Last day of school: Field Day surprise!

After Owen gave me the yes/no business about his end-of-year grade party, I decided to surprise him and just show up at the whole-school field day event. (I had asked if he wanted me to go and he said no again.) He was happy to see me and eagerly let me take pictures of him with his friends. 🙂

The school as I approached.

Mohammed, the kid Owen ran around with the whole time.

Every kid wore one of these. They got a sticker each time they completed an event/game/activity.

I get kind of choked up when I see this. I don’t want to leave.

Racing off to the next thing.

I was surprised when Owen wanted to do cup stacking—I wondered how he knew how to do it because he’d never mentioned it.

And then I watched him do it—ahhhh, he has NO idea how to do it. (I later showed it to him on YouTube and of course he loved it.) You can watch it in the video compilation at the bottom of this post.

We saw our friend Gavin and he wanted to give Katie a hug but she started to be shy.

Miss Christina, Katie’s teacher.

Showing me he can now climb to the top. When we were there for back to school night, he refused because he was scared. We told him he’d be able to do it by the end of the year.

He mastered the rock wall, too!

This is about as high as Katie gets. They don’t play on this playground in her class—the pre-k kids have their own smaller playground.

Waiting for face (or arm) painting.

Finally getting over her shyness with Gavin.

Katie wanted to get her face painted but the lines were pretty long and I wanted to be able to follow Owen around, so I told her not unless the lines went down. I turned around to talk to someone for a minute and when I turned back, she was getting her face painted by Miss Anne (our friend and Katie’s teaching assistant). I asked Mrs. Stuhlman (Owen’s kindergarten assistant who I had been talking to) how that happened and she said she just took her over and sat her down—the privilege of being a teacher! So Katie got to cut ahead of like five kids!! Mrs. Stuhlman asked if she might get Katie in her class next year…and I had to give her the bad news that we were moving. 🙁

Owen getting an alien on his arm.

I let Katie do some of the games that didn’t have big lines. She was waiting to throw baskets (video below).

Katie with AJ, a neighbor girl who is in first grade. She’s a tiny thing.

I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten my face painted (that wasn’t a thing back in the day) so when the grades were switching areas and there wasn’t a line, I sat down to get a quick flower to match Katie’s. Gorgeous work as usual by Anne and her daughter!

Lining up getting ready to switch to the fields for flag games and kickball.

I may have to redo this photo, but you can see three tiny black dots in the sky. They were dragonflies! The field was swarming with hundreds of them! It was the strangest thing!!

After flag games were done, Katie and I left. It was HOT and we hadn’t planned for it (I was in jeans and a black tee shirt and we hadn’t brought water—and we hadn’t thought it was going to be so hot and humid). Thankfully our neighbors stayed and got a few pics and videos (see below).

Owen waiting for kickball.

Having a BLAST in the water!

Me and Katie back at home…

I am SO glad I went and was able to take lots of pictures. We are going to miss this school so very much…

I’m going to miss running into friends at the playground!

We hadn’t been to the library playground in forever so we went today. We were the only ones there for quite some time and then two ladies showed up with two small kids. I didn’t pay much attention to them but Katie was playing with them and then I heard the boy call her Katie. In a tone like he knew her. And it turns out he did! It was the kids of an old neighbor (who is also a first grade teacher) who were there with their sitter (their aunt) and a friend. 

This is the stuff I am really going to miss.

They wanted to run so off they went!

Katie was ahead the whole time but then stopped for some reason so he passed her and “won.” 🙂

 

Dual Birthday Pool Party

After watching the forecasts and worrying about the weather all week (the forecast varied from thunderstorms to 60% chance of rain to light rain all day)…we decided to go ahead with the party and it ended up absolutely perfect!! It was overcast at the start and gradually got sunnier and warmer throughout the party—enough so that I had Tom grab my suit when he went back to get the cake!

We had 60 guests (kids and adults!!) and the pool was probably the busiest it will be all season (aside from the days they have cookouts with free food or night swims with free ice cream). But it all went smoothly, everyone had a blast, and there was plenty of pizza and cake for multiple helpings (once I started cutting the serves 48 cake and realized my small pieces were still not small enough to get me close to 60 pieces, I started halving those…and then ended up having half the cake left so kids got seconds and thirds).

The gaggle of dads. They didn’t move from this spot the whole time. 😂

Us moms:

;

The kids were fairly patient about opening gifts once we got home…and they LOVED everything. They got Bop It (thank heavens I found the volume control!) and Owen picked up on it right away, Katie dug right into the glitter glue and construction paper, Owen picked out his favorite baseball cards from a new pack, Katie put together her Disney Lego, we’ve been shot multiple times by Owen’s new nerf gun, and both kids were OVER THE MOON about all the gift cards and getting to go shopping once we move! They both said it was a great birthday!

Surprise! Today was Katie’s last day of Pre-K!

Yes, I said surprise. I had NO idea whatsoever—I just assumed they finished next week along with the rest of the school.

So, I dropped her off and a short while after I got home, I got a text from the class assistant (our friend) saying Whoops, they must have dropped the ball and forgot to send home the sheet about today being water day and could I bring a suit and towel for her. So I ran back to the school and dropped the stuff off and put her sunscreen on (they are not allowed to do it). Water day should have been my big clue since we also did it last year, but my brain is going in so many different directions that it didn’t even occur to me that water day was the last day of school. So I went to pick her up and saw her walking out with her art folder AND IT STILL DIDN’T HIT ME until the teacher said something about it being the last day and they enjoyed having Katie… Huh? What? Ahhhh, then it all became clear. Of course I was thinking WHAT THE HELL?!?! How could I not have known that today was the last day? Well, it wasn’t on the school calendar (and I live by my calendar). So I was bummed I didn’t have teacher gifts ready…so I will take them in Monday when I drop off some educational stuff for the classroom (donations as we purge).

Pool, Day 11: Pizza dinner

Everyone at the pool is really nice—everyone plays catch with Owen (we have no idea who this is but it wasn’t the first time he’s played with it Owen).

Owen pushing a bunch of girls around the pool. 🙂

Playing with Daddy!

Proof I’m actually there!

And tonight we surprised the kids and ordered pizza for dinner at the pool. We do it once a summer…so we had to get it in quick this year. 

Katie’s special night with mom

Since Owen was getting to go on a special trip to a baseball game, I had to make Katie’s night spent at home fun, too—of course she was a bit bummed that she didn’t get to go on the trip, but I assured her she wouldn’t love the baseball game.

Part 1: The playground with friends and a treat from the ice cream truck!

Part 2: Night swim with ice cream… And staying up past her bedtime!!

It’s that time again…Katie has started ABCMouse!


So, Katie has been doing “homework” lately—we bought her a workbook like Owen gets for his Summer Slide and she has fun with that, plus she also has a few educational iPad apps that she enjoys. She saw a commercial for ABCmouse.com the other day and asked if she could have it on the iPad again.

First, huh? She remembers? It hasn’t been on the iPad for probably two years now!

Second, well, why not? Owen really enjoyed it and if she wants to do it…it certainly can’t hurt! (And in the back of my mind I keep wondering if maybe that’s one of the reasons why Katie is a touch behind as compared to Owen—even though I know I shouldn’t compare the two.)

So the thought was in my mind but on the back burner since we’ve been busy. So imagine my surprise when out of the blue I get an email from someone at ABCMouse saying my site came up as one that linked to them and—long story short—would I want to become a full-fledged official referral source. Well, sure, why not?

So Katie was EXCITED to start her “homework” and she kept asking to do it. Before I knew it, she was 14% done with the pre-k level. Hopefully her excitement continues! And hopefully I make some money off referrals!

One last bear hug. 

Since we are trying to cut down on the amount of stuff we have, I decided that one of the two HUGE stuffed bears was going to go. We picked Owen’s since it was the most bedraggled—and he really doesn’t play with it anymore and it just sits in the corner of his room. So I posted it for sale cheap and someone came and picked it up within a few hours!

Back then, in 2011, with Owen:

Now, with Katie, giving him one last hug:

Probably one of our last family trail walks…

At the halfway point, we detoured toward the new sidewalks along Lorton Road, which took us over a huge hill where the grasses were as tall as Owen!

Stopping to check out a reclaimed water pond.

Katie kept complaining that her hips hurt or her legs hurt… Until we suggested she run ahead to check out the trail and she was off like a shot!

And since we’ll likely never be right here at the sign again…

I can’t believe we have a measly five weeks left…