Only 2 Months Behind...

I'm once again slacking greatly on the blog.  I had a nice little bout of motivation back in March and April and then things just took over life again...

May was really busy as the kids finished up their last weeks of school and soccer was winding down with several tournaments that took over our weekends!

Ella and I took a mini midweek road trip up to Cleveland with Jennifer and Abby to see John Green and a couple of the stars from the book turned movie The Fault in Our Stars.  The place was PACKED with screaming girls.  It was crazy!!

The girls totally loved it and Jennifer and I...lived through it.  I enjoyed the book actually - I started reading it while we were sitting at the mall waiting for the author and actors to come out.  The movie was...meh...
Ella and I went to see it opening weekend.

She made her own TFIOS tee shirt too. 

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This year the kids' school got a new gym teacher after our original gym teacher retired.  We LOVED our old teacher so we were pretty skeptical about a new person.  But, he's been FABULOUS!  He has organized so many fun fun FUN things for the kids, including the Fall Warrior Dash that we participated in.
This year field day was a Full day of fun for the kids (years before they split it up and it was just 1/2 a day).
There were so many activities and the kids and parents all had a blast.

(so all the above was added on Monday...here we are on Thursday and still trying to finish this!)

Back to Field Day!
Mr D had a fire hose thing that the kids LOVED!!

 Silas and Ben below...

 Silas on the water slide

Ella and Abby being goobers! :)

So, with that, I got 1/2 way through May...still the last of school to go.

BUT we leave for the beach soon, so that will probably interrupt any more posts about May for now!

Last Days of School

June 4th was the last day of school (this year went SO fast!) and the weeks before that were bizz-y wrapping up all the school events.

Ella's art was in the school art show.  She had a Picasso...

 And a self-portrait in clay

Ella and Silas both got to give a hand in making ice sculptures

There was Field Day, which I got to volunteer at.  What a blast for all the kids!!

 (picture taken by Si's mom's friend, Lori - (Studio Williams)

I was stationed at the "devil sticks" - they were fun - but hard!!

We had a wonderful Kindergarten picnic at the school with Si's class.
 We took a delicious picnic dinner of fried chicken, cole slaw, cheese/olive/pepperoni kabobs,
lemonade and watermelon.  It was a perfect picnic (except no wine! :)

Si's pals - Ben and Joey.

The last day of school...last day as a kindergartener and 3rd grader!!
I wasn't able to get Mason before he left the house :(

Walking Siley to his classroom  :'(

 And a last picture with one of the sweetest kindergarten teachers ever.
What a fantastic year she made for Silas and her class!!

He just exploded with learning this year. This was her comment on his report card:
I am so proud of Silas and all that he has learned this year.  
In his quiet way he contributes
great things to our class. He has become such a proficient reader and is ready for almost any beginner reader you can find at the library!  He is also such a great math thinker. It is amazing to watch and listen to his thinking as he solves a problem.  He loves numbers!!  Silas is so ready for first grade!  He is going to be awesome!  Thanks for sharing him with me this year...what a treasure!!

I'm so proud of him in his first year of school.  They all 3 had a great year - we've got a little bit of time and summer fun to prepare for 1st, 4th and SENIOR year!!!

Last Couple Weeks

The last few weeks have been extremely busy and I've had no time or energy to blog.  Just a couple highlights.

Ella and her class put on a great play at school.  It was 3 skits with parodies of Fairy Tales.  The kids also all wrote their own fairy tales as well and made them into books. Ella's was called The Princess and the Spaghetti. They really did a fantastic job!!



While we were at the school for Ella's play, we saw some of Si's artwork on the wall in the hallway.
This was a person he created on the computer.


And this was a snowman that he made. I love kid art!!




Last weekend, Justin and I went on a little road trip to Cleveland to go to a surprise party for Justin's longtime friend, Johnny C.  We had a fantastic time and it was great to see him and his wife (Reggie) and catch up. 

Reggie went all out and the party theme was Vegas style, with games and dealers!!

Justin and Johnny stayed up until 6:30am gabbing away.  I luckily, found a nice comfy couch to lay on for a few hours.  It's great to be able to celebrate special occasions with friends that we don't see often enough.


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100th Day of School

Silas and his class celebrated the 100th day of school on Friday, complete with Elton John glasses and hat.




It's a good look for him :)

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This, That and the Other

To continue with my updates from earlier in the week...

Last weekend I met up with some high school pals.  As I was getting ready to go, Ella asked me where I was going.
"I'm going to go hang out with some high school girls."
To which Ella exclaims  "oh, oh, I want to go too! I want to hang out with high school girls!"
I had to grudgingly admit - "honey, it's 40 year old high school girls...not girls in high school now."
"oh, never mind then" she said all bummed out.
Do you remember being young enough that you thought 40 was pretty much synonymous with the early bird special and hip fractures? 

What was fun about this group is that (with the exception of Sherry), I didn't hang out with these girls in school.  Our paths crossed in various activities and because of other friends but we wouldn't have just called each other up or gone to the mall together.  With the advent of Facebook, we all connected on there and keep in touch.  Rhea (bottom left), who I cheered with in middle school and some of high school, has had a lot of health issues since we graduated and she wanted to get together and see us - so here we are!  We had so much fun and it was so funny to get all our different perspectives on high school and who remembered what. I'd never want to go back to high school but the memories are fun :)

~

Last week, I attended Famous American Night in Ella's classroom.  All of the 2nd graders had written a report and designed a slide show (on a Mac none-the-less) and we got to view all of the slide shows, plus a few skits that involved the kids reading from scripts.  They all did a wonderful job.  God love these teachers, I don't see how they do it. Kids + other kids = chaos!!
Ella's famous person was Amelia Earhart and as she was doing her research, there was a lot of new information about her possibly having been found after all these years. Pretty cool.

~

We've had some funky weather here this winter.  Snow, rain, ice out the ying-yang, and then hail and terrible thunderstorms and tornado watches (in February!) last Sunday. They woke Justin and me up many times throughout the night - our bedroom has a skylight and it's like the Flashdance strobe light scene in there when the lightening gets bad.  Silas was the first to come in our room, about 5 minutes after we put him to bed. Ella came in around 2:30am. Zoe came upstairs at some point and peed in the floor, she was so scared. Even Cleo came  up and slept with us. I thought that Mason was being brave but when I asked him the next morning...he hadn't heard a thing all night. He slept right through the storms.

 ~

I plan to post an end of Feb YOSP update this weekend, but one related goal is my running. I can't remember ever feeling this happy and excited about physical activity. I've been one to make myself exercise but I've never been this excited about strapping on running shoes and my iPod and just go. It's been 2 months and 2 days and I feel SO much healthier and still in shock that I actually can run. I started logging my runs soon after I started and put a widget at the bottom of the blog - if you notice me slacking, call me on it :) So far, last week is the only week that I missed some running days. I was sick and only got 2 days in what should have been a 4 day running week.

Part of me wishes I had started running a long time ago but most of me is really just happy to have something new to get me motivated right now.  It's fun to start something new - especially something new that is good for you too. 

Last Day of School

Hard to believe, but another school year is over.  Silas finished up last Friday, Mason took his last exam yesterday and Ella's last day was today.  What a great year they all had!!  

One early morning event that we went to in Ella's class was a book signing.  Each kid chose a topic, researched, drew pictures and wrote the text and then it was bound into a book.  The parents then got to visit the classroom, see all the books and the "author" signed the book for us.

This is some art that Silas did in school, then the PTO had a company take the art and do magnets, mugs, t-shirts, etc.  It was cool.  Those they had to shrink the art (thus the hand print) for the magnets and Silas could not understand why his hand was so small!

Unlike Mason and Silas, Ella actually gets to celebrate her birthday during school. We took snacks and the class sang Happy Birthday.

They sang the "cha, cha, cha" version.  Mrs. C was fabulous this year.  Ella absolutely loved her and today as she was leaving the room, gave her a huge big hug. Mrs. C asked Ella to email her over the summer.  Hope she knows what she is in for!

Silas' field day at school was postponed twice, so it ended up being on the last day of school. I volunteered and was stationed at the "cow milking" area.  They must have known I was a home-grown Hilliard gal.  The kids loved it, though Si doesn't much look like he's enjoying it.

I love this picture - Si's favorite activity was the wet ball throwing.  When his teacher, Mrs. P, was out on maternity leave, Mrs. H (here in orange) was the sub for 8 weeks.  She came back to visit the class on field day and Silas welcomed her back by nailing her with a soaker ball. Look closely in the upper right corner of the picture and you can see the ball that bounced off of her.

Today was the "clap out" at the elementary for the 5th graders.  We have a few friends whose kids are moving on up to the 6th grade building. It's SO emotional and I was glad today that my kids are all going to be in the same buildings next year.  I'll still have a high schooler, an elementary student and a preschooler.  They just all move up a notch.  I'm happy for some even keeledness (not really a word, I'm betting) - it's been a rough week/month/2010.  I'm looking forward to not necessarily a stress-free summer, but definitely spending a lot of time with the kids, family and friends.
And I've got my list of Fun Stuff to do!