Last Days of School

Silly strawberry sisters

Last weekend we went to visit our friends who live by St. Cloud, MN. It was great weather that weekend so the kids all had fun playing outside.

They had some of that moon sand type stuff out on their little picnic table which Clara thought was super fun, but she also made a huge mess with it.

Cleaning up moon sand

Brynn and her terribly dirty face. I guess that's a sign of outside fun, right?

Jumping beans!

On Monday night Brynn had her spring piano recital. Here is the video link, however unfortunately the crying you hear so loudly is little sister. Dana was trying to video and I was trying to take pics and apparently Clara didn't like the lack of attention or something. I'm not sure which is louder: my shushing or Clara's crying. Brynn did a good job with her song, but just had a bit of a rough time with her ending.

This was the first round of younger students and there was yet another group of more advanced students who played later in the evening. Brynn and I stayed to listen to those students as she knew some of the kids from school and was really impressed with their skill level. It was great to hear all the kids play.

Brynn and Ms. Penny 

I have been so thankful this past school year to leave work early enough on Mondays and Wednesdays to meet Brynn home on the bus and then we go pick up Clara early from daycare as well. It's so nice to just have a couple extra hours with them at home and we aren't so rushed at dinnertime and all that, too. Then since Daddy's work schedule has him home most of the afternoon on Fridays, Brynn just goes to the HopeKids after school program two days a week. 

I wanted to get a video of Brynn getting off the bus during one of the last days of school. Usually she bounds off the bus and runs across the street to our house. As you can see from the video I got from Wednesday, she was not her usual happy self. She seems to get caught up in a lot of drama with her friends at school and usually has a lot of injustices against her to report on the daily. Wednesday was one of those days. :-) Summer break is good for many reasons!  Here is the bus video link. 

I had also wanted to get a video of the morning bus experience, as Clara usually comes out with us to see Brynn onto the bus. She loves waving at the bus driver. He is such a great driver anyway, but he just loves to wave back to Clara and sometimes opens his window to say "bye, Clara!" I guess Brynn must have told him her sister's name. The day I was videoing, he actually motioned to Clara and me to come aboard the bus and it might be a bit difficult to make out what he's saying, but he was going on about how Brynn should be proud to be the big sister and that Clara will look up to her and she gets more attention now because she's so little. Haha. It was so sweet. Well, then the cars were piling up waiting for the bus, so we had to be on our way. I'm sure he wondered why I had my phone stuck up by my face that whole time, but I just keep the video rolling! Here is the morning bus video.

At Brynn's school the second graders have Camp Skeeter the last three days of school. There are five classes of second graders at Centennial and they all are a part of the camp. They do real camp activities and even get t-shirts that say Camp Skeeter, a different color for each class. During those days they kind of rotate through the classrooms and do different activities with each of the second grade teachers and then journal each day's activity. One day they went and had lunch at Stonebridge Park which is the one that is right behind our house. One of the preschool teachers that was at Hope back when Brynn was in preschool told Brynn one day when we were picking up Clara that she even did Camp Skeeter way back when she was in second grade at Centennial! Brynn had a lot of fun. Ms. Jarvis, Brynn's teacher, asked us to make s'more bars for their last day, which was today. So, we had fun making those together last night. 

S'more bars in the making for Camp Skeeter

You can see some of the kids have their camp shirts on (and mustaches!) in this pic which Ms. Jarvis sent us parents.

I asked Brynn take some last day of second grade pics for me. Today was also PJ day for Clara at daycare, so she got in on some pics, too.

Last time getting on the bus as a second grader!

Today started out so beautifully and then just before 3:00 this afternoon, my coworker came back to my office to tell me there was a tornado! I must be stuck in the way back because it wasn't until I started walking around the corner out of the hallway that I could hear the sirens. It wasn't windy or raining or anything, but you could see a small funnel cloud in the distance. It appeared to dissipate about as soon as it had appeared. However, because of the sirens and the warning and everything, they pulled the students off of the buses at Centennial and had them wait out the warning in the school gym. Unfortunately, they didn't alert the parents and one of Brynn's friend's mom called me to tell me she was with Brynn in the gym and that Brynn was pretty upset. I talked to Brynn on the phone and could hardly understand her because she was so shaken up. If you know Brynn well, you know that she is petrified of storms and this was about as close to her worst nightmare as it gets. We've even told her many times that neither Dad nor I have ever experienced a tornado in our lives and now here is one and she is at school and not even with us. I think what made it worse as well was that they already had all the kids loaded up onto the buses and then when they took them off to come back inside, the kids could see the funnel and heard the sirens, of course, which really caused mayhem. Brynn's teacher said a lot of the other students were really upset, too. Clara was still napping at home with Daddy and we didn't want to wake her up so that Dad could go get Brynn, so I ran over to the school and took her home. She had refused to get back on the bus and the school wouldn't let her walk home to our house with her friend and her friend's mom (because she had to leave with a parent). Thankfully it only rained from then on out the rest of the day, but she was still rather upset yet tonight, especially when it came to bedtime. What a way to end the school year! Oof!