Preschool Wrap-Up

 Natalie had such a fun year in preschool.  I was so glad I ended up signing her up.  She absolutely loved her teacher, Mrs. Chae:

In fact, I don't know if she will ever love another teacher more.  Mrs. Chae has hero-status in our home.  She was a great teacher for Natalie.  She could be firm with the kids, but she was really good at getting down at their level and they all loved her.  She loved Natalie, too.  We had a parent-teacher conference at the end of the year and she just raved about what a pleasure it was to have Natalie in her class.  It was so wonderful to hear as a parent.  

We had a lot of fun activities and field trips towards the end of the year, including:

a picnic at the park...

 ...and a fun trip to Happy Hollow which I got to go on.

We also had a really cute Mother's Day luncheon complete with songs, homemade gifts, and flowers.

Natalie and Zoe:

Janelle took this one there and I loved how it turned out:

Even though it was hard sometimes volunteering so much at the preschool, I'm really glad I did.  It gave me some great one-on-one time with my Natalie.

1st Grade is in the Books

That year really flew by for me.  I still can't believe Elizabeth is going to be a 2nd grader soon.  There were some highlights at the end of the year.

She lost both of her top front teeth!  They've almost completely grown in now but she was toothless for awhile there.

Elizabeth got an award for excellence in writing!  When we got the notice that she would be receiving an award, I though for sure it would have something to do with reading.  But, it was a nice surprise to see it was in writing.  She is a great writer and I hope she keeps working hard to improve.

Elizabeth really loved her teacher, Mrs. Gray.

She loved the last week of school when they had their fun dress days.  Here she is on crazy/mismatched day:

It was a great year!  The poor girl will be starting yet another year at a new school.  She's a little bit nervous but we keep reminding her about how well everything worked out last year and all the friends she made.  I think she'll do great.

Primary Talent Show

Back in May (I think) our church put on a talent show for all the kids to participate in.  The girls were so excited about it and took forever deciding what to do.  They were all over the place.  Finally, (a few days before) Natalie decided that she would sing "Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime" by herself and Elizabeth decided she would play "Ode to Joy" on the piano.

It was so fun to watch them.  They both did wonderfully.  I was so impressed with Natalie's courage--going up to sing all by herself, and not even with anyone to accompany her.  You couldn't have paid me enough to do that when I was her age.  Here she is:

And here's the video we got of her:

This was Elizabeth's first time performing in public on the piano and she did a great job.  She played the song  perfectly and then I joined her and we played a duet.  We messed up a little bit on that part but that's OK.  During practice Elizabeth kept stopping when she'd make a mistake but during the talent show she just pushed through and I was proud of her for that.

(I was concentrating pretty hard :)

We were some very proud parents!

(Those still pictures are courtesy of my friend, Mary)