Celebrations
May is a big month for celebrations in our house, especially for me. Mother's Day, my birthday, and our anniversary all happen in a 3 week timespan. It would be nice to spread them out a bit. Haha! For Mother's Day, I told everyone that all I wanted was a clean house, a nap, and not to have to make any meals for the day. That was asking quite a lot, but Jonathon and the kids delivered! They did a great job, and it was better than any store bought gift I could have asked for. I also wanted to take pictures with each of the boys. They weren't thrilled with the idea at first, but we got some good ones.
My birthday was awesome too! Jonathon made me chicken cordon bleu, roasted asparagus, and cheesecake. It was delicious. They gave me tickets to take our family to The Music Man at Hale Center Theatre. Technically, it was a gift for all three of "my" holidays in May because it was a bit expensive. Lately, I have been much more into making memories than getting more stuff, so it was the perfect gift. Jonathon did splurge a little bit and got me a new large 28" monitor that I can hook my laptop to. It works so much better for scrapbooking and blogging, and I am getting spoiled with the new setup.
Our 14th anniversary occurred while we were in Idaho for Memorial Day, so we didn't do a whole lot on the actual day. When we got home, we went to see the play Anne of Green Gables performed at BYU. It was cute and charming, and we had a great time.
Preschool Graduation
Don't let the cute picture fool you. This little graduate was naughty during his preschool graduation ceremony. Gah! He is so different from the other boys, and I have a hard time knowing how to help him be good in social settings. He isn't shy like the other boys were, so he spent graduation talking to the boy next to him, running away from a bee, and causing one disruption after the next. They were all normal things for little kids to do, but I was embarrassed by his behavior, and couldn't get him to sit calmly and pay attention. Kindergarten will be interesting to say the least! He is so friendly and easy to love though, so I don't want to stamp that out of him, but we do need to work on appropriate behavior during specific times.
The graduation itself was really cute. His teacher, Mrs. Taylor, is such a wonderful lady. She is energetic, sweet, and super organized. Hyrum loved her so much! During graduation, they sang songs, quoted poems, and played musical instruments. Each child also got to be spotlighted and show off their favorite things from the year. The last thing that Hyrum wanted to show was a picture of what he wanted to be when he grows up. When Mrs. Taylor asked me to guess what he said, I was sad to say that I had absolutely no idea. She then showed the picture he drew of Link from Legend of Zelda. Yep, that's right! Hyrum wants to be Link when he grows up. Ha! I should have known. To finish off the eventful, and somewhat humorous spotlight, Mrs. Taylor gave Hyrum his certificate of completion. As soon as he received it, he proceeded to do a perfect windmill dab in front of everyone. I was in shock, and then burst out laughing with everyone else. What else can you do? That boy is going to be the death of me, but in all honesty, he adds so much life to our family.Christian's Dance
Christian's class has been working with a dance teacher (Chris Roberts) all year. Every Friday he would come in and teach them some new things. This has been an interesting experience for Christian, as he is not very physically inclined and not comfortable with many "right-brained" activities. For the last two months of the school year, they worked with a choreographer from BYU (Heather Francis) to develop a dance that they performed for all the parents.
If truth be told, I wasn't expecting a whole lot from a class of 6th graders who only practiced for an hour a week. In fact, I hadn't really heard anything about what they were doing, except that Christian needed to bring a baseball cap. When they finally performed for us, I was blown away! The dancing might not have been technically perfect because the kids were just learning, but they really did an amazing job. They memorized a long dance, created much of their own choreography, and brought everything together into one cohesive whole.The overall theme of the dance was about books, which was so appropriate for all of those CAS kids who are voracious readers. The dance opened in a library and each child held a book. After they danced a bit with the books, they broke off into different groups that performed a smaller dance based around specific book themes. Christian's group did a baseball dance. They had hats and bats, and pretended to slide into bases. It was very cute, and I was so proud of him for doing something so far out of his comfort zone. Some of the other smaller dances within the main one were a cowboy dance, a pirate dance, a Chinese fan dance, and a jungle dance (which everyone did). Throughout the small group dances, Christian's teacher (portraying the librarian) would walk across the floor shushing the kids and making sure they were behaving in the library. It was a cute way to help all of the different dances flow together and fit the theme. The whole dance lasted about 12-15 minutes. The kids really put a lot of effort into it. I thought it turned out so wonderful!
Mrs. Raymond's 6th Grade CAS class
Student of the Year
The last day of school was insanely busy. It was only a half day of school, but both of the kids had big activities that we were supposed to be at, and we needed to leave for Idaho for my mom's surprise party as quickly as we could (more about that in a separate post). We tried to squeeze everything in the best we could because it was all important.
A couple weeks before school ended, we got an email from Andrew's teacher telling us that Andrew had been chosen as Student of the Year for 3rd grade. What a huge honor! We were invited to attend a special assembly where he was going to be given the award. We were asked to keep it a secret from Andrew. This complicated things a bit because we were originally just going to skip the last day of school and head straight to Idaho. Christian had decided that he would skip his graduation so that we could go to Idaho early. Now that we had two big events that day, there was no way that we could skip it. We tried to cover up the secret saying that we decided that Christian needed to stay for his graduation, which was partially true.That morning, we dropped Andrew and Christian off for school, hurried and packed the car, then ran back to Andrew's school for the assembly. It took forever to get to Andrew's part of the program. After 45 minutes, I was worried that we would miss Christian's graduation. Jonathon decided to take the car and go to Christian's graduation while I stayed for Andrew's. Finally, Andrew was presented with his special award. He was completely surprised! He had no idea! As he walked up to the front, all the kids in his class were giving him high-fives and cheering for him. It was adorable. They called parents up as well to shake hands with the principal and get pictures taken. It was a huge honor, and I am so proud of Andrew and the amazing, smart, kind boy he is. His teachers gushed about what a model pupil he is, and it was music to a mother's ears. He received a certificate and will have his name engraved on the school plaque. What a cool award!
6th Grade Graduation
After all the craziness of the morning, we checked Christian out of school early, went back to Andrew's school to check him out, and then headed to Idaho so that we could make it in time for mom's party. It was a whirlwind last day of school, but such a great way to end the year and jump into an awesome summer!
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