Ramblings: End of Year Festivities

Last week the kids had their classroom awards ceremonies. I managed to get to them thanks to Granny. Maddie's was in the morning so I bravely dragged the boys along, with Granny for backup, hoping they would be able to behave for at least some of the 30 minutes. Errr...they lasted about four minutes. It was in the library and Aidan turned into a book-loving psychopath attempting to remove as many books from their shelves in as short of a time as possible.

Avery refused to believe that I didn't have an endless supply of fruit snacks in my bag and proceeded to argue and whine and tear apart my bag in search of a hidden stash of them. Then when the slide show of pictures from throughout the year came on, they stood on their chairs and screamed "THAT'S MADDIE RIGHT THERE!," or "WHERE'S ME AT?" or "IS THAT ALEX?" throughout the whole thing. No shushing or pleading to whisper made any impact. Luckily, the entire program was only about 20 minutes long and I didn't get too dehydrated from sweating to death.

They sang a funny song about moving on to first grade, complete with choreography. Maddie LOVED her teacher this year and constantly came home quoting things from her, or talking about how beautiful she is and what cute outfits she has.

They each received a scrapbook with a page for every month, complete with a picture of them dressed up in funny hats and clothes or in front of a decorated backdrop representing something they had studied or somewhere they'd gone. She even shrunk down copies of some of their work to include on the pages. Now I don't have to feel guilty that I don't scrapbook because she'll at least have that to look at in ten years!
I think everyone has very specific memories of their kindergarten teacher. Luckily, she'll have only rosy memories of her first year in school, which is exactly what I hoped for. I told her teacher to brace herself, because if she's still around there in a couple of years, odds are she'll end up with one of the twins in her class. And if it's Avery, there's a fairly decent chance that he still won't be potty-trained by then.


Alex's program was on Friday and smack in the middle of the boys naptime, so I got to attend solo.
He got awards for being on the A honor roll, being in the read-a-thon, reaching a certain level in the advanced reading group, and the Chick-fil-a knowledge award for "being the craziest kid in class." Haha. Just kidding. It's for "Discovering something new so you can be better at whatever you do." Basically, the value awards thing is just an easy way for Chick-fil-a to advertise. But I'm happy they do cuz each kid gets a certificate along with a coupon for a free kid's meal.

He almost got perfect attendance except for those days we took him out of school so we could get cheaper airline tickets to Disney World. Getting shafted that award was definitely worth the $1200 we saved on our 6 tickets.

He was acting really nervous before they started the awards but loosened up enough to high five his friends when each of their names were called. This is his TALL friend, Ben. They hang out together every Thursday afternoon in the hallway while their sisters have their ballet lessons. And I've noticed Alex, who used to be alot bigger than kids his age, has become one of the smaller kids in class the past year or two. Especially next to Ben who was hunching down to make it in the picture.

If you've never had or been around an 8 1/2 year old boy, then I have a picture that sums them up perfectly. Seriously. Like peeking in on wild animals in their natural habitat. Except I'd add sound effects to the picture--like armpit fart noises and loud belches resulting from gulping down stomach-fulls of air. And boogers. And lots of laughter about boogers.

The finale was a video they made of all the kids answering a variety of questions about the school year. What do you remember the most, what have you learned, that sort of thing. Alex was asked his favorite thing they did during the year and he answered, "Multiplication, doing hard math problems. Oh, and what are those things called? Oh yeah, fractions!"
I'm hoping that means he's headed for a career that doesn't involve the picking of boogers or the imitation of bodily function noises, but we'll see. They seem to be a favorite pastime.