No Greater Joy Continues: Talent Show, Quilt, Awards, Dirty Laundry, and other Randomness

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Talent Show, Quilt, Awards, Dirty Laundry, and other Randomness

Erin Joy really doesn't like to perform in front of people and didn't want to try out for the talent show this year. It's funny because she isn't shy at all. My shy daughter, Rachel, is the one who likes to perform. Anyway, Rachel did a great job performing in the school talent show today. I didn't have my camera on when she started playing. I came really close to shouting, "STOP!! WAIT FOR ME TO TURN MY CAMERA ON AND THEN START AGAIN SO I CAN POST YOUR PERFORMANCE ON MY BLOG!!" I refrained from opening my mouth so I wouldn't embarrass her in front of her peers. Even though I missed the first part of the song, the remaining 49 seconds of piano playing are fabulous:) The school choir sang a song and I recorded that too even though it is already on my blog at least two other times. If you watch long enough to see the school choir, notice the student on the right dancing while he sings. I love his enthusiasm:)

Rachel is holding our fourth grade "author's quilt." The students wrote to their favorite authors and gave them a quilt square to sign. Jan Brett didn't follow directions very well and made a huge quilt square. Hence the bigger squares in the bottom corner of the quilt. It was such a fun project. I loved getting quilt squares from authors who are also illustrators such as Mercer Mayer and Patricia Polacco. Henry Winkler's letter to the students was really inspirational. He really is a good guy. He talked about how hard school was for him because of learning disabilities. He talked about working hard to overcome those disabilities. Jan Berenstain's quilt square arrived a few days after she passed away from a stroke. When we heard she had died, the other teachers and I said, "guess we won't be getting a quilt square from her." We were wrong! How neat to have an autographed quilt square from her knowing it must have been one of the last things she did before she passed away. Very special indeed.

This is Rachel's book project. In case you can't tell, it is a classroom. The students are all lying on their backs because we couldn't get them to stand or sit properly so we gave up. I should have taken a close up picture. The names of the characters are on the desk and the title of the book is on the little chalkboard. She did a great job!

The girls fell asleep on the way home from their last day of school. I'm exhausted too. I would have been asleep if I wasn't driving. I had to take pictures while I drove. When the car stops, they wake up. It's hard to take a picture behind your head and drive at the same time. My first attempts looked something like this.....

Did better on these....

My poor dirty car....full of things that we will move into our new house if we ever get a new house...and full of our dirty laundry. We celebrated the last day of school by going to the laundromat and eating milkshakes and french fries while we waited for our clothes to dry. I'm tired of the laundromat. Can't wait to have our own washing machine in our own house.