School's Out For The Summer!

Let's see........where to start. It has been a busy last two weeks. It went by in a blur of activities. The girls had parties, field days, school projects and more parties. I don't remember having so many parties when I was in school.

Thursday, May 21st, Allison had a social studies project she had to present. The project involved making up a festival based on something the kids had learned about Florida. Allison choose to make a festival about the mockingbird, because it is Florida's state bird. The project required her to make a "float" from a shoe box, draw a poster to advertise the festival, write a short report about her festival and create a t-shirt about her festival. On the same day, Leah had to dress up as a book character. She chose a character from one of the magic tree house books. Below is a picture of the girls on their way to school that morning. Leah is wearing her costume and Allison is showing off her festival t-shirt.

Friday, May 22, Allison's class had to present their festival to the parents and the other classrooms. She had to take in a food to go along with her festival. She decided to take gummy worms, since her festival was about birds. I was glad she picked a "food" I did not have to prepare. In December, I had to make Anzac biscuits for her presentation on Christmas in Australia. That time they had to pick a country and make a food from that country. Here is Allison in her classroom presenting her festival to everyone.

Here is Allison with her teacher. Check out her shirt. The things we can do at home these days. We picked out a clip art from the computer and printed it onto an iron on transfer. Then, we were able to iron on the print to a shirt. It is pretty cool! An original shirt! I could see me having lots of fun with the iron ons!

Saturday, May 23rd, was supposed to be Rachel's last day of horseback riding for the year, but after a week (and 12 inches) of rain, it was raining again on Saturday morning, so she did not get to go. She decided to help her stuffed animals make a mass exodus from her room upstairs to the couch downstairs. It looked like the animals were descending from Mt. Everest and making designated stops at the base camps. First they all accumulated (and acclimated, I guess) on the landing of the staircase, then at the bottom of the stairs and finally on the couch. Here are some pictures of the epic event.

Sunday, May 24th, we all loaded up after church and went to grandpas and spent the night. It was a nice visit. Grandpa always says he is glad to have us, but I am sure he is also glad to see us go after 24 hours or so. We grilled out hamburgers and played in the pool on Monday, and for the first time in a week, we had a sunny day!

Wednesday, May 27th, Allison had to take in a food that had to relate to some topic she had discussed in science in the past year. We decided to make cookies in the shapes of the various animals found in the Indian River Lagoon. the class had a field trip to lagoon in October. We had a cookie cutter that we used to cut out the starfish, but the manatee, dolphin, jellyfish, sea turtle, fish, and stingray had to be done free hand. It made for some pretty silly looking cookies. We bought some black icing and white icing and assumed that we could mix the two to make gray. You would think that would work, wouldn't you?! Well, black and white in the baking world makes purple, so we ended up with purple stingrays, dolphins and manatees, so we just decided to go wild with the colors. No matter the look, the cookies tasted pretty good.

Allison shows off her cookies in her classroom.

Also on Wednesday, Rachel's classroom had a pizza party. Along with the food, they did songs and handed out certificates for the little ones completing preK and heading off to kindergarten. Here you can see Rachel receiving her certificate from her teacher. We had a good time celebrating and eating. After the party, we had to race home, pick up the big girls and head to Orlando to see Rachel's speech therapist. The therapist is very happy with Rachel's progress. I was hoping for moire noticeable changes, but there are subtle changes that hopefully will build into big changes in the near future.
When the girls and I got home from Orlando we ran by Target and bought Mike a birthday cake. Wednesday was his 45th birthday. For the next six months he cannot kid me about being older than him! We gave him a photo album from our trip to the Keys in April and a DVD of one of his favorite movies.

Thursday was the girls last day of school. I have to say I was glad for that day to finally get here. The teacher's had worn all of us out with all the activities they packed in the last week and a half. Allison had a friend over to spend the night and Friday we had to get up and get Allison's friend home and take Allison to the dentist. What a way to start a summer break, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Friday afternoon we cleaned out closets and the playroom to round up things for a neighborhood yard sale on Saturday morning. We got a few good things out there and actually made a little money before it was all said and done. Allison thought it was too cool to get money for getting rid of some of her stuff-I thought it was cool too, but before I knew it Allison was off to a birthday party for the afternoon and came through the door with a goodie bag full of junk from that. It is a never ending battle!