This week in Kindergarten....

Wow - has it been a busy week in the life of a kindergartener! W has had a full week! On Wed, the Kindergarteners were given the opportunity to stay the whole day at school. This gave them a taste of what next year will be like plus the added bonus of eating in the cafeteria (which W was SO excited about and said they had the best chicken nuggets ever) and visiting a 1st grade classroom. Luckily, S had some training that day and I was able to go up and help out during the afternoon. Fifty kindergarteners in one room made for a busy teacher!

Next up was the kindergarten program on Thurs night. The current kindergarteners sang for the upcoming kindergarteners before their orientation. It was a little country theme and each class got to do moves on stage to one song. Sorry the pictures did not turn out, we were too far away from the action to get a good shot.

We LOVE our teachers!!! We will miss them so much. Mrs. McCracken is on the left and her assistant, Ms. Linda is on the right.

The principal deemed them official 1st graders after the program. (Even though they still have 2 1/2 weeks of school left) Here's W with his bud, Jamie giving me the big 1!

To finish off the week, the kindergarten had field day on Friday. My neighbor was gracious enough to watch the little boys so I could go and volunteer. It was a super fun day! They had several relays that involved water - which the kids LOVED! Here's the class ready for the wet activities of field day!

Will getting his sponge ready for the Soggy Bottoms relay!

The MopHead relay

Ready for some White Water Rafting relay. Are you??

Ahead of the pack while getting sprayed by the PE teacher.

W with his bud, Elliot. Elliot lives in our neighborhood and he and W sit on the bus together every morning - so sweet. My little boy is growing up!!

Old McDonald Had a Farm

This past week, T had his class field trip to a local working farm. All week he had told us about the peacocks sitting on the fence scaring the fox away from stealing the chicken eggs. Apparently his teachers had told them the story about it. She just laughed when I told her T had been telling us all about it. T was so excited to actually get to see the peacock. We also saw ox, horses, sheep, pigs, guinnys, geese and chickens. It was quite the fun day. Oh and W got to tag along for the trip!

The peacock from the story!

Why did the sheep cross the road? - to get to the "baa"throom! HA!

Eating our snack with our friend Ryan

T and his friend Mikey

Big Accomplishments

I finally did it! I ran a 5K! Sure, I've walked several 5Ks in my life, but I have never wanted nor attempted to run an entire race. Well, about 3 months ago, I decided I needed a challenge. I took up running and I endured my first race - AND finished within 30 minutes! It was a really hilly course but I knew that signing up. I figured "let's just go for the hard one as my first race and all the others will be easy as pie!" My neighbor, and friend, ran with me and we are really good running buddies together (we've only ran once together prior to race). We have the same speed and pushed each other at different times. My fan club was there cheering me on with can shakers and lots of "GO MOM"s. Check two of them out on the sidelines! :)

Before race:

Almost finished...

After the race....

You are probably wondering if I am now a running addict. The answer is NO but I want to keep it up enough to run another race or two in the future. Believe me you will not see me marathon running (who wants to torture themselves like that??)

On to other news, there was also another big accomplishment in our family. W got his first book award at the AWANA awards ceremony. I am so proud of him for working hard and getting the entire book complete in spite of the fact he was late getting started with the program. We are already looking forward to next year!
And just had to share this one....C accomplished something too - finishing an entire ice cream treat of his own from Dairy Queen on Mothers Day. Needless to say, he thought it was YUMMY!

Tea & Teacher Gifts

Yesterday we had a Mother's Day Tea at T's school. It was cute. They had tables all set up nice and pretty with a gift for each mom. Here is T posing with his handmade gift for me. He painted a flower pot and planted some flowers in it. He was so excited to show me there was blue on it (my favorite color)

We took a self portrait b/c he wouldn't smile for the camera when someone else took the picture. So I thought this might be fun and it worked.

This week has also been Teacher Appreciation week for W's school (as most schools). I would have posted this sooner to give some ideas but I was rushing around last night trying to get it all done. All week, they took things each day to the teachers but I wanted to give them a little something extra (not scripted by the school). I found this cute idea on my favorite blog and decided to make it for the teacher assistants. You can find all the instructions here. They turned out really cute and are EASY and CHEAP! I filled mine with m&ms.
As for W's teacher, I found an idea online here and thought it was great! I bought some stamps at Michaels - you know how they put stamps in their $1 bin. I found some great stamps that were 'springy' without screaming Easter for $0.30 each!!! Then I found this star box (since W's school is the stars) for $2.99 plus a 40% off coupon and painted it and decoupaged scrapbook paper on top and bottom. Put all the stamps inside and bought a stamp pad for about $1.50 to put on top and wha-lah - a cute little teacher gift. W's teacher is always stamping their homework so I thought it would be a fun little gift.
*****Hope you took the time to appreciate your child's teacher this week - they certainly deserve it! It doesn't take much time or money to say you appreciate their hard work.*****

Thought I would update you on our little roof top garden. Our "science experiment" is really taking off! The boys are finding it quite exciting.

Ridin' Around on a Double Decker Bus

This weekend, we got a visit for Nana & Papa Jones. Since Nana has never been to DC, we decided a day in the city was a must. Papa suggested we try to arrange a riding tour since there was so much walking to do. We found a Double Decker bus tour and it was GREAT! W was so pumped we were riding a double decker bus. We had seen them in the city before and he always thought they were way cool. (I rode on one in college on a trip to Europe and thought it was cool too and was equally excited) The tour let you get out at any stop and came back around every 10 min or so for the next stop. Great way to see all the national landmarks without walking around with 3 crazy kiddos.

Here's the bus!

W all set and ready to go on top of the bus

Our family in front of the capital. We got out and did the visitors center which had a great exhibit on the progression of the DC area throughout history.

Nana and Pop with the boys on other side of Capital

The boys always felt the need to "help" Nana and Papa walk.

Me driving by the Jefferson Memorial

C with some action near the Washington monument

And we can't forget the White house. They had it so closed off you couldn't get much closer.

Thanks Nana and Papa for such a great time! We enjoyed showing you the sites of the city! Hope you can come back again before we move again!

Easter Pictures

There was no White House Easter Egg Roll for us (we did enter the raffle but alas we were not chosen) but we had a great Easter with our little family. Enjoy the photos.

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Resurrection Eggs - Homemade version

THis week I happened to stumble upon an article I had saved from an old MOPS publication. You can find it here. I had completely forgotten about it. It was how to tell the resurrection story with your preschoolers using eggs and things inside them to represent parts of the story. There is a retail version you can buy of these resurrection eggs, but this was how to do a spontaneous, free, home version of the story. It was a rainy afternoon, so I decided to give it a try with my boys. They really liked it. I made each a set (only to be fair) and then hid them around the house. Each was able to find only 6 eggs. After the hunt, we looked at the numbers on our eggs and if one had duplicate numbers, we swapped with the other. It worked great and they loved opening each one to find out what was inside. May make this a tradition because our kids need to know there is more to Easter than chocolate bunnies and eggs! They need to know why Easter is such a celebration!

Here are my eggs. I couldn't find a thorn so I just printed a picture of one and we talked about how a thorn feels. T was quick to tell me that someone on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse had a thorn in their paw and they had to use tweezers to get it out. HA!