in the live auction.

 She loved her job as Vanna White.  She did such a good job showing off the items and getting so excited when they sold.

 Then we had a church skating night.  Glen refused to use the skating walker.  So she was all on his own.  But I think that he did a pretty good job.

 He only fell a few times, and he went slow, but he went and he was proud of himself.

 I am proud of him too.

 Grace is a skating wiz.  She loves it when we get a chance to go to the rink.

And she loved going for church night.

 A bit tired, I got the kids a slushie as they rested up.

 They shared very nicely.  Sometimes they do get along :)