Final Day of School/End of the Year Picnic

Jake and Brooke's last day of school was May 31st. Technically Jake's last day really was June 1st but that day we just all met at a park for an end of the year picnic so it hardly counts. Anyways here are some pictures from their last day of school!!!!

All the girls in Jake's class

Brooke and Ms. Linda

Brooke and Ms. Barb

As I mentioned above Jake's "last day of school" was actually a picnic at the tire park. All the kids had *sooooo* much fun. As part of the day the kids had a "promotion" ceremony where they got certificates for completing kindergarden plus a binder of some of their work from over the course of the year. In addition the kids put on a very special performance for all us that included some of their favorite songs from this past year.

Jake and Brooks

Tracy and Jake

Olivia and Jake

Brooke and Sadie

Also since Ms. Weatherholtz's birthday (the teacher) is over the summer they did a mini-party for her. They had each kid decorate a balloon and then give it to her with a flower! It was such a cute idea and it worked out really well.

The photo above is of Tracy presenting the teachers with their own monogrammed totes. In addition they wrote the names of all the students on the back of the one for Ms. Weatherholtz since this was her first year teaching her own class! When it came time to present the promotion certificates Ms. Schratz (the principal) stopped by to help. It really was such a special day for the kids and Jake is still talking about how much fun it was.

Mrs Schratz congratulating Jake on a job well done.

Final Girl's Days

So as May came and went Brooke and I got to enjoy some of our final Girls Days Out together. It was such a special time that we were able to share this past year and even though she's only 4 and probably won't remember any of it in the future I know we made a lot of memories that will stick with me forever.

Of course she had to continue stealing my camera to show me life from her perspective....

One of my favorite aspects of our girl time together is that Brooke is not a picky eater at all so we got to go to some of my favorite restuarants including P.F. Changs which is now one of her favorites.....

Enjoying her Red Velvet Cake dessert

Blue Ridge Parkway, Memorial Day Weekend

For Memorial Day we went and visited Kris's parents like normal. We went out to dinner with Kourtney and Patrick Saturday night (unfortunately Kris's Dad was sick) and Kris got to have a swordfish filet in fact the last one they had because it was the special for the night. What made this hysterical was that right before the waiter came over Kris had been talking about how he hasn't had a good Swordfish Filet in a long time and about how you don't seem them on the menu that much. Then the waiter came over, listed the specials and Kris practically spit his water trying to get the words "I want the special" out of his mouth! Other than that we had a pretty chill weekend. Lots of relaxing, reading and sun time were involved. On the way home we hit some traffic (surprise) so we decided to cut over to the Blue Ridge Parkway since at least traffic probably wouldn't be crawling there. It was my first time on Blue Ridge and while I'd probably love driving it, experiencing it as a passenger wasn't the best time ever. I never actually got car sick but I definitely felt like I was going to! Despite that I still managed to snap some pictures of the scenery.

Yep, a Christmas tree farm!

On the way down...

Rosa Parks Spring Concert 2012

The week before Memorial Day I had the week off work as the kids were in Disney for the week!!! During that time Kris had some of his spring concerts and I got to come along and see the one at Rosa Parks. His students did really well. He has some incredibly talented kids there and it was so cool to see them display all their hard work. While Kris and I are both super excited about next year it will also be hard for both of us to leave the kids we have been working with for the last few years. Hopefully we will always be able to stay in touch with at least some of them :)

Kris played cello with his beginning orchestra....I can proudly say he was the best player in that orchestra!

This year he started a jazz ensemble and opened it up to any instrument. He had an overwhelming amount of violins show up to rehearsals. To keep it a little different he gave the kids a chance to improvise in the concert. They did an incredible job. I know at that age I certainly couldn't have improvised anywhere near that well and I certainly wouldn't have done it in front of a large group of people! He also brought in a saxophonist to solo with the group. There was also a drummer to provide the rhythm section (I didn't get any good pictures of the drummer) and one of the other music teachers played bass to round out the instrumentation.

One of the students that improvised

Overall Kris was very proud of all his groups and it was a wonderful way to cap off another successful year!

Mother's Day 2012

This Mother's day weekend I had a Saturday morning rehearsal so we didn't get to leave for Pittsburgh until around noon. When we got in on Saturday we had a yummy dinner. I got to have my favorite perigori's..mmmm sooo good! The next day we had our usual Mother's Day spread.  For dinner we did a "make your own kabob" dinner. We did a have slight grill issue as my Dad was running out of propane but we adjusted our cooking times and it worked....that is....until dessert. The obvious choice for dinner were S'mores however by that point we had obviously used up every drop of propane because we didn't even have enough heat left to roast a marshmallow! Also add to that it was cold and raining and the whole situation was pretty funny. 

For Mother's Day Kris and I got my mom some suntan lotion (silly I know but she was having a super hard time finding spf 2 in the stores) plus tickets to a bike tour of the monuments in D.C. I'm sure my Dad got her some awesome stuff and sadly a month later I can't remember what! We enjoyed the visit and we *really* look forward to next year when we have a 1 hour drive home instead of a 4-5 hour drive home :)

SAS Festival

The Friday before Mother's Day Jake and Brooke's school had a family "renaissance" festival. I have to admit I have no idea why they called it a renaissance festival since there was nothing renaissance about it. Anyways they had a moon bounce, games, a dunk tank, art stations, temporary tatoos and a D.J. The kids had an absolute blast with all their friends.

Yes Jake got chains on his arm

and a scar with blood dripping off

Brooke has been spoiled by the amazing tattoo people at the mall last summer and so now whenever she asks for a princess she assumes her whole face will be done up like a princess. God bless the girl working this day who did manage to paint a princess on Brooke's cheek. While it wasn't exactly what she wanted Brooke was still happy afterwards.

Much better than what I could have done

Backtracking a bit....before we went to the festival we all gathered in Jake's classroom for a special Mother's Day presentation. Sadly Tracy couldn't be there so I had to be the stand in (which works since most of the kids think I'm Jake's Mom and that Tracy is his "other mom"). It was so cute and special, I felt so lucky that I got to be there :)

Jake's classroom

We finished out the day with some more good old fashioned festival fun!

Brooke laughing it up in the moon bounce with Chase

Brooke and Caroline at the hula hoop contest