The End to an Amazing School Year.

I SWEAR it was just yesterday that I was posting about the first day of school, and now I'm posting about the last!!!

I was looking at Addison's first day of school pictures and I couldn't believe how much she has grown!  It made me a little sad.  As I was taking her picture today, she seriously felt so grown up!  I wondered how my first grader...well...technically not first grader any more...but still...could seem so old!



And then she started giggling and gave herself bunny ears.
 

Whew, at least she's not completely grown up. :)

We had a late start day today...but that doesn't stop the girls from getting up at their regular time, so we had a lot of time to kill before school started.  Addison took her sisters on a little adventure on the wall separating the neighbor and our yards. 
 

I seriously love this little lady.  She's not even close to a tween yet, but it still feels like she has one foot in the grown up world and one in the kid's world.  She is so mature and responsible in someways, and so innocent and child like, and carefree in others.

Finally we headed off to school. 

The last day was really bittersweet.   You know those amazing, life-changing teachers you always hear about on television?  Well Addison had one of those this year.

Mrs. Boles is SO amazing.  You can tell that she absolutely loves teaching, and loves her students. And her students SERIOUSLY love her! 

I knew there was something special about her when I went in for Addison's VIP day about two weeks after school had started.  For part of her VIP day, I read the kids Addison's favorite book.  I sat down to read, and all of the children sat COMPLETELY quiet in their spots on the rug, their attention TOTALLY on me.  And these kids were just barely out of kindergarten!  That was when I had my first inkling that Mrs. Boles was something special, and the rest of the year just confirmed my suspicions.

Addison was always excited to go to school, and loved telling me what they were doing in their class.  I knew every single day Mrs. Boles was absent because Addison came home so sad that she wasn't at school and excitedly anticipated her return.


She made school so much fun for Addison.  I was hoping that all of my kids would wind up having her!  Unfortunately not too long ago we found out she would be moving to Idaho once the school year was over!  We are happy that she and her husband get to retire, but we are also SO sad to see her go!

I came to school a little bit before the last bell rang so I could make sure to get a picture of Addison and her teacher.  The bell rang, and all of the students just ran to Mrs. Boles and gave her this huge group hug!  It was seriously one of the sweetest things I've ever seen!  It was the perfect end to an amazing year (and career)! :)

A Joint Art Show

So this year Bart contacted Addison's first grade teacher and asked if her class would be interested in doing a joint art show with his high school students.  Mrs. Boles said, "Absolutely!" So the show was on!

Addison's class drew pictures of monsters and then Bart's ceramic class sculpted them.



I picked up the pictures from Mrs. Boles, made copies of them, and dropped off the copies at Bart's class.  When he saw them, he got sooooooo excited!  They were so good!  He couldn't believe first grader's had drawn them!



The whole sculpting process was a bit stressful for Bart...especially since there were more students in Addison's class than in his, but several students did multiples, and a few teachers helped out too, so every first grade picture had a great sculpture that went along with it.   And when the kids came to the art show and were soooooo excited to see the sculptures of their art work, it made all of the hard work and stress TOTALLY worth it!!!



 Bart got to sculpt Addison's monster, so that was pretty cool too.  :)



Bart's class took a vote and they elected to give the sculptures to the elementary school students, so they took a field trip over to the elementary school to give them the sculptures.  It was so awesome!  The kids were so excited! 

They put the art on display at the school for the last few weeks of school. 






I got WAY more pictures than I posted here, but I didn't want to bombard you with a million pictures. 

Needless to say, it is something we hope to repeat in the future!!!  :)

Putting the Garden In

We've had our peppers and tomatoes in for a while now, but now that we're past the average last frost date, we decided to go ahead and plant our seeds today.  (We're keeping the skeleton for our covers on for a few more weeks just in case we need to pull out the plastic for cold nights).

It was sort of a last minute, right-before-bedtime thing (hence the kids in their PJs).  And admittedly, the kids did more dancing than actual planting.  

But they were really excited when Bart told them we were planting seeds, and they did put some seeds in.

I am sooooooooooo excited for fresh vegetables!

One more of the Girls

This month's challenge for I Heart Faces is "Girls."  I just couldn't resist. ;)

To see more submissions you can check out I Heart Faces here.