Category Archives: Playing

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…