The Last Days of School

This was a crazy fun week for Ella! After the weekend fun of visiting with Bubba and Grand Pat, she had a school field trip on Tuesday afternoon. I volunteered to chaperone this one because Lily could come too. We visited Staring Lake Park. The kids had fun with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, played with a parachute and chased Rocket Balloons. We had a snack and then enjoyed the rest of the time playing in the park. Even though this park is only about 10 minutes from our house, we had never been there making it that much more fun for Ella and Lily. I think Ella's favorite part was riding the school bus though! She always gets so excited when she gets to do that! (Lily and I had to follow in the car because of liability reasons or something, Lily couldn't ride the bus because she wasn't a student at Partners Preschool.)


Top: The parachute game and Ella chasing Rocket Balloons.
Middle: Lily enjoying her spot in the grass and Ella, Rachel and Ellie riding the crank toy at the park (you can sit on this platform and someone else turns a crank to move you back and forth). Bottom: Can you spot Ella on the school bus? :-)

Wednesday we had our sitter, Olga back after a month long hiatus. She visited her family and friends in the Ukraine for a few weeks. And she brought back some Ukrainian chocolate for all of us! I thought that was so sweet of her to think of us on her trip! The kids were so excited to see her and play with her again. Next week is her last week with us unfortunately, at least on a regular basis. Our schedule is changing for the summer so we don't really need her. I hate to lose her though, she's so great with the kids!

Then today! Ella had her first little concert at school and a little graduation ceremony in her classroom. Andrew was so bummed to miss it because he was in New York for work! I videoed the whole thing though and my dad took pictures for me. So of course, we have the whole thing captured (You'd expect nothing less from me, right?). I do think the graduation is a little over the top, especially because she will be attending the same preschool again next year. And it tends to lend to the idea of overachieving that seems such a huge focus in our society. (Sidenote: I actually read a post today on one of the book blogs I read that sort of touched on this same idea. You can check it out here.) While it was really cute and I think its nice to make every kid feel like they have accomplished something, I just worry about putting too much pressure on our kids to achieve so early on. Just let them be kids, you know. It seems they graduate from everything these days (preschool, kindergarten, each school they attend). I don't remember receiving accolades for anything until at least the end of middle school when I was growing up. (Sorry just another one my rants). ;-)



Ella was so excited about singing for us last week. She told us about it a couple different times and sang a few of the songs while she was playing around the house. But today, once all the parents and family members were seated in front of the kids, I think she was a little nervous. She didn't really smile much, and stared mostly at the teacher. I think she was really overwhelmed the whole afternoon. I asked her if she had fun and she smiled and said that she did. At least next year, she'll know what to expect.




Top: That's Ella with her friend, Emma. Emma actually lives a block
away from us and we carpool with her, which worked out great for
me and Julie, Emma's mom. :-)

I'll post pictures from the field trip tomorrow and hopefully get a little of the video up soon. :-)
We have another fun-filled weekend planned so look for more updates early next week!