Saturday, June 15, 2013

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks....

I used to count down the days to school's end with dread. I liked order and schedules. I didn't like the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of days that summer brought. But with teenagers comes harder and sheer amounts of just more when it comes to homework and projects. Add their busy-ness to mine and that's a lot of crazy. Plus, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of days have become a lot more frequent in our lives. So I now count down the days to school's end with anticipation, looking forward to a break.  The kids are old enough to entertain themselves, and though they still complain about boredom at times, overall summer vacation is exactly that.....a vacation.

As to be expected, the last week of school was a doozy of end of year stuff. Here's some of the highlights....

*Kindergarten graduation....my baby is heading off to 1st grade and a full day of school. Please don't judge me too harshly as I do the happy dance. By the way...Kindergarten graduation program....cutest thing ever!

 The graduating Kindergartners were told ahead of time that after the program, they were to meet their parents underneath their graduation certificate and self portrait, and then lead them outside for refreshments. Each child was allowed three cookies, and it was up to them whether or not they wanted to share with their parents...though I'm sure sharing was strongly suggested. Judging from Lilian's two fisted cookie monster pose here, each cookie with a bite taken out of it, can you guess what her choice was in regards to sharing? (I snuck a bite or two when she asked me to hold the cookies while she slid down the slide one last time....)

*9th Grade Awards Night.....Julianne, due to her insanely good grades, was invited to the awards night. Seriously, in the past 3 years of Jr. High, the girl has had only had two A-'s to mar her otherwise perfect straight A GPA....and those were in 7th grade. But beyond the 4.0 GPA and recognition for things like foreign language fair, choir solo and ensemble, and other such activities she has participated in, she also won a rather big award...one that we didn't see coming. Each department picked one or two students who they felt had outstanding prospects, had gone above and beyond, and had achieved "greatness" for lack of a better word, in that department. Julianne's was awarded this special recognition from the French department.





*District Decathlon....like last year, Brandon got a high enough overall score in the Presidential Fitness Challenge that he was one of four 6th graders sent to represent his school at the decathlon.































The 6th graders also had their big end of year dance. Bryan and I were on our cruise but a friend sent me this picture of Brandon with the caption, "6th grade dance star!"


*Rebekah got out of school a day earlier than the rest of her siblings. I think it had something to do with the last day of school being graduation for the seniors. So she went boating.

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