May, what more can I say

By early May, Paul had put more hours into landscaping our lawn than either of us care of calculate. There were many, many trips to the home improvement store to pick up 20 landscaping stones at a time, plus sand, landscaping fabric, and bags and bags of mulch. But all those hours paid off; our flowerbeds are the best looking I've ever seen.

Nathanael's school had a very simple little Mother's Day program. The class sang a cute little song about mothers, then the kids were allowed to join us at the table, thus eating the fruit and muffins that were supposed to be for us, ha I did get a couple pictures of Nathanael with his best friends, Davi'yon and Annsley. I can't remember who that other white boy is. 

I chopped my hair. It didn't exactly turn out as I'd envisioned, but that's usually the way it goes. I certainly didn't end up looking like Reese Witherspoon, which was my goal. I guess there's more to it than the haircut. 

Nathanael procured a hand-me-down satchel from Mimi. Considering he'd been asking for luggage for Christmas for quite some time, this was right up his alley. He immediately packed the thing with first-aid supplies and other necessities. He now carries it to church with him every Sunday, packed with my scriptures, pens, pencils, paper, and crayons. And it goes on every car trip, whether day trips to Dollywood or longer trips. 

In May we learned that another batch of our favorite friends would be moving far away. Luckily we were able to make a quick trip to Dollywood together for a final hoorah. Nathanael and Eva were inseparable all day, riding all the rides together. They were too cute, holding hands around the park. Benny and Becca were the most amazing babies ever, never even getting grumpy as the got carted around for hours. It was such a fun day and we miss our friends so much. The good ones never stay. 

Somehow I managed to nearly forget about the strawberry picking season. We only managed to make it to pick one time. Truly disappointing. Nathanael is actually quite a helpful little picker, and Claire isn't so bad to have along, as long as she stays busy eating the strawberries. 

Nathanael had his kindergarten graduation program. It was actually a really awesome program. They sang lots of songs, recited lots of things they had memorized (including a Bible verse for every letter of the alphabet), played hand bells, etc.

Nathanael had his last day of kindergarten. I don't think he will miss his teacher, but I will miss having him around on Mondays and having the more relaxed schedule (getting him to school at 8:30, pick up at 1:45). Nathanael had a lot of success in kindergarten. He entered not reading a bit, but by the end he was able to read pretty well, especially when he put his mind to it. Reading certainly isn't one of his favorite things to do, but I am proud of his progress. At school, the students had end of the year standardized testing; Nathanael scored above average in most areas. I can't wait to see him grow even more in 1st grade.

And finally, I cannot close the recap of May without mentioning the massive splinter that Paul dug out of Sam's toe. He got it while playing barefoot in our backyard. Robin and I tried to remove it with tweezers, but because it had gone straight in, we had no idea what we were really dealing with. Poor Sam had to endure it until Paul got home from work, at which time Paul had to extract it with tweezers and a razor blade. We couldn't believe the size of the thing and poor Sammy was certainly glad when the operation was over!

Cousins Photo Shoot

School Projects: A Parent's Worst Nightmare

The main theme for Sam's third grade school year was major project overload. In the second half of the year, he was assigned two major projects, one right after the other, with no decrease in other homework to allow time to work on it. The second project was assigned in March, with no clear due date or requirements. All we were clear on was that this was to be a family assignment (because doesn't every family need the school to assign them additional opportunities to do things together?!), we were to visit AT LEAST 10 suggested historically important sites in Greenville and complete a scavenger hunt (answering questions for each place), and we were to make a scrapbook about it. As the weeks ticked by, the project evolved. It seemed his teacher was making it up as she went along. First it was a family project, then the students were supposed to do 100% of the scrapbook in class (yeah right, as if that would EVER get done...). They needed pictures for each place. They needed memoribilia for each place. They needed to pen a POEM, a daggum poem, for each place. They needed a certain number of paragraphs within the scrapbook. Then suddenly there was also a paper due. And on and on and on. I emailed the teacher several times, asking for clarification on certain requirements. She got snippy, seemed annoyed that I wanted clearer direction. She wouldn't give a due date. It was supposed to be a major grade. Yet, ultimately, they never ended up turning them in until the last week of school. Me thinks we could have turned in slop at that point and she would have been so over the school year she still would have given him a 100. But I'm not gonna turn in slop. I put blood, sweat, swears, and tears into that dang scrapbook. It's on the bookshelf so that any time Sam feels unloved, he can pull out that scrapbook and say to himself "my mama loves me."

Places we visited:

The Rudolf Anderson Memorial

The Upcountry History Museum

Apparently children are not welcome here. Nathanael had received 4 free passes to the museum in his Pepsi birthday pack. The ladies at the front desk acted like we were trying to con them and were visibly disgusted by the 5 children Robin and I had brought into their quiet, BORING museum. The scaveger hunt requirement for the museum was to tell something interesting learned there. We struggled to find anything interesting. Ugh, it was miserable. In fact, to make things interesting, Sam gave Nathanel a fat lip on the way home. The tooth was already missing.

Museum and Library of Confederate History 

One Saturday, Paul wanted to get some work done around the house, so I planned to take the kids and knock out several places in one trip. First stop: Confederate History Museum. The place was tiny and quiet, and Claire wanted to run loose so she could break everything. Nathanael, the boy who I thought would be in absolute heaven looking at all the old weaponry, got freaked out by a display of old medical tools, including an amputation saw displayed cutting into a bone. (He was afraid to sleep for weeks) After that, Nathanael suddenly needed to go home to poop and our mission to knock out the whole assignment was in ruins.

We did finally knock out the rest in one whirlwind tour of downtown, however, the weekend we were assigned to show Nathanael's class pet a big time (two birds, one stone). We visited a bunch of statues, the Downtown Baptist Church, the Westin Poinsett Hotel, the Peace Center, the Wyche Pavilion, Liberty Bridge, and Springwood Cemetary, which freaked Sam out and he didn't even want to get out of the car to pose for his obligatory photo. 

North Gate Soda Shop

We capped off our tour of downtown Greenville with a stop at an old soda shop, where Sam enjoyed a cherry bomb (chocolate ice cream in cherry Pepsi) and Nathanael got a milkshake.