Rocket's Away

One of the most anticipated activities at Olivia's school is the 6th Grade Rocket Launch. According to Liv all of the students can't wait for the day to come when it is finally their turn to buy (cha-ching!) a rocket and some motors, assemble it with specialty plastic cement (that may or may not be available through the school), and launch it into the heavens in front of all the other sixth graders and their cheering families. She picked out the rocket she wanted and built it herself (with minimal supervision from Ryan). Today Sophia and I got to go and be the cheering family and we got to watch Liv and her friends (and all the other sixth graders) launch their rockets. Olivia had a great time and when I asked her if it was as wonderful as she thought it would be.. she said it mostly was, but she regretted that her rocket didn't do anything crazy like spin out of control or burst into flames... maybe next time around, Sweet Liv.

Clear Creek

Olivia and a few friends spent a week at Clear Creek--our school district's summer camp. She loved all of the outdoor activities, caught a few wild animals in the trap she built (sadly--or humorously?--one of the pot guts died a sad death of exposure and/or starvation while in her trap), made new friends, and managed to make it through the week without getting too homesick. I was reminded how much of a helper she is around the house and with Sophia. We missed her a lot and were so grateful when 3 pm rolled around on Friday and we got to pick her up.

Dance Festival 2012

The end of school came before we knew it. The kids always enjoy the dance festival... and I am always glad when I find where they are in their group so I can watch. I am always more glad when Ryan gets to come so he can take good photos!

The fifth graders wore their Hope of America shirts and dressed up like islanders for their Beach Boys songs.

Olivia did a great job!

The second graders did the Monster Mash and Coleman wanted to be a vampire... he wore his teeth around for several days after the dance festival (yuck!). 

 Loved this last photo... it's a great monster pose!

We love our Superhero Teachers

Our school celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week by treating our teachers like superheroes...

We helped with the door decorations for the kids' teachers. We invited each of Ms. Knowles' students to write why she is a superhero.

Olivia's teacher has been teaching for 29 years and is retiring this year. She's been a great teacher for Liv and has supported her and helped her do good things.

Coleman's teacher has been great too, she has really worked hard to challenge him. Don't judge me for my drawing of Mrs. Incredible, nor for my inability to judge the size that her head needed to be to fit with said Mrs. Incredible. All of Coleman's classmates filled in a paper saying why Mrs. LeBaron is incredible.

We are grateful for good teachers!

Hope of America

The fifth grade students in many of the schools in Utah County participated in a wonderful patriotic program called "Hope of America." On April 18th Olivia got to be a part of it! She and her classmates learned songs and practiced for months to get ready for their performance at the Marriott Center at BYU.

Her group is in the top, middle, yellow section. You can spot her, right?

Liv with her cute friend Anna.... All of the students LOVED learning the songs and dances and really were able to grasp the importance of freedom and liberty. We are proud of you Sweet Liv!

Handcart Trek--Fourth Grade Edition

Yesterday Olivia's fourth grade participated in the best activity of the year.

They dressed up as pioneers (Olivia chose her clothes and was convinced that this sweater was "in-style" back then... good thing we had the bonnet to make it a little more official, no?)...

...and got arranged into families...

...and pulled a handcart through the neighborhood. They crossed a stream en-route and stopped for lunch (beef-stew, which was reportedly not that tasty--but "it was food" so they ate it--and dutch oven desserts) and then participated in pioneer games and work-activities before trekking back to the school.

She even had to walk part of the way on crutches. All of the students (and parents) love this activity. So much time goes into preparing for it and it really paid off. Children learn by doing, and I love that Liv was able to learn more about our history and heritage by pulling a cart and playing the part for a day.

Mountain Man Rendezvous

Olivia got to participate in a Mountain Man Rendezvous at school today. Their whole fourth grade has been learning about Mountain Men and they have been earning beaver pelts (for attendance, good behavior, turning in homework, etc.) to use for admission and trading at the trading post today. They also were able to bring their own handmade crafts and other items to trade and sell. All month long Olivia has been dreaming of things to work on and then doing it. We were glad to have a day off from school earlier this week (snow make-up day? what's up with that?) so we could complete all of her Rendezvous projects.  She made flower clips, party decorations, a BYU banner, bracelets, necklaces, and a few magnet sets.  Trading was successful today... she came home with all sorts of knick knacks and jewelry and other things that we need to find a home for :). I loved that she was thoughtful and picked things out for me and for Coleman.  Before the Trading Post they got to participate in several different activities like panning for gold, face painting, hunting (shooting rubber bands at pictures of animals), leather work, beads, and something called an atl atl (sp ?). They even had a modern day mountain man (Olivia said he had a goatee :)) come and speak to them.

I love the fun learning activities our school provides. It was so neat to see Olivia work so hard toward a goal and reap the rewards.

Dance Festival 2010

At the end of every school year the kids perform in a Dance Festival. I have a love-hate relationship with this event. It seems that their costume requirements are rarely things we have just laying around the house, nor are they things that we will have much use for later.

Third grade performed to "Hoe Down Throw Down" by Hannah Montana... luckily we had a bandana and she wore Ryan's Chilean cowboy hat.



The kindergartners did a dance to a Humpty Dumpty song and we had to buy some suspenders and knee-hi socks, which are surprisingly hard to find for 6 year old boys!

I love this mischievous look on Coleman's face.

Despite my issues with the costumes, Olivia and Coleman both did a great job in their dances and we survived another year of Dance Festival!

Third Grade Time Machine

Liv was assigned to read a biography and present a report about a historical figure. She was supposed to dress up as the person, so naturally we encouraged her to choose someone that we already had a costume for--she suggested Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, or Harriet Tubman, but of course we didn't have any costumes for those upstanding and inspiring women. Ryan brought home some great, authentic Egyptian clothing so we felt we were brilliant in steering her toward Cleopatra.

After she started reading the biography and asking some, well, interesting questions, I decided I needed to read it myself. It quickly became apparent that my knowledge of Cleopatra was limited (where was I during that lecture in World History?) and that I did not know (or had forgotten) about Cleopatra's partying, adulterous, murderous ways. I'm pretty sure the third grade teachers didn't mean for the parents to have to find selections from the biography that were safe for her to read. Oh well, we already had the costume, right?

She ended up giving an age-appropriate report on Cleopatra and looked fabulous!

She got to make a poster about Cleopatra too and was able to use some of the fab photos that Ryan took on his trip to Egypt a few years ago.

Her speech was quite funny sandwiched in between 25 other kids who were dressed up as inspiring people who actually made the world better instead of murdering family members and committing all sorts of other unthinkable acts... that said, Liv did a great job with memorizing her report and managed to put a positive spin on a pretty bad chick. Here's a short video if you are inclined to listen and watch:



Way to go Olivia!

Let Freedom Ring

Coleman just participated in a fun kindergarten program where they sang patriotic songs and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Poor Coleman was yawning through the whole program, and I kept thinking, "Who is that boys mother, and why doesn't she let her son get more sleep?!?"
But he did a great job singing and doing hand actions anyway, even though he looked so, so tired.
His cute teacher Mrs. Walker has been at our school for so many years that some of the kids in her class have parents that were her students. Coleman loves her!
Sophia slept through the whole thing (which is why she is in her car seat... I usually don't like to carry that bucket around, but I couldn't bring myself to wake her up to get her out and put her in the sling, which I am still getting used to maneuvering).

On the way home we told Coleman we wanted to take him to get a treat--he said that he would pick something and save it for later because he felt sick! No wonder he was yawning! He slept the afternoon away and was all better the next morning.

I'm so proud of Coleman! He's done great this year in kindergarten and loves learning.

Walk-A-Thon

Lots of elementary schools have several fund raisers a year... selling candy bars or wrapping paper door to door... but our school has always tried to keep it to one fund raiser per year and we've tried to avoid having the kids ask everyone they know to buy something they don't need or want. Our school for many years has done a fall carnival to raise money, which has always been so much work and took 50 or more parent volunteers to staff (I can take no credit for having planned any of the carnivals, but I do know what it was to show up and take my turn at a station or two). The carnival was always a lot of fun for the kids, but it really ended up being a big candy and junk toy fest. Now I love candy with the best of them, I just hate to see it given so freely and so often to the kids at school. Last year when I was really active with our PTA I was thrilled that our yearly carnival fund raiser didn't work out because of construction on our school grounds. At the PTA conference the spring before we heard of a few schools that did a Walk-A-Thon for their fund raiser and we thought with the construction going on last year it was a good time to try a change. As the health commissioner I was glad to see the kids doing a healthy activity to earn money instead of paying for junk. The Walk-A-Thon was a great success and much less work, and this year I was thrilled to see that the current PTA brought it back!

Coleman and Olivia loved it...

Coleman was so funny... I went to cheer them on and walked a lap with each of them. About half way through Coleman asked if I maybe wanted to rest, so he could run again. Poor kid, his mom was slowing him down!

Liv had fun walking and running with her friends...

...but my favorite sight was the two of them walking together. I have loved hearing them talk about how excited they are to be at school together and to find each other at recess... I'm so glad Liv is willing to be her brother's keeper and watch out for him.

Both of them ended up walking over three miles in just an hour... pretty impressive!

**Aren't you glad we didn't hit you up for a magazine subscription, a box of candy bars, or some overpriced wrapping paper?

Opera Star

Olivia has had a great music teacher at school this year. She gave the second grade classes a chance to write and produce their own opera. Liv's class named their opera "Sharing is Caring" and they performed it for us on a Saturday afternoon at the Junior High.

She was a wizard and got to wear a hat that she decorated all by herself with blue sparkly foam stars and a wizard cape that I made all by myself with stamps and glitter paint.

Liv is the fifth from the left, standing with other wizards, next to elves. Not shown are the royalty and the Jedi. With that mix of characters, you can tell that second graders dreamed it up.

Here's the video of the opera... it's fairly long (over 8 minutes) so NO obligation whatsoever to watch):



I'm so grateful for good teachers who go out of their way to give our kids good experiences with things like this. I love that she got a taste for creating a whole opera and that she helped with the scenery, costumes, music in addition to performing in it.

The whole musical thing reminded me of a conversation I had with a few of girlfriends during our fun "Mamma Mia" night several months ago--a few of my girlfriends and I decided that life could be so much more fun if we could spontaneously break into song and dance.

**If your life were a musical, which one would it be?

Classic Skating

Back in my glory days of the early teen years my sister Lauren and our friends used to go roller skating all the time. We loved getting dropped off at the 49th Street Galleria and spending the day cruising. Our prowess at rollerskating began even earlier, when we had awesome strap-on-to-your-shoes metal skates that we'd roam our neighborhood in, while listening to cassette tapes on our boom box (or 8-tracks if our friend Michelle was involved) of Rick Springfield, Michael Jackson, or the Police. We rocked it.

Olivia's school won a party at Classic Skating, so we went as a family, and I have to say, I'm not so good anymore. Coleman and Olivia were so excited and I didn't have the heart to remind them of the last time we tried roller skating (not a pretty sight for their bums or my shins!). But, in an effort to support the school and give the kids a fun experience, we went anyway. We all survived without broken bones and most of our dignity intact. I am proud to say that I stayed upright the entire night (even though upright might need to be defined a little more loosely for my benefit).

Ryan helped both kids around the rink several times--he has a lot more patience for teaching than I do. He first tried taking them with his skates on--that didn't work too well, so he switched to his shoes.

Olivia wanted so badly to learn to skate--and she did pretty well, despite the fact that she flopped around like a noodle most of the night.

Ryan and I even managed to even hold hands a couple of times while going around the rink during the couples skate. It brought me back to the days of a seminary activity in 10th grade when the boy I liked held my hand at the skating rink. How sweet.

Too bad we didn't have a couples skating outfit, right?

Coleman and I hung out on the bench while we waited for Ryan to come around for Coleman's turn.

Coleman's self-portrait. I asked him if skating was fun, and he said, "No! It's just HARD!"

Our last time around the rink Liv and I tried to do it without holding onto each other. When we told her it was time to go she cried... and we don't know if it's because her backside hurt so much or because she didn't want to leave (probably some of both).

**Where did you roller skate in your glory days?
**Have you roller skated lately?

Second graders make really good teachers

As I was helping in Olivia's class for her Valentine's Party, I was taught a valuable lesson.

There is a student in her class who has some form of degenerative disorder that has weakened her muscles to the point that she is wheelchair bound and needs help with everything she does. Despite numerous tests, doctors haven't been able to figure out what is happening or how they can stop it.

Her classmates and schoolmates have always rallied around her--in the fall her neighbors sponsored a carnival to raise money for her and just last month the school held a "Penny War" to raise money to buy her a special computer.

Tiffany comes to school when she is able, but has a weak immune response, so she's been absent for most of the winter to protect her from getting sick.

She wasn't at school the day of the party, and Liv's teacher said she wasn't sure she would be able to come. About half way through the party, as the kids were having fun decorating cookies, playing games, and doing crafts, Tiffany and her mom entered the room.

It didn't take more than a couple of seconds for the kids to realize that she had come in and they all jumped up from their seats and rushed to her, yelling her name and saying sweet things like "Oh, we are so happy you are here!" and "It's so good to see you again!"

The next thing that happened brought me to tears. All of the children burst into a cheer that was obviously well-practiced... and repeated it several times. It is short, but moving:



These children show unconditional love to someone who is their peer, yet is just a little different than they are.

I have been thinking for the past few days that I wish we could respond to each other in the same way--that we could rush to each others' sides and give a cheer for each other, even just a little inward hooray, hoping with all sincerity the best for each person around us.

Second graders make really good teachers.

Update: Thanks to Beckie for pointing out that there is a website for Tiffany: www.helptiffany.org. Visit if you'd like to know more about Tiffany!

Say BOO to Drugs and Violence!

This year I somehow got roped into being the Health Commissioner for our school PTA (read: Enthusiastically Volunteered For...). We celebrated Red Ribbon Week the last week of October and it was crazy busy. Our school combines the anti-drug message with the anti-violence message (denial that there is a problem with either in our quaint community?). I can say with all honesty that I am relieved and happy it is over. I think it went well--we had a lot of great ideas that were hard to implement with over a thousand students, but we did our best.

While I was gathering ideas, I read that fun activities for kids don't really make that big of a difference when it comes to choosing whether or not to do drugs. There was also some history about how they've tried to educate kids about drugs--they started off teaching about individual drugs, their effects, what overdoses were like, etc. This didn't deter kids. So they moved on to scare tactics--"This is your brain on drugs" type things or pictures of someone with a rotted out nasal cavity from cocaine and that didn't work well either. Another way was to have motivational speakers do assemblies and talk about the horrible things drugs do, how hard it was to get clean, and how kids should never, ever try drugs. Apparently, it took the opposite effect and kids thought, "Hey, if they can overcome it, I could too!" I remember all of those tactics--and although I've never tried drugs, I'm not sure any of those messages was the reason that kept me from doing them. More than the messages from school, it was a deeper moral conviction and a desire to keep control of myself that kept me from seeking out drugs. Aside from that, I had a pretty sheltered childhood and adolescence, and don't recall ever being somewhere that drugs were being used in close proximity (the stoner hall at school and some concerts aside). I was a good-girl through and through, which isn't a bad thing.

So, in preparing for Red Ribbon Week, I was pretty discouraged about what we could do to help kids so they wouldn't want to experiment with drugs. Finally, I found some scientific research that said that informing parents and giving them tools to talk to their kids would improve the chances that kids would actually say no to drugs. So, we provided parents with some solid information and then did the "fluff" with the kids during the week. We are trying to avoid giving treats at every turn (we are meeting with some opposition, from the kids especially) because I don't believe kids need or should get something every time they do something, especially if it's candy. I love candy and junk food, but I provide enough of that at home for my family, they don't need to get it at school too! We had to get creative, but it all turned out well.

Here are some of the highlights:

On Monday we had the kids sign a banner, pledging that they would say no to drugs and violence. They kept asking, "What do we get for signing?" and my response was always the same: "You got to sign the banner!" Each student got a red plastic bracelet in their classes (thanks to a donation from our school district) and we encouraged them to wear them all week.

"Tie One On" Tuesday--we put the message in the fence with cups and the kiddos tied red ribbons all over and they wore crazy ties.

I felt a little ghetto pushing the cups in, but it was very legible and the kids thought it was great. Unfortunately after 36 hours someone pushed every single cup through. So much for a strong anti-violence message (is vandalism VIOLENT or just really disrespectful?). In any case, I was bugged, and spent some time picking up 400 cups off of the ground.

On Wednesday the kids turned in a pledge they had signed saying that they would respect themselves and others--and say no to drugs and violence. They did get a prize that day (a Red Ribbon Week pencil!) and they were happy.

Thursday was "Inside Out Day" (because drugs and violence turn you inside out). Olivia wore her jeans inside out, but wanted to wear her Halloween t-shirt right side out so she'd match the lunch ladies.

Friday was Halloween and we encouraged the kids to wear their costumes. We had Halloween stamps for their hands and had put up a little surprise in the lunchroom. Each student decorated a ghost and we hung them all over the walls.


I am amazed at how much work goes into PTA activities. We had so much help from other moms, teachers, and administrators--and being with the kids made it all worthwhile. PTA moms become celebrities when they show up with trinkets and activities during recess!

**What anti-drug messages do you remember?