Second Half of First and Third Grade

Despite the challenges of this particular school year, second and fourth grades are finally rolling for Mika and Ramona. Here is a look back at some projects and fun they had the second half of last school year:

Mika's First Grade 100-Day project:

   With some help from her family, Mika stuck 100 penguins on and around an iceberg made out of styrofoam and foil.

Hers was the most awkwardly-sized-project by far. I don't know how she brought it home with her on the school bus.

Ramona's Third Grade Biography Project:

   Ramona chose to research Marie Curie for her biography presentation last Spring. She created several powerpoint slides and wrote a puppet show about Marie's life. We helped her make puppets out of old gloves, fabric, and buttons.

Ramona seemed genuinely inspired by Marie Curie's accomplishments, and perhaps because of it, she especially enjoyed her fourth grade chemistry unit in September.

Third Grade Roman Festival:

The kids got a day to wear togas made out of white pillowcases, make laurel wreaths, and create jewelry out of aluminum foil.

First Grade Music Performance: "It's How You Play the Game"
First graders got to wear jerseys or other athletic gear for their show in April. Mika represented her favorite sport with her Highland Meadows Tennis T-shirt.

Around this time she also completed her solar system project. Mika decided to research the planet Mars.

And here is a peacock Ramona drew for her animal research project:

Showcase:

The grand finale of every school year at Bethke is of course the Spring Showcase. We began our evening by perusing the art room. Mika had some clay owls to show us. 

Next, we watched Ramona perform a dance with a group of friends in the gym.

Not long after that was the third grade recorder performance in the cafeteria.

Finally, we made sure to spot all of the girls' projects displayed throughout the halls.

Teacher Appreciation:

As the classroom coordinator for Mika's first grade class, I was in charge of a class gift for Teacher Appreciation week. I decided to attempt a compilation of acrostic poems by the kids, and this is what I came up with:

I wasn't in charge of a class gift for Ramona's third grade class, but Ramona made an adorable card on her own for Ms. Fennimore:

First and third grade ended on a great note last year. Hoping the girls will be able to look back on second and fourth and admit that it wasn't so bad, either.

Shoulder to Shoulder

I need Forest. I am not complete without him. But I have had to learn to be okay without him the past year and a half as work has required him to travel to Taiwan every other month. Those trips, combined with a smattering of work trips to Silicon Valley, has made his absence rather prominent. Back in May, not long after another Taiwan trip, Forest had surgery on his left shoulder which ended up having a more challenging recovery than anticipated. With post-surgery restrictions limiting the use of his left arm, I was left with all the lifting, child carrying, and lawn mowing that needed to be done. More than ever, I was learning to survive without his help. 

Although it was not fun, I'm sure it made us stronger somehow.

Here is Forest on the day of his surgery, by the time his drugs were wearing off: 

And here we are a couple of days later on our 11th anniversary, trying to soak in some peace from the temple grounds after a particularly rough day:

Eleven years of marriage has taught us a lot. One thing Forest has learned is the benefit of supplying his wife with consolation chocolate to help make life a little sweeter. Here is my favorite variety of chocolate he almost never fails to bring back from Taiwan:

And this is a bag of chocolate I must have earned one week when I was looking more defeated than usual:

Now that his shoulder is mostly healed, I have felt some of the burden lift off of mine. But I hope Forest still keeps buying me chocolate, anyway.

May The Fourth Be With You

For the first time ever, our family celebrated Star Wars on May fourth. We dressed up Ramona as Princess Leia, Mika as Rey of Jakku, Paula as Padme Amadala (warrior edition). Rey and Leia rode the bus to school that day after practicing their piano.

After school, their weapons of choice were water guns and sticks from the backyard.

In the evening, we watched about half of "The Last Jedi." I think we finished the rest of it the next day. Ramona's Rey doll sat and watched with us, too.

I would have loved to dress Wylie up as a little Yoda or Darth Vader. Maybe another time.

I love how Star Wars turned out to be such a unifying force in our family. Any story that helps pile all our kids onto the same couch and plays a soundtrack by John Williams seems alright with me.

Sam-Packed Saturday

Aunt Christie had a conference in Denver at the end of April, and brought Uncle Dan and baby June with her. We still had not met baby June, and who knows when was the last time we saw and Dan Christie? So that Saturday, we drove down to meet them for lunch and a stroll around the city.

We went to Sam's No. 3.

A balloon artist handed Mika a flower as we were walking down the sidewalk.

On the way home, we took naps in the car and stopped at Culver's for ice cream.

After that, we had my orchestra's annual potluck/meeting in Loveland. It was my idea to get it partially catered, which turned out to be a good idea, but of course then it fell on Forest to pick up the food (in addition to supervising children during the meeting). Thank you, Love.

It was a little jam-packed, but not a bad Saturday for the Dixons.