Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Best and Worst

Seeger's worst - tv satellite outage
Nick's worst - had to clean bathrooms
Mike's worst - not being able to go back to sleep this morning
Natalie's worst - didn't run this morning
Seeger's best - didn't have as many chores as usual
Nick's best - watching the Dark Knight Rises
Mike's best - a night at home with the family and good dinner
Natalie's best - accomplished a lot at work today

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Crazy Is My Middle Name

Nicklas has started blogging again. The typos will make you cringe but if you still want to check it, click on over.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Sixth Grade Polish Olympics

My last post mentioned that Nicklas hosted an end-of-elementary school class party at our home in May. The group in his class have been together for the past 3 years. The students come from all around the county to participate in an accelerated learning/gifted and talented program. It's a tight-knit group but now that they have finished elementary school, they'll be divided up between three different middle schools. I'm bummed that Nicklas won't be in the same school as some of his friends. He is too and so for the past few months, he's talked about hosting a party for everyone - sort of like one last hurrah for the class.

He decided the party should be a Polish Olympics (consisting of fun and silly games and contests). Once his guests arrived, they were asked to make a flag to represent themselves in the Olympics. The first event was the paper airplane contest.






We also did a P.I.G. game, rock/paper/scissors tournament, and water balloon contest.



Next was a cornhole tournament and a contest to see how long people would stand on one foot. Woo boy, did that one take a while. I underestimated how long people would last. 






Here our our final two contestants who stood on one foot for over 30 minutes. The other participants got a bit antsy (i.e. wild and crazy) while waiting for it to finish.

After that, they divided in to teams and completed a trivia sheet.

The final event was a relay that consisted of a few running legs, shooting a basketball through the hoop, unrolling a roll of toilet paper, rolling dices, and completing a puzzle. Both teams led at different points of the relay and it was a very close finish.







Here are some photos of the flags that everyone made.


And the results of the 2013 Polish Olympics.

After awards were made, the group roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. It was a great party and everyone said they had fun. This was reinforced when parents came to retrieve their children and were told to come back later. Success!!

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The Month of May Recap

May was a great month; it was the end of the yucky, crazy, busy semester of work I had and I just felt like I had more time to enjoy life. This is reinforced when I go back and see all the photos I took in May versus January, February, March, and April.

The month of May was all about Nicklas. It was his last month of elementary school; he graduated from 6th grade; he started baseball; and he hosted a party for his friends. At the beginning of the month, we attended his class play, Sparkle White and Seven Dwarfelles. Nicklas played one of the Dwarfelles and he was the best and funniest actor in the group. (I'm not making that up; everyone said so!) Seeger took these photos while I filmed so they aren't the best. Nicklas is in the blue shirt and gray pants and pointy hat.





Here's a video of the entire play. (It's 6 minutes long.)


In May, Nicklas had his braces put on. This is the before photo while waiting for his appointment.


He also had his end of 6th grade dance/party. All his classmates looked so nice dressed up and smiling. Isn't he handsome?

It was his first dance and I had warned him that sometimes boys his age get embarrassed and don't want to get out on the dance floor. Nicklas loves to dance at weddings and he's good at it so I didn't want him to spend the whole dance watching the girls and not participating. I told him that if no one started dancing at first, he should go out and get things started and eventually others would join him. He said that's exactly what happened. No boys danced to the first two songs and then he and his friend started dancing and eventually other boys came out and danced with them. By the end of the evening, everyone was dancing. I was so proud of him putting himself out there! After the dance, I took him to Orange Leaf. (He took off his shirt and hat because both were a sweaty mess.) He was so happy and content; not common emotions for a 12 year old. I'm so glad the dance was a success!


In May we went morel mushroom hunting in our woods. (We have a few acres.) Our property is very oddly shaped and we are never sure where our property line is. This time we found a corner as marked by the red pole. We were all surprised with how far away it is from our house.

We didn't find any mushrooms but it was a beautiful day and we visited the waterfall. 

Baseball games started for Nicklas. The Polack is helping with the team and we've enjoyed our evenings at the ballpark.

We had a mouse build a nest - three times - in our grill. It's been a challenge getting rid of the mouse family and we didn't enjoy the snake that kept showing up to eat the baby mice. Luckily, them seem to have all vacated the deck area. I hope so, anyway.



Here's a shot of me, just before I had my hair cut.

Seeger had a stye on his eye. (Sorry for the gross photo!)

Seeger's class had a musical informance. It was fun to learn what his music teacher/class has been up to. This close up isn't great but it does show his friend Layla in the background. Apparently Layla is a werewolf.

During the informance, the class performed a play and Seeger was the lightening. 


The kids school had their Learning Festival in May. We helped out again this year by running the Fitness Trail/Obstacle Course. Some of the Strings kids performed at the Learning Festival.

And speaking of Strings, Nicklas had his Spring Strings Spectacular performance.

He also had his 6th grade graduation. The three sixth grade classes were presented with promotion certificates and Nicklas received two awards for participation in Strings and K-Kids Club.





The graduation also had their baby photos on display. Nick's is in the center, with the green ball.

Two family photos from the graduation. My kids will no longer attend the same school until Nicklas is a high school senior and Seeger is a freshman.


Here is Seeger with his friend Blake at a baseball game.

And our last shot of Nicklas when I picked him up on the last day of school - he's no longer an elementary school student. (I told you the month of May was all about Nicklas!)

I'll do a separate post about the class party he hosted. It was a fun afternoon.