What time is it? SUMMERTIME!

Why is the end of the school year always SO CRAZY!?! 

Because it involves kids like these...

And saying goodbye.

And ripping your heart out, knowing they'll never be first and fifth graders again.  That they're getting bigger.  That you have to say goodbye to the wonderful teachers and coaches that helped encourage and challenge and expand their world.  I never cry on the first day of school, I'm always distracted by the exciting new supplies and new teachers and new classrooms and new friends.  So much new stuff!  But the end of the year is so hard for me!  I hate goodbyes.  I may be a little dramatic.  I realize this.  You have to love me anyway.  

My awesome friend C decided to celebrate the beginning of summer by creating a homemade GIGANTIC SLIP & SLIDE!!!!  Look at how huge that is!  It went down the side yard of her neighbor (and luckily our friend;) J's house.  There were about 15 little girls over, ready to party.

At first some of the girls didn't understand what you were supposed to do.  They daintily sat their hindquarters down on the plastic and expected to have a swift, entertaining, but fully controlled slide down the hill.  They slid awkwardly down about three feet and wondered why it wasn't "working".  Then one brave girl threw herself down belly first on the plastic.  Then C broke out the bucket of shaving cream.  And a bottle of soap.  And, for good measure, a Costco size bottle of dish washing liquid.  Yeah.... there weren't any problems sliding down after that....

 

 

Can you see why Gretchen loves these girls?  BRING ON THE CRAZY.

Just in case you were wondering, yes it IS very fun to cover yourself in shaving cream.  Being covered in shaving cream unleashes your inner poser.

(Unfortunately Ella was at a class GIRLS ONLY swim party, so I didn't get any awesome pictures of her covered in shaving cream.  Though she may have been too mortified by her sister to engage in shaving cream shenanigans...)

 

Gretchen posed at the top of the slide, ready for adventure...  

 

Adventure!

 

 

Our friend C is a very good friend to have.  For example, the week before she made a GIGANTIC END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR ICE CREAM PARTY for 50 of their closest friends.  Don't be grossed out by how unhygienic it is to share an ice cream trough with 50 of your closest friends (we're building immunities!) think about how awesome it is to have A FIFTY FOOT ICE CREAM SUNDAE!!!

The only problem is that it was sort of on a hill, and our little friend on the bottom right kept yelling that her ice cream was "floating away"!  But it's the ice cream trough that keeps giving, cause as hers floated away, another new ice cream cam floating down to her.  Awww!  Circle of life.

   

Remember how two paragraphs before I was saying how hard it is to say goodbye to our teachers?  Yeah.  It was.  Now I'm going to go on about that again.  Feel free to make fun of me for what an emotional nerd I am.  This year my friend M & I partnered up to do art in two classes (her son's and Gretchen's.)  We had so many nice moms (and even a nice grandma) who came in to help us.  It was AWESOME.  To thank our amazing teachers, we had the kids do self portraits on shrinky-dinks (dude, we're bringing shrinky-dinks BACK.  For reals.  It's our 2nd time using them this year, and we have a plan for next Christmas too.  Booya!)  We gave the kids the option to draw their self portraits as a person, or as an animal.  They just had to draw the animal (or person) with a t-shirt on that had their name.  So we could tell who it was who thinks of themselves as a purple dragon.  I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but they turned out ADORABLE.

 

I gave Gretchen's teacher hers at the Poetry Slam the night before the last day of school.  I was going to say, "We love you so much, thank you for all that you did for our children.  You have an amazing gift of making each child feel special and capable.  We all owe you so much."  But instead I just sort of awkwardly shoved it at her and said, "Thanks for a great year." and then sat down again before I broke into tears.  UGH.  NERD!

No, but seriously, her teacher was amazing.  Sniff.

Also, that's not her baby.  But look at how cute that baby is.  We all fight over holding her.  We let her teacher win.  This time.

 

The kids were encouraged to wear "Black" to the poetry slam.  Fun, right?  Gretchen took it a step further and wore ALL BLACK.  She resurrected her super creepy Halloween costume from kindergarten year.  And totally owned it.  I kept thinking she'd wimp out and take it off last minute, but she sat in full black for the full poetry slam.  Even delivered her poem in it.  Yep.  Pretty proud of that kid!

 

 

I almost didn't make it to the Poetry Slam.  I had an unexpected 18 hour layover in Phoenix on the way home from Charlotte, NC.  Why did I go to Charlotte?

 

To help these fine people debut their new card game, "Nuts about Mutts"!  Yaaaaay!  We were at a Specialty Toy & Gift Fair, right next to the Smelcils people (smelly pencils!  don't be jealous!  My girls were!) 

  

 

You should totally buy this card game!  Despite the fact that it's still getting shipped from the Italian printer.  You should TOTALLY buy a million copies!  It'll be on Amazon in a few weeks with free Prime shipping!  Woo hoo!  While we were there, we found out their first game (which I illustrated for them many moons ago, "Cover Your Assets") is not only the hot new college drinking game (Grandma Beck and I are a little mortified that we're contributing to the delinquency of minors, but happy they're buying the games;), BUT it's also in the Top 100 games on Amazon.  Woo hoo!!!!!

It was a really fun experience, and cool to see all the specialty toys.  Grandma Diana would have been SO EXCITED, it was all her favorites.  Automoblox, fancy wood learning toys, random 3D puzzles, dress up booths... the works!

The next day, Grandma Beck (who I call Tauni.  We're close like that.) decided the best way to spend our free morning was to go to an antique mall.  That, my friend, is ALWAYS the best way for me to spend my morning!

Here note two things:  

1.  People have always loved their cats.  Even antique people.    

2.  Does that music stand look familiar siblings?  They totally had one!

 

And, because poor Ella got NO pictures this post, I'm throwing in this one from her friend's birthday party.  She beat that beautiful purple unicorn to a candy-bleeding pulp.  That sounds awful, doesn't it?  But look at how big and capable she's getting!  

And, I forgot to add this one on.  Here's Gretchen with her soccer coach getting her ribbon.  Yay!  Soccer is over!  (Wait, did I just say that?  I mean "Yay!  She tried something new and persevered!"  I really was proud of her, by the end she was totally going after that ball!  I would have been all, "Um, I'll just stand over here and hope it never comes close to me...")

 

 This was the first week of summer and we kicked it off with a bang.  I invested in water park passes and they've already paid off!  We went FOUR TIMES last week!  And we're going tomorrow!  Crazy, I know.  But SO SO SO FUN!  Gretchen' officially ridden all the rides.  (There's one even I won't go on!  It's the only one that Ella won't either.  I was proud of her for branching out!  I thought she'd stick to the lazy river and the wave pool all summer, but she proved me wrong!)  Uncle Aaron and his crew are rolling in Monday evening, then we're going to take them to Tahoe and show them around town.  So fun will be had this week, my friends.  FUN WILL BE HAD.