Despite a little flight delay, and a drive across town to retrieve Roux from Pet Camp, we made it home from San Diego with enough daylight left for a Courtyard Egg Hunt. It's getting harder to get photos - Brennan & Lucie are blurry, candy-egg-seeking-missiles in most of them.
And they both found the same number of eggs, without parental intervention. It's an Easter Miracle!
Then we moved onto our other Easter traditions: eating too much candy and donning the embarrassing bunny ears.
The Grattan Jellyfish played their final game - it was a little sad, as the team is splitting up to join new Boys and Girls 2nd grade teams in the fall. But we went out on a strong note, with a good game against the McKinley Strikers - they were competitive but not demoralizing, their coach belongs to Daddy's school of coaching (support ALL the kids, not just your team), and Brennan came THIS close to scoring a goal.
In other news, Lucie got her first - and probably not her last - stitches, climbing on a skate ramp. (the bandaid on her chin is covering them) I thought you only needed protective gear while skating. In retrospect, letting her horse around with the bigger boys may not have been the best decision, but I think I regained a few Mommy Points by taking her to the ER and resisting the temptation to go all Country Vet and sew her up myself.
We're encouraging her to pursue her art...
...until the day comes that she tires of drawing leopards and decides her easel makes a fantastic ladder or diving platform.
The last weeks of the school year are a busy time - I don't know if it's deliberately activity heavy, to make the final stretch fun for the kids, or if everyone looks at their calendar and says, Oh crap I only have X days to get this done. So we have the Fun Run, when the kids run laps around the school to raise money for Asante Africa -
Fun Run, 2014: Brennan ran 8 laps (2 miles).
Fun Run, 2015: Brennan ran 11 laps (2.75 miles) in 30 minutes, which means next year he's on track to be a better runner at age 7 than his mother was at 32.
What better way to celebrate than Mac & Cheese on the patio at Zazie?
I was also invited to SF Public Montessori for a Mother's Day Celebration. Lucie met me at the classroom door with a rose, served me sparkling apple cider, and painted my fingernails with a generous amount of silver glitter polish. Then I painted her nails pink and she finished off my cider.
I also learned that my favorite food is salad.
There was also the Talent Show, which featured Brennan reluctantly performing - and the rest of the 1st grade in varying degrees of enthusiasm - a dance routine to "Uptown Funk".
The little sisters club was captivated. Lucie immediately declared she was staying "for the whole show".
I also realized I was running out of days to make good on my promise to let Bren have a day off, since we didn't use up our allotted sick days on actual illness. Shh, don't tell the school district. So we went to the Jeremiah O'Brien, where he produced a flood of WWII questions that immediately dried up when face-to-face with the many kind WWII veterans who volunteer on the ship.
AND I chaperoned the 1st grade trip to the Botanical Gardens. We split into small groups to "collect specimens", aka, pick up leaves/pinecones/rotting camellia blossoms/slugs. My group included 4 runners and 2 dawdlers, which meant I was trying to coax someone away from a super-interesting stick while several other someones shot off out of sight and earshot. And we took public transit. I'd rank it 8 out of 10 on the stress scale. (and yes, Brennan was one of the runners)
The Darkling Ponies
(their choice for group name)
All the school work comes home, so we get a chance to see what Brennan's been working on all year:
This is from pretty early days, so he gets a pass on penmanship & spelling. I think it reads "I went to the Boulange and ate a sandwich" - but what I really like is the picture. Even if he can't spell "Boulange" he knows to write it backward to indicate he's inside the cafe.
Here's another favorite, mostly because it's so typical San Francisco: going out for a family dinner means walking and sushi and some ginormous hill.
In addition to all of the above - but not pictured - we also had a Count Me In party (a kind mini-fundraiser) for students at the animal hospital, Roux & I visited Bren's class for a career talk, and the Grattan Egg Drop, where Brennan is now 2/2 for egg survival. (We used cotton batting and stretch gauze from the bandage drawer at work, which is probably taking office supply appropriation to a level beyond the odd pen or paper clip)
Geez, that's a lot of activities! We need a BREAK.
So we went to our favorite break spot, Healdsburg, to enjoy some sun, picnic in the grass, pick up our wine, and...
FEED SOME LAMBS!
And before we knew it, May 29th arrived - the last day of school. Here's your first grade graduate:
