Last Day of School!

Today was the last day of school....whew, we made it!  I saw this idea of taking your kids photo in the same outfit as their first day of school so you can see the difference a year makes.  Pretty cool idea! Here is Sadi's first day of school....

And her last....quite a difference.  I can really see the difference in her face, and this dress was pushing the limits of possibly too short so she has definitely grown taller.

Chase on the first day of school...he was mad that the sun was in his eyes.

Today when I took his photo he whined that he wanted to stand in the sun!  What a difference a year makes.  Chase didn't grow to much taller, but maybe a bit wider...time to do a little running!

I always try to come up with a thoughtful gift for my kids teacher's and this year I found the cutest little critter book that said it all.  A cute story with lots of mishaps by little critter and in the end he makes his teacher a portrait, which I had each of my kids do for their teacher's.  The were excited to give these to the best teacher ever!

Today was also the awards day assembly.  Chase won Honor roll again for the 4th quarter...woo hoo, straight A's!  He also got a certificate for winning the second grade spelling B.

BUT, the biggest news was about to come, each student who made at least a 2 point progress on their M.A.P. testing got their name in a drawing for an iPod touch.  Guess who won?!!

The luckiest (hard working too) kid I know!  He was beyond thrilled!!  Summer is starting off great! 

*Oh, and it's nicer and newer than all of ours, even has the 10 mega pixel camera with flash!  So get ready for your i-pad's/pod's to be blown up with face time calls from Chase!

Another Grad...

Do you remember way last fall
When I was oh so very small?
Now look at me! I’m grown up here!
And my, I've learned a lot this year!
In fact, you think I'm really great!
That's why I get to graduate!

Thursday was Sadi's Graduation...sniff, sniff.  My baby is growing up.  She has learned SO much in this one year with full day Kindergarten, I cannot tell you the difference I've seen.  The Kindergarten classes put on what was one of the best productions I have ever seen.  They put Sadi right in front since she was the best singer (imagine those home videos you see of kids that yell so loud it makes you laugh...that was my kid, and to be honest we were all shocked).

 We could not be more proud of our little Grad!

Sadi with Mrs. Bergstrom....whom we LOVE to pieces!  We honestly could not say enough things about her to even begin to tell you what an amazing teacher she is.  She really has spoiled us for any teacher in the future.

Sadi and one of her "Besties" Mallory.  She really made some great friends this year! 

After Graduation it was time to say our last goodbyes and take down all those special memories that had lined the hallway including this self portrait on Graduation day.  I love this.

 Sadi also won the "sweet tart" award" for being a sweet heart to all.

It was a fun filled day, and later it was time to have a little celebration.  We had a milk and cookie party...perfect for our little sweet tooth!

Graduation Weekend!

This weekend was Matt's graduation from UNR.  We were lucky to have quite a few family members make the long trip here to celebrate.  We all got together the night before in Reno to hang out and stay the night in a hotel. 

We hit the UNR swag shop to see if we could find any cool gear.  Kelsey found the perfect wolf pack hat, but we decided it might be a bit much for graduation day.

Graduation day was early...it started at 8 a.m. so we had a very early morning since Matt had to be there even earlier to check in.

While he waited in line, we saved seats.  It was a bit chilly that early in the morning and I was nervous the kids would be too cold, but it quickly warmed up and became a beautiful day.  Poor Grandma Denning had a broken foot but was such a trooper with all the walking she had to do.  Her and Kelsey saving some seats....

The row of Grandparents...

Uncle David and Chase and Sadi...

The Pedro family (Matt's Sister)...

The ceremony was perfect.  We all cheered really loud for him, and once his name was read Sadi said "Yeah! Now we can go home!"  It was so much more special having so many of his family members there to celebrate this accomplishment with him.   His Grandparents Dick and Carolyn,

His Nana Goodale,

His parents who traveled two days to make it to his Graduation,

and his brother David.  Somehow I missed a photo with his sister and her family (I think I was running Sadi to the restroom).

We are all so proud of him and all the hard work he put into making it to this day. It was also nice for Kyle and Kelsey to see what they have to look forward in just one more year...eek!

I am happy we made it, and we can finally take a break from school...at least for a while.  After 4 years of school  I think we've all missed having Daddy at home.

As we were leaving they had all of these different signs on the lampposts throughout campus.  I saw this one and thought this one was quite appropriate for the occasion.

We all headed back home for a party at our house.  I was too busy I guess that I really didn't get any photos besides the cake, I guess that means it was a good party?

Glad this day finally came, and look forward to where it may take us!  Congratulations Baby!

Mother's Day Love

I had a wonderful Mother's Day which started VERY early in the morning with breakfast in bed and then each of the kids had made me something special.  Kelsey made me some coconut lime foot scrub which smells scrumptious.  Chase made me a handmade vase filled with flowers.  He made sure to tell me for the last 3 weeks they were working on a special project in art :)  Sadi's teacher once again surprised me with all that she did with the kids.  They made silhouette's, Mom's M&M's, a flower basket filled with a flower bookmark made with their fingerprints, and the cutest little poem, a flower garden stake they made, and a fingerprint key chain. 

Besides all the lovely gifts and cards I received Sadi made sure to make a few "extra" cards for me.  Most of these arrived in the morning with my breakfast, but others fluttered in throughout the day. 

I love each and every one of my priceless gifts, and I am so grateful that I am lucky enough to be called Mommy 3 times over.

Our Zoo's better than your Zoo...yeah no it's not.

This week Sadi's class got to go on yet another field trip...to the Zoo!  Yes, Nevada has a Zoo...anyway that's what they call it.  Before we left the school on the bus for the 1.5 hr. bus ride to the zoo they had called to say they were closed because of all the rain...it was raining buckets.  They still allowed us to come though.  This was my cute group who had to do research for their animal report while at the zoo.  Our animal was the sloth.

Ordinarily the Sloth is not my favorite animal to see at the Zoo, but when there is so few animals to see, you see things you might ordinarily miss.  Actually this is the first time I have seen a sloth awake, he was moving around in the tree branch (although he was hard to see because of the rainy window).  We did find an interesting fact that I did not know:  The Sloth only comes down once a week to poop!

Because of all the rain that morning all the birds and monkeys(the few they had) were taken indoors so we weren't able to see them.  We did get to see a baboon...poor guy looked so sad.

We also saw deer, a camel, goats, rabbit (yes that is an actual exhibit there), a tortoise, peacock, zebra, lion, white tiger, and a LIGER!  That's right, a liger.

You literally could walk through the entire "ZOO" in 15 minutes if you walk slowly, which was good since it was a 1.5 hour bus ride to get there.  Sadi's teacher made each of the kids animal bingo cards which kept them excited the whole time.

We ate a lightning quick lunch there and then headed back to school.  Although our zoo is not what I would call up to par by any means, it was still a fun day for everyone.

2-4-6-8 Who do we appreciate?!

This week is teacher appreciation week at our school and we wanted to show them a little love.  Early Monday morning we headed out to decorate the teacher's doors.  Chase's second grade teacher loved her door.

Sadi's teacher loves owls, and has owls everywhere in her room so this was an easy one to come up with (I don't claim to be a great owl maker, but it turned out OK).

We had taken a trip to the donut shop in town and filled some gable boxes with some hot donuts with a cute saying attached for all of of our teachers.

I spend so much time in Sadi's class that I worked on a little something extra for her teacher.  I had all of the kids secretly sign this mat and framed this cute saying for her:"What I like most about my classroom is whom I share it with".   This was a huge hit, and I highly recommend this for any teacher.

Once the teacher's were done, we delivered to a few other teachers that have really had a hand in my kids everyday routine this year.  First stop...the Librarian.  She got a little chocolate with a note:  "Thank you for giving us just what we need, a love for books and a learning to read"

Second stop...the school nurse (whom I'm pretty sure Chase has depleted her entire stock of band-aids himself).  We filled a little bucket with lollipops and attached a note:  "Thank you for making our boo- boo's feel better".

 And our final stop was to our P.E. teacher.  We had a sport drink and energy bar tied up with a note:  "Thank you Mrs. Doll for making P.E. a ball".

We have some great teacher's and wanted them to know how much they are appreciated every day of the week.