Fun day at school

Both Gage and Emma had fun days at school today. I've had notes all over the table for the past few days so I would be sure and not forget anything!

Emma's class is working on the letter "S" so they had planned a Silly Sock Day today. They were to all wear silly socks and then they were going to have a silly sock parade!

Emma and her silly socks!

Today was Gage's big day at Apple Valley School. For the past few weeks they have been studying a unit about Pioneers. They have had many things going on at school to prepare for the big day today. The entire 2nd grade class graduated from Apple Valley School today! They have had several projects that they have been doing, and one of them was to interview someone from the "olden days". Gage decided he wanted to call Grandpa Alan to do his interview. Grandpa isn't that old, but we have no living great grandpas or grandmas to interview. He asked Grandpa a bunch of questions and then got to ask one of his own questions. He wanted to know if they had a paddle. Grandpa said they had a switch and then Gage wanted to know if he had ever been beaten with it. Grandpa assured him that he hadn't been hit with the switch, but he had been bonked over the head with a clipboard!! :-) That must be where the bump (it's actually a mole) on the top of his head came from?

Another project that Gage was supposed to do was to make a veggie person to enter into the County Fair. Gage made his veggie dude pretty much all on his own, except for supergluing the almonds on the potato head for hair. We could have had a huge mess if we had turned Gage loose with super glue!

Here's Gage and his veggie dude, Anakin Skywalker. Hmmm, I don't think Star Wars was in the pioneer era? It certainly looks Star Warsish doesn't it? He even has a green light sabre in his hand! Gage's veggie man has an Idaho potato body, a red potato head with celery for his arms, legs and light sabre. His hair is made out of almonds and his eyes are dried fruit with a piece of dried pineapple for his nose. He did a pretty good job.

Once we got veggie man to school, we were to put him up on the coat rack, above Gage's hook. We had him standing up at one point, but his limp celery legs gave out and he fell into the splits! Gage wasn't wanting him to be doing the splits, so we had to rearrange his legs just a little. There were some elaborate veggie people on display and there were some that it was quite obvious that the parents did most of the work.

Gage (or I should say John..................John Allen was his Pioneer name) won a blue ribbon at the County Fair for his vegetable person.

A great big thank you goes out to Mrs. Schmidt. It's kind of nice having friends in high places! I had asked Gage's teacher if I should come back to watch his graduation and she told me that there wasn't going to be much of anything for the parents to see. In other words, stay home! I then asked her if I could leave her my camera to take a few pictures for me. She then told me that they were going to be taking photos of the kids and have them printed and sent home today. I obviously wasn't getting anywhere! My friends in the library took care of me! Mrs. Schmidt went up to Gage's room and got a bunch of great pictures for me! I told her, from one scrapper to another, I didn't want just 1 picture for his scrapbook because I wanted to do a whole page! She made that her mission at the end of the day, to get some pictures for me and she did a great job! Thanks Mrs. Schmidt! I have enough pictures to make several pages now!

John Allen receiving his diploma from Apple Valley School. All of the kids were supposed to wear Pioneer clothes today and bring a sack lunch of food that they would have had in the "olden days". Gage took a ham sandwich with homemade bread (from the store of course) and apple from Grandma Pipi's tree and some baby carrots, all wrapped up in a bandana. I told him to buy a carton of milk from the lunch room on his account so I wouldn't have to worry about how to keep his milk cold. Mrs. Smith did put his lunch in the refrigerator with hers because I was worried about the ham. Gage said it was delicious and he wanted to have some more of that ham tomorrow for a snack! :-)

The kids also got to go down to the library and play some games like Cat's Cradle!

They also played some jacks. Gage and another classmate are playing jacks with Gage's teacher, Miss Owens (a.k.a. Mrs. Smith). It was kind of funny several weeks ago when Mrs. Smith sent home the first letters about Pioneer days, she had signed the letter "Mrs. Smith (soon to be Miss Owens)" When I saw that I wondered what that was all about. I thought maybe she was divorced and taking back her maiden name or something? Apparently I wasn't the only person who thought that, because later she sent home another letter saying she was happily married and that she was taking her maiden name for the Pioneer days because she would have been in her teen years as a teacher back then, so she would have been Miss Owens. LOL! That's how rumors get started!

Gage and a classmate playing jacks. We had to borrow the shirt, suspenders and boots from our neighbors. We didn't have anything that resembled clothing of the pioneer days. I was going to go to a thrift store to look for some, but time got away from me and I didn't make it there. I thought he looked pretty darned cute dressed like he was.

That was a fun way to end the school week for Gage. There is no school tomorrow or Friday for Teacher's Convention. I'm actually kind of looking forward to being lazy tomorrow! I haven't had a quiet day for awhile and am certainly ready for one!

Today I was super busy running errands and getting fundraisers wrapped up. I had to run down to the Girl Scout office to get checks endorsed to deposit into the bank and I also stopped at Barnes and Noble this morning so I could replace the lost library book. Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs. Hocking kept telling me to stop worrying about it, but that was just a waste of breath. I couldn't stop worrying and thinking about it so I just wanted to buy the new book and be done with it! I also picked up a book my Mom has been wanting and also few for Gage with his gift cards he got for his birthday. I made 2 trips to the church trying to get the CROP Walk stuff completed and out of my sight, then made 2 trips to the bank trying to get rid of it. I had to make another trip to a different bank to deposit Girl Scout money and Kara stopped by to get one of the deposits for another bank (thanks Kara!), and then I ran the Girl Scout stuff to the lady in charge of the fundraiser. I was bound and determined to get rid of that stuff and I did!!! WOO HOO! Now I just have the Cub Scout popcorn yet to deal with. The popcorn sales end on Oct. 27, so I have a few days yet before I can get rid of that. However, just getting those other 2 things out of my hair has made me feel TONS better! So if anyone wants to buy some popcorn, you best be doing it because it will soon be over. :-) Just click on the link on the right side of my blog to order online if you're interested!

As I mentioned before, we are going to have a lazy day tomorrow. I hope it's cold, rainy and dreary out so I can feel good about staying inside all day! We have The Spiderwick Chronicles to watch from Netflix, so that should be something fun to do. I hope we can sleep in too!

Oh, and by the way, I know a lot of you have seen Scott's video from yesterday's post by looking through my Feedjit live traffic feed, but I have only had one comment so far. Kara agrees that Scott should shave the beard! I need some more support here people!