School's Out for Summer

Friday was our last day of 1st grade and 3rd grade.

My babies are getting too big!

The first grade stayed in and watched Finding Nemo, with a popcorn bar. The third grade had their end-of-year party at the park, with picnic lunches and a visit from the snow cone truck.

Since I was ridiculously insane and volunteered as one of the homeroom parents for both boys' classes this year, I was in charge of the end-of year gifts for their teachers. I stole this cute idea off pinterest, and was rather pleased with my flower pot gift card end result. I actually like this better than the winter holidays tree we've done in the past.

Both boys had perfect attendance this nine weeks. Ryan would have had perfect attendance for the entire year if mean old Mommy hadn't made him miss a day to go play with Laurel and Audrey in Houston back in October.

Alex also received honor roll again. Combined with his absolutely perfect STAAR test scores, I'm a very proud mama of my "staar" 3rd grader right now.

And I know, getting a 100 on your standardized test scores doesn't mean you are a genius, but unfortunately, those damn tests are important and can make all the difference in your future. We made a big deal about his test result with him, to show how proud we were of him. And then in his end-of-year summary, my heart warmed about ten degrees when I saw he was equally proud of himself. Especially when this moment was sandwiched in between his favorite activity was "the last day of school" and he'll never forget when "today happened" (ie, the last day of school).

So to celebrate, we took the boys to see Iron Man 3 after school on Friday. Both boys were thrilled, although Ryan afterwards admitted he was a little scared by it. Yes, I know, neither boy is anywhere near 13 in age, but somewhere along the way I accepted superhero and science fiction violence as being tolerable since its not "real." Or so my bizarre justification goes.

Our celebrations continued on Saturday watching our first Austin Aztex game of the year. They won 3-2, and it was a good game. We love watching real football matches!

*and yes, somehow both boys are wearing the EXACT SAME CLOTHES TWO DAYS IN A ROW. What can I say? Its summer vacation. 

Finally, Ryan and the first grade boys had an end-of year Ninjago Training Party on Sunday, but I'll make that a separate post.

Now, on to a summer filled with (hopefully) fun camps and awesome vacations! Or, as Alexander put it: