The Last Day of School

and Kindergarten Graduation

I have become increasingly discontented with Grant and Anna's school.  One of the minor points of contention from this past week was that there was a kindergarten graduation ceremony but I was only made aware of it the day before through a last minute note home.  Throughout the year there has not been great communication home about what's happening at school.  

Luckily Scott already had the day off but I had to miss an event in Matthew's class to go to Grant's graduation.  In any case that is only a minor thing and we were able to make it to the graduation.   Here is Grant with his long-suffering teacher.  Grant had several behavior problems at the end of the year.  The major one involved him standing up to some 1st graders who had been teasing and picking on him all year.  Any day Grant got a ball, all year, these two 1st graders would steal it from him and then tease him.  The yard duty people never did anything when Grant complained 'cause the older boys would say they hadn't stolen the ball and that Grant was lying.  In the second to last week of school Grant stole the ball back when they took it from him and kicked it across the field.  Then, for good measure, he kicked their lunch boxes too.  When the yard duty people asked Grant if he did it, he said yes.  At least he didn't lie about it.  He ended up in the principal's office that day.  It wasn't a good day and was not good behavior, but I get why he did it.  And I don't like that the kindergarteners, even though they have their own playground and lunch area, have lunches and recesses with the older kids.  Because they get picked on.

Anna also had her troubles.  Two boys in her class picked on her all year and Anna ended up paired with one of them most of the year because no other student in the class could work with them.  Anna hated sitting by him 'cause he constantly made fun of her but her teacher intentionally kept her there 'cause Anna was a good student and would still be able to get her work done.  It was bad for Anna.  She was counting down the days until she would never have to sit by this boy again.

Next year Anna is going to a different school to be in the same program Matthew is in and will have, I think, the best teacher in the district.  So I'm hoping she doesn't have to sit by any jerks next year just because she is a good student.

UPDATE:  We just found out Matthew's teacher is retiring immediately and Anna won't get to have him next year.  I'm very sad about it but hopefully they will get a great new teacher to replace him.  :(

And I'm considering sending Grant to that school as well for several other, much more serious reasons (involving misappropriation of parent donated Home-and-School Club funds) that I won't go into now.  Sorry for the school rant.

 Grant with his class at the graduation ceremony.

 

I was really annoyed with a lot of the parents because they walked right up in front of everyone who was sitting and stood there to record with their phones while our kids were singing.  No one could see.  At least crouch down people!  I got a few glimpses of Grant between standing people.  They also announced each child's name so they could walk across and get their diploma.  And a lot of the parents sitting in front stood up, folded up their chairs and stood there chatting after their kids' names were called even though there were still 3 other classes to go.  Some days I feel like people are the worst.  Ok.  Not all people.  ;)

After the ceremony.

I made it through without punching anyone.  Yeah me!!

So Grant survived kindergarten.

Barely.

And we all survived his graduation.  I'm glad we found out about it in time.

Onto 1st grade...maybe at another school

Anna and her beloved 3rd grade teacher

Despite Anna's classroom troubles she did love her teacher.

Matthew on the last day at his school.

He was sad to leave his great teacher, Mr. H., who Anna will probably have next year.

Mr. H is a fantastic teacher who we love.  But Matthew will still be able to see him some next year.

UPDATE:  We just found out that Matthew's beloved teacher is retiring immediately.  I was hoping we would at least get a year notice on the retirement.  So Anna won't be able to have him next year.  We're all sad.

Here are our school kids on the last day.

Last day of 4th grade, 3rd grade and kindergarten.

And my two kids at home...who will be home with me one more year.

They have really become buddies this year.

John wanted to be in the picture with the big kids.

They all look so grown up.  Are we ready for summer?

The day after the last day of school, Grant crashed, hard in the afternoon.

 It's like when you're a college student and finals are over and you just sleep for three days.

Am I the only one who did that?

He slept and slept and then was up a bunch in the night.  

A year of kindergarten will really take it out of you.

Now on to summer!!

Downtown Monterey

On Memorial Day we visited Monterey.  After playing in the dunes for a while we walked around in the Fisherman's Wharf area a little bit.  Here we are on the wharf looking for sea lions.  We found a few.

It was busy on the wharf but we got some candy and got to look out over the bay a little.

John didn't like the cotton candy.  Scott doesn't like it either.  He had a bad experience.

By the wharf looking out at the boats and eating candy.

Matthew went on a field trip here a few weeks ago.  There were educational activities set up in the Custom House and Pacific House among other places.  Matthew showed us some of the things he saw and told us what he learned.   We got the Matthew mini-tour.  Here he shows us cow hides - a main currency of California in rancho times.

Outside one of the houses.  Nice California landscaping.

There were many fun displays.  The kids all wanted to put their faces in these playing card cutouts that taught about British royalty and military rank.

Everyone had to give it a try

In a courtyard at one of the museums

Same courtyard, different view  We had a lot of fun walking around Monterey a little bit.  Brings back memories from when we lived here.

At the Fisherman's Wharf marketplace

This is new since we lived here ten years ago.

It was a little chilly but we had fun visiting Monterey.

Fort Ord Dunes

Over Memorial Day weekend we went to Fort Ord Dunes State Park.  Its a beach with lots of large sand dunes a little north of Monterey.  It was a little overcast and slightly on the chilly side but everyone warmed up from running around.  Here we are up by the parking lot.  From what I understand this is a relatively new state park and this all used to be part of the Fort Ord military base.  There used to be a club out here on the cliff but they had to demolish it a few years back because of the cliff erosion making it unsafe.

A short walk got us down to the beach.

The kids had fun climbing and scrambling on the dunes.

We wished we had brought a sled or two.

Maybe next time.

Scott watched some of the kids down by the water.

John and Grant climbed pretty far up the dune.

Can you spot them?

John got surprised by a large wave and fell down in the water.  He got wet up to his chest.  He told me he wasn't fast enough to run away from the wave.  Poor John.  Luckily I had a change of clothes for him in the car.

Emma was afraid of the noise the ocean makes.

She told me it was too loud.

She didn't want to go near the water by herself.

There was lots of running around and exploring on the sand.

 I think we'll be back!

Maybe we'll go swimming next time.

There's Scott...and all the gear I had to carry back.  Most everyone abandoned their shoes and coats.  I should have brought a bag.

Little (wet) boy on a big dune.

After playing by the water for a while we headed back to the car.

There was more dune climbing on the way back.

It was such a fun place and relatively uncrowded.

 All the kids want to come back with sleds and beach gear.  Glad we found a fun new beach.

Small Gardening

I like the idea of gardening, but I am also lazy.  Or rather I'm busy with a lot of other things, many of which interest me more or are just necessary.    In any case, I've never spent a lot of time trying to get things to grow.  We have a small border of plants at our house here and some of them have not survived the transplanting last fall and/or the winter.  So Scott and I decided to pull out the dead stuff and put in some new things.  We purposely tried to pick plants that would do well here and were supposed to come back on their own each year and require very little maintenance/work (because laziness), but about eight of them died.  The border plants are on a drip system so there are certain spots (where the drip nozzles are) that plants can go.

See our very tiny raised garden in Illinois HERE.  It rains a lot in the summer in Illinois so very little work was required on that garden.  Love it.

This is some of the dead stuff.  Dead lantana I think.  

We also had some lavender die but other lavender plants did well.

We tried to get a variety of things to replace the dead stuff.  I am a sucker for anything that looks remotely like a daisy so we got a lot of that.  Scott had to lobby for some non-daisy like plants.

Here are some of the things before going in the ground.  I think that's a euryops plant in the pot.  They have small yellow daisy like flowers (see my daisy obsession?)  I wanted to get a lot of these but the nursery we went to only had one plant left.  So if anything else dies I might try to replace it with more euryops.  Those seem to do well here.  I see them all over town.

Coreopsis in the back and echinacea closer (two daisy like flowers).

And Scott is putting a camelia bush in the middle.

There it is in the middle

Euryops near, two plants that didn't die in the middle (escallonia like) and purple osteopermum farther away.   Another one that looks like a daisy.

Also some of the plants our landscaper planted are finally looking like they might bloom.  See that stalk going up in the middle?  So excited!!  These ones have been dormant all winter.  This is actually a Shasta daisy I think.  See, I may have a problem.

Two gardenias.

Not daisy like!

Euryops

I check on them all the time since we've planted, hoping that they don't die.

So far, so good.

Osteopermum variety

Arizona blanketflower between two of our hearty lavender plants (daisy anyone?).  I tried to cut back some of the dead leaves which made these lavender plants look a little weird and scrawny.  Maybe I'll just wait until the end of the season.  I am gardening illiterate.

I was reminded of my other domestic failures this week when I tried to hand sew this bunny's head back on.  The kids played with her a little too wildly and her head was hanging by a few threads.  Anna begged for me to let her do the sewing since she learned a few stitches at activity girls.  I should have let her.  After I finished (and it was not pretty - think Franken-bunny) Anna examined the finished product at length and said, "You should have asked Grandma Guptill to do it when she was here."  :) 

So I can't garden or sew very well, and I'm also pretty bad at decorating and cleaning.  But I do cook! That's something. If only learning to decorate were as easy as reading a recipe from a cookbook.  Then maybe I could do it.  Oh well.

Small Gardening Update!!

Today we added a grapevine to our very small selection of plants.  It's a concord variety.  We were going to get a green variety too but decided on just one for space reasons.  Hoping it does well.

Some of our almost dead lantana has been coming to life lately.  We left a few nearly dead lantana plants because they were showing signs of life.  And now they are growing!

Another lantana plant, back from the dead.

Some succulents we got for inside the house.  We transplanted some and are awaiting pots for others.  The pot on the left has some new pumpkin seeds in it.  If they grow we will have to get a larger container to put them in.  We'll cross that bridge if we get to it.  Anna and I also planted some herb seeds that came in a little window box set.  We'll see how those do.

We have some gravel between the garage door and yard that is very uncomfortable to walk over barefoot.  I wanted to get some paver stones to make a little walk way and finally got some today.  I found out this afternoon that they get very hot in the sun, so still hard to walk across barefoot in the heat of day.  :)

Our front porch got a little sprucing.  We used to have nothing out there but a few months ago I added a bench because the neighborhood kids will sometimes gather on the front step.  I added a few pillows for sitting on or against, the little plastic Adirondack chair for kid seating and the blue planter stand for a small table or seat - sometimes there are drinks or rainbow loom supplies that need a place to be.  I want to get a little wicker pouf (like this one) for sitting or putting feet or things on.  So I'll keep my eye out for a good deal.

Got two planters that I filled with succulents too.

See that's me trying to make things look nice.

Another view.  Not that the neighborhood kids will really care.  But I care.  

Hope it's functional for the kids at least.