A Torrential Downpour of Good Times and Pictures

School has ended! Parties have happened! We've gotten SO MUCH RAIN!

Last Day of School pic

The week was crazy. Monday was a holiday, Tuesday was a very full work day, and Wednesday was Claire's awards ceremony!

You'll be glad to know she graduated first grade, even if she isn't happy about it at all. She has loved first grade like she loved Kindergarten- possibly even more- and she is truly devastated to leave her teacher behind. Remember when I wrote my post about daycare kids and how wonderful it is to find these people who become such important bright spots of love in your kids' lives? Well elementary school can be like that too and her first grade teacher is a true bright spot.

Claire also got Outstanding Citizenship, High Honor Roll, and Reader Leader for every six weeks. It's been a great year for her. She's learned so much and, possibly not related, lost so many teeth.

Wednesday was also the big kids' first summer league swim practice of the year and Claire got stung by a bee! Tons of excitement all around.

Past experience with bees

Thursday was almost normal, except I taught two barre classes that night, at 5:00 and 7:00, which was fun and exhausting. I wouldn't normally do that except my old studio needed a sub and I love them and I so rarely miss a night with the kiddos that it felt okay. Especially since I was taking off the next day for Last Day of School shenanigans. And I'd just bought new stripey yoga pants I needed to justify. (They're beautiful, no additional justification was really needed.)

Also on Thursday, Landon did his oral presentation for his third grade state project to Claire's first grade class! It was random that their classes got paired, but it was so cute.

Claire's teacher sent me pictures- look at her listening intently to her brother's presentation!

Landon had a note card of facts and everything, but he told me he didn't really even need to use it. Then he proved it by repeating his presentation to me about 5 times while I made dinner. He may be too cool for me to mess up his hair, but he remains earnest and adorable about all academic endeavors.

Now for Friday! Landon's awards ceremony was at 1:00. He also graduated! He loved third grade, but unlike Claire, is quite delighted to move on to fourth. (Fourth!)

He also got High Honor Roll and a bunch of other things.

Claire loves school with her whole heart, Landon thinks it's great mostly because he's effortlessly good at it and he's a social butterfly who needs a swarm and a reason to do his hair in the morning. We loved his teacher this year and are so thankful for all she did to keep him challenged and excited about class each day.

It's been a wonderful year. I genuinely can't believe it's over.

Friday afternoon was a little Last Day of School pool party. James had to coach until 7 and I knew my kids would be crazy, so I wanted people over to drink margaritas while the kids play in the pool. We planned to order some catered Mexican food and make is super easy and splashy.

Except it rained. It rained the minute school got out and didn't feel like stopping. Now I suddenly had 22 people in my house in swim suits. Luckily, I also had the margaritas and 90's Smash Hits on my Spotify. So we rocked out. Twelve old people in a kitchen with margaritas in Yetis. Every memory was better than the last. We knew every word to every song we didn't know we remembered. Our kids were appalled. As every generation has noted, kids just don't understand good music these days.

make it stoooooppp

We got the food and ate picnic style on the floor. My kids, who have never eaten a bite of food away from the kitchen table found this to be AMAZING.

A million 90's songs later and the skies cleared just before bedtime. The kids jumped in the pool and I made a 4th pitcher of margaritas.

It was a good time, even if I had to pull the dust buster out a few times along the way. I can handle a lot. I can't handle food anywhere food isn't supposed to be.

Today (Saturday; it's been a full week) was Claire's MUCH anticipated birthday party! 25 1st graders and siblings coming to our house to swim! Troll themed, with lots of music, a treasure hunt in the pool, and ALL THE SWIMMING. So obviously, it started raining immediately after we woke up. Landon and I ran errands at 11 and water was just being dumped from the sky onto our heads like it was personal.

The party was supposed to go from 2-4 and I was standing in Michael's at 12:30 trying to think of backup craft activities to do in the house when I just couldn't handle it and sent a red-alarm emoji-filled text to all the parents officially postponing the party until 3. We've never had to do that before but the chance of rain went down every hour after 1:00 and I just hoped and prayed it would help. And we couldn't push back more than that because we had ANOTHER pool party for a friend that started at 6:00. So we continued our errands, forgoing the practical craft-filled backup plan and going for hopes and pretend sun god sacrifices instead.

It totally worked.

I set up all the snacks and decorations inside beforehand, because I have to party-prep somehow and it was actively raining outside until EXACTLY 2:55 p.m. So everyone admired the spread and then went straight outside to swim, hallelujah.

Eventually I trusted the blue skies enough to transfer all the snacks back outside where they belonged. I made Trolls-themed chex snack mix with multiple eye-searing colors of candy melts.

We had 48 bags of cotton-candy "Troll hair."

Poppy's pink party punch for grown-ups and water and juice for the kiddos.

A giant rainbow cake from Costco because "rainbows" felt the most Troll-like of the options.

But mostly, there was swimming.

James even got to swim when he jumped in fully clothed to rescue a drowning child whose parent dropped off their kid without telling us he COULDN'T SWIM. When I told the parent what happened at the pickup, he shrugged and said "yeah, that's happened before." [RAGE]

But everyone had fun. Even the poor child who couldn't swim but happily played on the steps under the eagle-eye of James and his wet shorts for the rest of the time.

Claire opened her presents- lots of Trolls and arts and crafts, utter perfection for our shiny happy near-7-year-old. The $10-20 birthday price point is really her jam.
She has no long-term collections or preferences, she just loves lots of little things she can squirrel away in her 1,000 shoe box treasure boxes like the happy hoarder she is.

I'll write about her birthday milestone tomorrow- she's owed her own post, so I'll wrap up with a pic from our super fun second pool party of the day. Our kids somehow found it thrilling to swim hard for 2 more hours, including this kid who is now too cool for goggles at a coed 9-year-old birthday party and who I honestly didn't recognize when I spotted him across the pool.

And now, moments before midnight, we're off to bed so we can celebrate our sweet sunshine girl in the morning. Can't believe my Biscuit is turning 7. What fun it has been every year so far.