This year convinced me every elementary school child should have a two week long spring break. After our trip M had an entire week for things like go to the Butterfly Pavilion, fly kites, help buy Hubby a new grill at Costco and play dates. 
A glimpse of K and M loved learning how to make lemonade from lemons at Activity Days. We are going to miss having Sister S. as our Activity Days leader but are grateful we got to be around her as much as we did. Now the meetings are going to be at our house!
M loved visiting her friend Z over break. It’s her dream to be a farmer and she got to spend the day at a real farm with one of her best friends!
D working while I was there to help with tile math.
On that Saturday, after M raced her pinewood derby car at districts, we all journeyed with my parents down to the DMN&S to see the temporary exhibits The Dead Sea Scrolls and Creatures of Light. The Scrolls were pretty much a bust for the children but the bioluminescence exhibit saved the trip for them. Well, that and rolling down the hill outside while heading to the cars.
We got some pretty surprising 23&Me Results. What we really paid the money for was the health tests, which came back with pretty favorable results, but the ancestry ones were so much more entertaining.
Hard to believe our GS troop only has a few meetings left before the end of the school year!
At M's last parent meeting I got to meet M's teacher for next year and I was so impressed. Although we will miss her current teacher so much, we can't help but be happy for her to be a stay at home mom with her very first baby. The days are long but the years are short. We also got to learn about the 9 year change and how the Waldorf 3rd grade curriculum supports the children during that phase of development. If I was the crying type I would have bawled. That is exactly what my handsome boy would have thrived on this year. I felt a lot of remorse that I didn't place both M and D in the same school last fall, especially since it has been hard for them to be in different schools this year. After that meeting, I let D shadow at M's school for 3 days and he absolutely loved it. Now we decide whether to have him switch schools this summer or not! I really feel the 4th grade curriculum would challenge his weaknesses and round him out but I also absolutely love K's teacher this year and would be more than happy to have him stay at the public school. It will be a difficult decision but I think his mind is already made up! But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Before shadowing:
D earned his Bear Rank,
we reorganized M's room with a terrific desk from the flea market to replace the toddler sized one her long legs couldn't fit under any more,
fell in love with the movie "The Greatest Showman" and listen to the soundtrack pretty much every day, 
learned how to play a new card game after eating yummy Peruvian food at the C. family's house Stake Conference Sunday, 
went crawdad fishing and brought the dog along,
played Monopoly like criminals,
enjoyed going to N's first field trip to learn about recycling,
played capture the flag after talking about gardening at Activity Days (the last one before moving the location to our house),
ate too many treats,
had fun at D's first baseball practices of the season,
were amazed at K's ability to draw,
had plenty of preschool play dates,
spent plenty of time outside on a snowy morning while Grandma babysat our oldest and youngest children, 
made a new record on how low my mini van's tank can get before I get the the gas station. It might just be a miracle we didn't stall on the way!
And my children loved having a lemonade stand together that afternoon with 2 other neighbor kids. A nice man made their day by handing them a $20 bill for his cup of lemonade! Without that, each child would have made about $1.50. Due to his kindness, each child felt truly proud of their $5.75 and my husband and I were happy to be paid back for all the supplies.
Going on D's field trip was fun too -- I even got my first school bus ride for a field trip. It was loud but good! I got to run around with a great group of kids.
Our last regular GS meeting on the year was down to business finishing up our Money Manager badge and starting our hiking badge. We had good and bad examples of what to wear and what to bring hiking and picked out a place to go together at our next meeting time. I just hope the spring weather cooperates in May!
K also began spring volleyball and Hubby is the head coach! It is such a joy to watch her play and him step into a role he has never had before and do it well. So proud of the two of them!
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