A Week of Celebrations and Fun--a picture intensive post!

Well, I am home from church this morning with a sick little one. Drew woke up with a fever of 102.5 and an icky sounding cough. He's resting now, the kitchen is clean, the beds are made, so I am using a few quiet minutes to catch up. There are about a hundred an one crafty projects I'd love to start, but I know as soon as I pull out paint and supplies, someone will wake up, so for now I'm just going to update the blog. We have had a wonderfully fun and busy week, so of course I will have lots of pictures to share!

Let's see, the fun started waaaaay back on Tuesday when Sophie's class had their Summer Birthdays celebration. With quite a few kids celebrating birthdays over the summer, they decided to have an ice cream party to celebrate! The birthday kids all wore the birthday crowns they made at the beginning of the school year.

(Decorating the crowns was actually their Open House activity before school started & I think that is such a clever idea!)

The boys and girls lined up in order of their birthdays. (Sophie's is the week after school gets out, so she was first!)

We sang happy birthday to all of the kids and then the teachers gave each child 6 high fives & 6 hugs (since they are turning 6.)

And then we saved the best for last...Ice Cream and all of the trimmings!

Darcy enjoyed some ice cream, too!

Drew just had fun crawling all around the room finding  a wide variety of things to get into!

On Wednesday, we celebrated the culmination of another year of Awana with the Awards Night. Jack completed his third year as an Awana Spark and received his Sparkie Plaque for completion of all 3 books. It is really amazing the amount of Scripture Jack has learned over the past several years & he is very good at learning it on his own. I am so thankful that our children can be involved in great programs like Awana where they hide the Truth of God's Word in their hearts and learn what it looks like to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
Before the awards ceremony, Jack's team met outside for a little ice cream celebration of their own! The younger kids just ran around & played. Darcy lovin' on sweet lil' Sophie. Darcy loves being the "big girl!"

Drew pretty much always has a smile!

Drew & Sophie playing with the stroller.

During the awards presentation (which can be rather long), 

the little kids colored & played somewhat quietly in the background!

As the night went on, more & more kids joined the group!

Here is Jack on stage with his team.

I'm pretty sure that Jack's color team won (or tied) at game time almost every night of the year, that was a big highlight for Jack!

When Jack received his Sparkie plaque, his leader Mr. Hal laughingly mentioned that it was his first year as a leader, but that whenever there was any uncertainty on a procedure, Jack always piped up with "this is how we do that Mr. Hal." That certainly sounds like our Jack! And I just pray that he was respectful with his suggestions!

Jack with his Sparkie Award plaque.

Jack & his great bud Corban. This was Corban's 1st year & he completed 2 books! Way to go Cor!

Moving right along to Thursday, we enjoyed a very special Anthology Day in Jack's classroom, the celebration of a year's worth of Second Grade writing!

Over the course of the year, the children have been compiling their writing work into a 3-ring binder. Each child in the class chose three of their original works to read to the class and all of the parents.

It was very interesting to hear all the different things they have been learning about from animals to countries to tall tales to poetry. Jack selected his Animal Report on Seals, his memories of the class field trip to the Zoo, and his poem on Rwanda/Burundi. The kids ALL did a wonderful job presenting their writings to the class!

Each quarter during the school year, the class works to memorize a different passage of Scripture. During the presentations, the children were also broken down into small groups and each group recited one of the passages. Jack was in the first group & they shared the very first passage from the beginning of the school year, Matthew 5:1-12, the Beattitudes. 

Jack waiting for his turn to present his writing!

During the presentations the children were busy taking notes to provide written positive feedback and encouragement to each classmate. And afterwards the parents all walked around and signed the each child's book, as well. It was fun to read the comments that Jack received on his presentation. My favorite from one of his classmates was "To Jack, you had a smooth voice."

Finished, job well done!

Later on Thursday, Sophie was invited to attend a Rock-n-Roll birthday party! 

We dropped her off at the party with an hour & a half to kill before pick-up time. It was not too hot, so we decided to stop by the nearby strawberry patch to pick some berries. 

It's Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, oh sorry, that's just Jack with a strawberry nose!

Jack and Darcy were very efficient workers & we picked a ton of berries in just a short amount of time. 

Drew had not had a nap all afternoon, so he watched from the stroller for a while & then Jeff took him back to rest in the car with the a/c on! (I'm not sure who wanted to sit in the a/c more...Drew or Jeff!) 

The strawberry patch also has other fun activities for the kids...

...like rubber ducky racing and a maze made out of string. 

Uh-oh, mom knocked over the berries trying to take a picture of a ladybug!

(Jack actually asked me when I took a picture, "Mom, are you going to blog this?")

Aforementioned ladybug

Two tired pickers & a great strawberry harvest!

We realized on Wednesday evening that we didn't have any plans for Friday night, so we had rather short notice asked some dear friends if they would like to come over for dinner. With only a day's notice, I thought they would probably be busy, but they were free! Our kids just LOVE to play with their kids & even though it rained and they couldn't play outside, everyone had SO much fun! And amazingly the house wasn't a disaster either!!

Our idea was to feed the kids pizza early and then let them play while the grown-ups enjoyed a nice meal of grilled salmon, new potatoes with chives, corn on the cob & salad. The kids dug into the pizza & gobbled it up! And the plan half worked...the bigger kids played away while we were eating, but the little ones were still in & out a bit needing this or that or more food! Darcy pulled up a chair right beside me and said, "Why are you eating without me? I'm hungry again!" With 8 kids under 8 in the house, it was a little crazy, but we did manage a few quiet moments to eat & converse between jumping up to see who was crying! 

Good friends are such a wonderful blessings & the Lord has surely blessed us with so many dear friends, we are thankful! I wish I had taken a picture of the YUMMY strawberry chocolate angel foodcake trifle that Jenny made, it was DE-licious! Maybe she will post the recipe on her blog, hint, hint! Really I wish I had taken more pictures period, but it was non-stop action the whole time, but in a good way! 

As they were packing everything up to leave, however, this is the sweet sight we found in the girls bedroom...

All the girls had put on their PJs and were snuggled up all cozy! Next time, we will have to try a sleep-over!

Saturday dawned a bit misty and rainy, so the kids used our newly cleaned out garage (that was last weekend's project!) for their studio space as they drew & colored & worked on artwork.

Darcy was really wanting out of the riding toy, but she had buckled herself in!

Drew was busy getting into all kinds of mischief inside...

After Noon, we headed down to Young's Garden Center to buy plants for the 4-square vegetable & herb garden we are wanting to plant. I will blog more about that in a separate post.  On our way in, we met Jeff's sister and her girls heading out, and they offered to take our older 3 kids to their house to play! So Jeff & I got to shop for an hour with only Drew & he was easy to entertain! After loading up the car with lots of vegetable plants, herbs and soil, we headed over to pick-up the kids. Of course, they didn't want to leave their cousins' house, but we had to get home for baths because we had dinner plans with some other friends. We got home, got everyone showered or bathed & were back out the door in an hour! We headed to Sam & Ginger's house for a wonderful evening of food & fellowship with them & their 6 children. All of the kids have so much fun playing together and Ginger is the ultimate hostess! She had pizza dough and all of the toppings for the kids to create Make-your-own pizzas, YUM! The grown-ups got to enjoy her DELICIOUS Trattoria Burgers with a slice of tomato, fresh mozzarella, basil & olive oil. WOW, seriously the best burger I have had in a loooong time, perhaps ever! I'm definitely going to try those at home!

Well, it has taken me all day to write & finish this post & now it is time for me to head back out to evening church. It is the season finale concert & Jack's choir is singing. I am serving in the nursery & Sophie is excited to be my helper. Jeff is going to stay home with the little ones. We had a nice afternoon of planting our 4-square garden & I can't wait to share more of that with you next time! As I type, I still smell the light scent of manure on my hands...mmmmm!
Thanks for not falling asleep reading about our fun, busy week!