Last day of school 2010

Today was the kids' last day of school. Silly me forgot to take pictures of the teacher gifts for Justin and Trevor's teachers. Oh well. I haven't had enough sleep lately anyway! Trevor's teacher got a gold colored transparent pitcher with fresh lemons in it. She's a big ASU fan because her husband works there so we thought they'd get a lot of use out of it during parties. Trevor wrote her a nice note thanking her for being such a good teacher for the last two years. Justin's homeroom teacher is a huge crafting and scrap booking fanatic like me so I found a bunch of ribbon, a ream of coordinating decorative card stock, a scalloped edge chipboard scrapbook and a brown and blue scrapbook tote bag. Everything in there was on sale so even though there was a lot it didn't end up costing much. I love finding great deals!
Being a room mom for Natalie's class meant that a few of the other moms and I worked together to compile contributions for a large group gift. We ended up collecting $175 from the families. Then I painted a terra cotta pot pink, painted Drew's hands and put hand prints on the pot with the date. One of the other moms cut out tons of cute card stock flowers and put them on wooden skewers. They were delivered to me, and I wrapped the stems with green chenille pipe cleaners. Then I passed it onto the mom who got the gift cards. She put the cards on the flowers and wrapped it up. It looked darling.
Melody, one of the moms made a scrapbook page with all the kids, then went in with a card and had the kids all sign it. She picked up food from McDonald's, and after we passed it out we presented Natalie's teacher with her gift. We made Mrs. Dede cry because she loved it so much. I had Drew with me, and expected him to stay pretty close to me the entire time. What surprised me was that Natalie also chose to sit next to me the entire time. She usually comes and says hi, or gives me a shy and embarrassed smile but she usually will stay with her friends. Today she stayed with me the entire time.
Now that the end of school craziness is over I need to start preparing for Sunday. I stupidly answered the call, knowing it was going to be to speak in church on Sunday. I still don't know why I did that, but I did, and now Kent and I are speaking in church on Sunday. At least it's a holiday weekend so we shouldn't have a ton of people there to witness this. I've tried repeatedly to start looking up the topic, but I just can't get into it. It is a topic with a lot of material to choose from, but I can't focus. Hopefully I'll sleep well tonight and then i can work tomorrow. i sure hope so!

One more thing...

If you haven't been on Facebook recently I just announced that I'm down 30 pounds. I chopped my hair into an A-line bob and touched up the color. From my father I have inherited a bit of gray hair a little earlier than I think is reasonable. (I think 50 is reasonable to expect a bit of gray, don't you?) I am hoping to continue losing more over the next several months. Hopefully our Christmas pictures will have a slimmer version of me!

End of the school year

Wow, it's already arrived... the end of another school year. Things are a little crazier this year than previous years because of last week's surgery. I'm hopeful that it will take care of the issues I've had with my back. I think it might because within an hour of the surgery my back pain was equal to the surgery pain. I guess I won't know for a few weeks if it will help my back too, but not having to deal with the issues that have plagued me for the last 20+ years I'm cautiously optimistic.
Drew is so excited that he's finishing preschool. He's going to miss Miss Judi because she was a great teacher. He has developed a strong love of reading. He tolerates coloring and writing. But if I ask him to take a note for me he gets excited. He has his graduation ceremony on Wednesday morning so we'll get some fun pictures of that.
Natalie bridged from Daisy Scouts to Brownies this afternoon. She is very excited to move up. She's also getting ready for her birthday party. We're doing a 1970's theme so it should be fun. I was really stumped as to what we should do this year. She wanted to invited 26 (!!!) people. I had to put the kibosh on that. We've pared the list down to 20, but since it's going to be in June this time I'm hoping that we'll be closer to 10-12 people. Trying to come up with the wording for the invitation was fun. I googled a bunch of 70's information, and I was laughing so hard. The slang was Hilarious! She is also getting ready for her dance recital in a few weeks. She's got 3 costumes, and loves them all.
Trevor just earned his Webelos badge, his religious knot and his Arrow of Light award last week. Only a few people have earned all of those things so we were very proud of him for doing so much work. He's already started earning Merit Badges for Boy Scouts. He also reached his A.R. goal for this last quarter of school so he gets to participate in a party tomorrow in class.
Justin had one last project due for school that he finished tonight. It was his class called the History of Rock and Roll. I would have been all over that at his age. He had to make a concert poster for the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Lucky! Another thing I like is the school lets the kids choose between being in band and P.E. for the whole year (3 and 2 days respectively) or they can take drama, dance, P.E. and choir for one quarter each. Justin had absolutely no interest in being in band so he took the second option. Last week they had a dance performance at the local high school. He's also getting ready for the week long encampment in a few weeks.
Kent's been busy with work. He found computer discs that are basically classes for Cisco training so he's been working with those nightly. I hardly see him at night so I guess it's good that he has these so he can at least be in the house and not having to travel for those classes. He went on the guys' trip again a few weeks ago. He enjoyed that. You can find those pictures on his Facebook page if you're interested. He's also been taking care of me and the family when I was taking it easy this weekend.
As for me I've been walking nearly every night in my effort to lose weight. I used to walk with Natalie, Justin or Trevor, but it got to be too late for them to go on school nights so Kent went with me. He didn't like leaving for an hour of walking because he needs to finish the classes for work. One of my friends expressed interest so we've been walking several nights. It works out well because Kent gets at least one hour of study time, and the younger kids are in bed. I get socialization and exercise. This week I'm busy working on teacher gifts, reorganizing my house and laundry. It really piled up over the weekend!

They do love each other!

Trevor started things off on Saturday when Kent took the 3 youngest kids swimming at our neighbor's house. The kids threw swim toys to the bottom of the pool and Trevor was in charge of retrieving them. After he was done his ears were hurting so he took it easy for the rest of the day. On Sunday night he was complaining about his ears and a headache so we told him to go to bed. On Monday he was feeling worse so he stayed home from school. He had a terrible headache, with sensitivity to light and sound. His whole body hurt and he started running a low grade fever. I tried to keep him hydrated and medicated. By the late afternoon his headache was so bad that I got really worried and was able to get a doctor's appointment. He was tested for strep and mono, which were both negative. The doctor determined that he's got some sort of virus. He's still been home every day, though so it still hasn't run its course. Justin started feeling lousy on Monday night. He's got the same symptoms as Trevor, but with a bad stomachache also.
So the reason I tell you all that is so you know how bad they were both feeling. Trevor has been sleeping a lot, and Justin has been trying to function, but still sleeps a lot. Anyway, last night Trevor went to bed shortly after 7. We finished getting everyone else ready for bed, said prayers, and Drew came back down with his special blanket. His former primary teacher got some soft fleece with pictures of Jesus on it. She cut them about the length and double the width of a scarf and tied it all around the edges. She called it the Comforter to help them remember the Holy Ghost. When Drew brought it down he said, "Mom, Sister Fuller gave this to me. She said that whenever I feel bad to put this around me and remember that Heavenly Father and Jesus love me and will help me feel better. Can I put this on Trevor so he can feel better?" Of course we said yes. He put it on Trevor's sleeping form and when Trevor woke up in the middle of the night wondering how it got there I told him what Drew did for him. How sweet is that?!