Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
We were in Destin at the start of our vacation for about 10 days. This is the longest we've ever been there, but was a wonderful place to recover from the trip and jet-lag, and it was nice to start our whirlwind month of visiting with a week or so to relax on our own terms.
I'm not really feeling up to a recap of our trip, so I'll just share a few highlights and memorable moments.
Highlights:
-Seeing Andy and Patsy, who the kids and I hadn't seen in almost a year.
-The beach! Enough said.
-Last year, Hannah was just crawling around, but this year she was big enough to run, play in the sand, and smash Chris and Jayce's sandcastles.
-Jayce' swimming drastically improving from the start to the end of our vacation thanks to Chris' instruction.
-Chris and Jayce night swimming several evenings in the pool.
-Jayce immediately befriended any kid that was around him at the pool, playgrounds, restaurants, etc. I guess when you are used to being in school around your friends 33+ hours a week and you are suddenly just with your parents, desperate times call for desperate measures. But I was so proud of him.
-Mellow Mushroom (which Hannah called "marshmallow"), Jim & Nick's Barbecue, and breakfast on the beach.
Memorable:
-Hannah tossing her pool floaty over her shoulders and declaring "Here she comes Hannah!" as she strode towards the pool. Every time. Apparently she needs to be announced.
-One night we were driving to dinner and Chris made a comment about go-carts. Hannah immediately piped up from the backseat, yelling, "Go Cards!" with her fist in the air. :)
-We stayed on the 18th floor, so Jayce and Hannah counted up or counted down for us and the other elevator occupants on every trip.
-Often when we were walking somewhere Jayce would grab Hannah's hand, she would let him, and they would stroll out to the car or over wherever we were going together.
-The kids playing in various fountains around the town after lunch or dinner. At night, whenever the fountains would go from a short burst to a large towering stream of water, Hannah would run away saying, "Oh no! Fire! Fire!"
-One night while we were in the condo someone set off a few fireworks from the beach, which towered over the beachfront condos and lit up the sky. We ran out to the balcony where we had a perfect view. We only saw a few, but it was Hannah's first experience with fireworks, and Jayce's first where he wasn't cowering at the noise. It was just enough.
Whenever we were getting ready to go somewhere, Hannah would go climb into her stroller that was by the door to wait for us, since the stroller is her ride whenever we go anywhere in London. She also climbed in a few times and asked me "Mom, stroll Hannah." and I would push her around the condo a little bit.
-That said, after about 10 minutes in the car, Hannah, who now isn't used to riding in cars, would start whining and asking to be held. (Not that this was fun, just funny to think that my 2 year old is not used to car riding.) However, she played games with whoever was driving by making silly faces at them in the rearview mirror. She also called her seatbelt her click, and would instruct us all when we got in, "Mom, do click! Dad, do click! Mom, a Hannah click off!"
-Jayce re-discovering tv shows that he hadn't seen in a year. The Disney Channel lineup and most of PBS' shows aren't on here, and there were a few where even Chris and I were stopped in our tracks, listening to the intro music and trying to remember the name of the show. A strange thing.
-On the way home there was a black spec on the window beside Hannah. She thought it was a bee, and talked to it for most of the ride home. "Bee! Shoo bee! A bee doing? Mom, a bee doing? Mom, a bee fly! Bee…"
Monday, August 26, 2013
Jayce's class had their sharing assembly a few months ago, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The class has a short 20 minute or so presentation to the parents one morning on some things that they had recently been working on. The class sang a few songs, talked about their senses, and went through the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. (There is a video at the end of the post of their performance.)
It was pretty cute, though certainly not as elaborate as their Christmas play. They each had speaking/acting parts, sang a few songs, and then we got to go back to their classroom to see what else they'd been working on.
I was recording the show, and Chris was doing his best to keep Hannah restrained, who was so excited about the singing, dancing, group of kids in a big room, and well, all of it.
When they finished and Jayce ran over to say hi Hannah was delighted.
She took his hat and decided to start a little performance of her own.
This picture (above) is my kiddos to a T right now: Jayce chilling, Hannah performing. This is what they were like our whole vacation.
This is one of my very favorite things about Jayce's school, they do a "learning book" of sorts. Each child has a book that the teachers fill up throughout the year with various examples of them achieving their learning objectives in the classroom, pictures of them participating in different activities with captions, and examples of their work glued in with dates and explanations.
I loooooooove this. I love being able to see what he is up to in his classroom since he rarely tells me about his day, and I love the pictures of him in action, obviously. There are a few different times during the year when parents are invited into the classroom for the students to show us their books, and Jayce loves flipping through it and telling me about his work.
We have his book now, we received it at the end of the school year. But at the time of this assembly I felt like this book was a precious treasure and I was eager to get a few pictures to show the grandparents. It turns out that I didn't need to do this since we brought Jayce's book with us to the states and he was able to sit down and flip through it with a few of them. It turns out that even kids who don't want to talk about their day still want to talk about their work and photos when it is all pulled together, and I have read through it with and without Jayce a few times since it came home. It's like his teacher made us a detailed scrapbook of the year. I can only imagine how much time this took them and I love it.
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