Tuesday of last week Sarah had an all day field trip to the park for her Mountain Man Rendezvous. Their grade had been learning about the Native Americans and the explorers and to sum up everything they have learned the last month they have a rendezvous. At this rendezvous they have a mountain man come and speak with the kids. Then they have different stations the kids would rotate around to see. At the stations they had different pioneer games, tasks, and the favorite: a trading post station. I got to volunteer to help man the trading post station. The kids had earned paper beaver pelts according to behavior and homework status to use as currency to buy things at the trading post. Wow it was like Black Friday only for kids--haha! It was fun to help with that and see what different items the kids bought. It was fun to see Sarah's group cycle through. She ended up buying some toys and some candy.
Although I was helping at the trading post station I got to see Sarah try out the three legged race station.
The kids had the choice to dress up for the occasion. Sarah wanted to wear her pioneer costume. However, that only lasted about half the day until she was too hot and it became too uncomfortable. Good thing she wore shorts and a t-shirt underneath.
Right after school got out that afternoon Matthew, Josh and Sarah had their piano recital. Their piano teacher loves Matthew (and the other kids, too). She even let him conduct the recital. When we heard he would be conducting Aaron and I were a bit nervous. Matthew can be a bit of a wild card as in you never know what he is going to say. Anyway, he was so elated to be conducting. As you can see there was a lot of hand flapping going on because he was so excited. Also let me just say that it is a good thing we live in Utah and all the recital participants are LDS because after Matthew performed his piano pieces he got up and bore an impromptu testimony. Again I repeat he is a bit of a wild card....however, it was fine. He did do a pretty good job at conducting, too.
Josh's turn:
Sarah's turn:
Here's the songs they played:
Sarah got to design one of the covers for the recital.
Front:
Back:
I am glad they are learning to play the piano and like it (most times anyway).
After the recital I had to rush Sarah over to her dance performance at another care center. We had enough time after the recital to pick up her costumes, put some lipstick on and leave for the performance. We made it right as they were getting ready to start--phew!!
The next afternoon was just as crazy. Noah had his first Cub Scout Pack Meeting and he was pretty excited that he had earned some awards as you can see his face:
We were supposed to have a scavenger hunt outside and roast s'mores over a camp fire, but as soon as pack meeting started it began to rain pretty hard. They had to move things inside. Luckily, our Cub Scout pack is pretty small so there weren't too many boys, but enough to make it loud--haha! After getting his awards he got to pick out a corny cheer. Yay for Cub Scouts!
That night Aaron and I had to divide and conquer as well. Daniel had a baseball game at the same time as pack meeting. After the baseball game Daniel's youth activity that night was to go on a 12 mile bike ride. So as soon as baseball finished Daniel had enough time to come home, change out of his baseball clothes grab his bike and go. Here's all the boys and leaders that went on the bike ride:
Matthew had to walk to his activity since Aaron and I weren't around to take him. Luckily, we live pretty close to the church. I had to come home from pack meeting a few minutes early to take Josh to his Youth Council activity. The police were doing an active shooter drill at a school that they had asked the youth council members and some other kids to participate in for practice. Josh got to help out with that. However, when he showed me the pictures of the activity I don't think Josh minded since he got carrying the injured kids duty which meant he got a few tries to carry some cute girls to safety. Insert and eye roll right in here--haha!
The next morning was Aaron's birthday. Happy birthday! Although it was his birthday things were still pretty busy. That morning the Jr. High had an end of year assembly where they got a bunch of kids to perform and dancing through the decades dance. Josh volunteered to help out. Here he is during a few of the songs:
It was pretty impressive because the whole group danced straight for 20 minutes and this was active dancing not the deacon shuffle. It made Aaron and I tired just watching them!! Here's a small clip of one of the 8 songs they danced to:
At the very end of the assembly Mrs. Smith who was in charge of the whole assembly asked Josh and two other students to dress up as the Warrior mascots and run around and through the students to get them excited about the school. After running around they went up to the microphone and Josh went through the school morals and then did some more running and shouting to get everyone to show their school spirit. Here's my spirited Celtic Warrior with his sword (don't worry I made sure he was wearing shorts under his kilt--haha!):
Later that afternoon was Daniel's elementary graduation. He got to wear a suit to school even though the graduation wasn't until that afternoon. He looked pretty sharp as he left for school that morning:
As we were waiting for the program to start we looked at the wall with all the graduates' pictures on it along with what they wanted to be when they grew up. Aaron was pretty proud to read that Daniel wanted to be an engineer:
Daniel is at that stage where parents are embarrassing. As his class was entering the gym they walked right by us, but Daniel wouldn't look at us. When he finally did glance at us he wouldn't acknowledge us by waving or anything. He just glanced and gave us a weird look and kept walking:
The graduation program started with the announcing of the 'Hope of America' award from the Kiwanis Club. They pick one girl and one boy from each of the five 6th grade classes to receive this award based on their leadership, good character, scholarship, willingness to serve, etc. We were pretty excited to hear Daniel's name be announced as an award recipient. After announcing the winners they had the parents come up on stage with the award recipients which was cool.
They got a certificate and a medal to wear:
Next on the program they recognized the youth council for that year which Daniel got to stand up for, too:
After that they sang some songs. Daniel was a part of a small ensemble that sang the first verse of the song:
After that they handed out all the diplomas. Here's Daniel getting his from his teacher:
We even got to embarrass Daniel further when Aaron loudly yelled out "ALRIGHT DANIEL" when we were clapping for the graduates. Daniel looked like he wanted to disappear as he completely blushed...if you can't embarrass your kids who can you embarrass?!
We were glad G&G T were able to come see his graduation:
We are some proud parents:
Daniel's teacher (she also happened to be Josh's old 6th grade teacher, too):
Last school day at the elementary school:
Daniel also received the President's Award for Educational Excellence for his academic performance which he did great throughout the year:
Here's his Hope of America Certificate:
An interesting side note is that I received the Hope of America Award as well way back when I was in 6th grade, too. Wahoo! Like mother like son--haha!
During that day as well Josh received his Warrior of Light pin from seminary. In order to get that he had to attend at least 80% of seminary days throughout the year, read the scriptures for 200 days, read the entire Book of Mormon, pass off the scripture mastery scriptures, complete both doctrinal mastery tests each semester, complete 9 EST which are explain, share and testify with your parents about 9 different mastery topics, and memorize the names of the first presidency and the 12 apostles.
Wahoo, Josh!
Matthew was pretty excited to get his yearbook. The SBOs had Matthew's yearbook engraved which was really sweet.
They had it engraved to say 'Matthew Mancil GPS':
After all the craziness of the day we were able to come home to finally celebrate Aaron's birthday. He wanted his favorite dinner of Firecracker chicken. Also instead of a cake he wanted a banana split/brownie with a sundae ice cream bar including different toppings and whipping cream.
Since there was no cake we could only put one candle in his ice cream for him to blow out.
This was a big birthday year for Aaron. He is having a bit of a hard time with putting a '4' in front of his age...I am a mean wife with with not too much sympathy since I am older than him and he has been teasing me about that for the last two years since I have been in my 40s for that long while he has still been a young thing in his 30s!!
Even Sophie got in on the celebration when we gave her her own 'puppaccino' with whipping cream on her dog food. She was a big fan--haha!
Aaron got two funny t-shirts for his birthday. He got a funny electrical engineer 'Resist' t-shirt with a picture of a resistor on it:
He also got a 'Trophy Husband' t-shirt, too. I love it!!
Although it was a crazy day, it was a good day!
The next day was Sarah and Noah's last day of school. Once I took their pictures that morning I put all the kids' first and last day of school pictures together. I like to compare how the kids have changed throughout the year:
They are looking older and older which makes me sad, but also happy that they are turning out to be good little people for the most part despite their parents!
Since Sarah and Noah were at school I had just the three oldest at home which was a bit weird. I took them out to lunch to get some deli hot dogs which were pretty yummy. Teenage boys are always up for food, right?!
That afternoon Sarah and Noah came home from school. Sarah got the 'Happy Helper' award for her always positive attitude:
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