WaterStone Bank Contest and Kinderfest

Last Friday was a really special day at school. During April I had posted about WaterStone Bank hosting a 90th Anniversary giveaway to local non-profits. Well, we didn't win the first place prize of $30,000, but HOORAY, we ended up 5th place in the overall voting and were awarded $15,000! That is huge for us and our Foundation!

Since early May, we knew we were one of the recipients, but I didn't want to blog about it until it was official. The press release is here. On Friday WaterStone Bank arrived at school, gigantic check in hand, just in time to see one of the funnest end of the school year events, Kinderfest. The check presentation was done in the gym with all the kids present, and there was wild cheering and tons of excitement. It was great!
 The bank representatives were very impressed to be completely immersed in a German speaking environment and see how the kids responded with such natural ease. They even got to hear the kids sing some favorite German songs.

The German Immersion Foundation will use the money to help fund and expand the Amity Intern Program at our school. Every year we have between 4 and 5 German college students come to our school to complete their teaching internship. I cannot say enough about how valuable the interns are in our classrooms. Beyond the native German language skills they add, they lend an entirely unique and authentic German culture experience to each classroom they help out in. We are so thankful for the Amity Interns and for the funds to be able to continue this excellent program!

As a side note, now when you click on the German Immersion Foundation logo in my sidebar, it no longer brings you to the voting page, but instead directs you to the Foundation's website. Just in case you are ever curious about what GIF is up to.


 After the awards and singing in the gym, the kids all headed outside for Kinderfest, a school carnival day. Here, Alyssa is jumping rope with Frau Petri, one of the awesome interns spoken of above. Its so cool how the intern program not only brings great benefits to our school, but also that it benefits the German students who come here as well. They seem to love the experience of teaching in the US. There is a current 2nd grade teacher who was hired full time as a result of her internship, she had the opportunity to go back to Germany to teach, but felt strongly enough about the program that she chose to stay here. Recently one of the interns was amazed at the banana muffins I brought into Rebekah's class {I'll be honest, they were from a box :-)} and it's just small things like that where a huge cultural difference is seen, and I appreciate so much that we can introduce them to things, and our students learn so much from them.


 Emma and her sweet classmate, Dara waiting to play some Kinderfest games.


 This picture of Rebekah with her hand in a popcorn bag just about sums up her entire Kinderfest afternoon. She ate treats, and more treats, then more treats. All week long we had talked about how this was her very first Kinderfest, and she was so excited.

I was supposed to be working one of the games when I saw her sitting in the grass on the edge of the playground. She was all alone, just snacking and staring at the older kids playing tug of war out in the field. I was worried that she lost her friends and was sad, so I walked over to see her. When I asked her what she was doing she told me very contently, "I'm watching them tug the war." Then she added in an almost nostalgic way and like she was very much trying to ingrain the thoughts in her memory, "I can't believe this is my first day of daycare." See, we have this conversation at least twice a week when we walk past the after school daycare in their school's gymnasium about how much Rebekah loves daycare. I always have to remind her that she has never once been to daycare. So somewhere along the way she has gotten the impression that daycare is carnival games, tug of war, tricycle races, magnetic fishing pole games, dunk tanks, and snacks. And she was very proud to finally spend her first afternoon there!


 In the picture above where A and R are smiling, this is what they are looking at ~ Ka'iulani's teacher in the dunk tank, and she did get wet. Thank you, Frau O'Connor for being such a good sport! There's not a whole lot that kids enjoy seeing more than their teacher sitting in a dunk tank.

It was a good day to be a MGIS Ladybug! Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to vote for us in the contest!!

Summerfest Planting Day, Not Feeling At All Like Summer

Yesterday I went with Alyssa and some of the 5th graders at her school to Summerfest Planting Day. Summerfest requested that the school limit our group size to 24 {which works out to be a little less than one half the 5th graders at her school}, and in her usual, no nonsense manner Alyssa informed me that she was one of her teacher's favorites and that's why she was able to go. At least she doesn't think lowly of herself or her standing with her teacher :-)
 It was actually quite exciting for her to do this because often when we visit Summerfest grounds during the summer and see the areas that have been planted by local students, or when we go to some of the downtown parks that have trees decorated at Christmas time the girls will look at the signs that tell which school had decorated there and they always ask if their school ever gets to do this. Before now, none of the girls have been in a class that got to do any of the downtown decorating, so it was a fun opportunity.


 This is Alyssa and her friend, Hannah. The weather was kind of terrible, it was somewhere in the high 30s and the wind coming off the lake was absolutely freezing! The kids would take turns planting for a little while, then they'd duck behind a cement wall for shelter from the wind to warm up for a few minutes. Not at all what we think of when we think of a trip down to Summerfest. The Summerfest organizers treated all the kids to hot cocoa and doughnuts, which the kids thought was awesome.


 There was also plenty of playtime too. I can't believe how quickly her 5th grade year is wrapping up! We just got the invite to the 5th grade completion ceremony and it was a lot to wrap my mind around that in just a few weeks she will be done with elementary school and only a couple months later she'll be in middle school! I think it was Beth Moore who I heard say something about how in raising young children the days sometimes get so loooong, but the years fly by. It's so true!!!

Pen Pals

For the last couple of months, Alyssa's class has had pen pals with students from a 5th grade class at a different school in our area. It has been fun for her and she has a lot in common with the girl they matched her up with, so that has made it extra special and exciting.

Today Alyssa wrote the last letter that she will send before she gets to meet her pen pal (she is soooooo excited about this!) in June when the other class takes a field trip to our school. She decided to make a collage of all the things they have in common.
 Thank you, Heather for sharing the cute magnetic bookmarks on your blog! Alyssa made a few of the rainbow and paint ones for her pen pal and they were the perfect little gift to send along with her letter and collage :-)

The girls both love theater and singing. In fact, in one of the letters from her pen pal, the little girl mentioned being nervous about singing the National Anthem that night at a school basketball game. "Wow, she must be really good!" Alyssa told me.


I think letter writing is becoming a lost practice. I'm as guilty as anyone else of neglecting the pen and paper for the speed of the electronic version. It was nice to see the kids encouraged to write actual letters that have a personal touch to them! Alyssa was so excited to receive each letter and she never wasted any time at all writing a response. The notes they passed back and forth were precious. Beyond sharing about their interests and hobbies, their messages were something to the effect of: Do you want to be friends?... Yes! I want to be friends! Do you want to be my friend? When I was a kid, I remember wishing I had a pen pal from a far-away place, and this letter writing experience for Alyssa has been everything a kid could imagine in their childhood pen pal daydreams.

My Little German Strudel Cake

Get ready for some cuteness :-)

Last week, Rebekah got to bring home her German Dance dirndl. The dresses are sewn by her teacher who does such an incredible job. People who can sew actual outfits that people would want to wear absolutely amaze me. They have delicate pearl buttons and every detail is attended to, Miss Irene even sewed her name to the inside of each piece, it's so perfect. When Rebekah brought hers home she was so happy! She marched into the living room and asked Dave, "You want me to try it on for you, Daddy?!"
 This morning, as we got ready for her first dance performance, Rebekah was none too thrilled to have her hair braided, it's so baby fine that it was no easy job either.


 Our sweet little German dancer.


 Here she is with a group of Emma's friends, and if she looks a little distressed it's because they were wanting to take pictures with her which was keeping her from doing this:


 Playing chase around the May Pole with Allie.


 Before Christmas Rebekah's partner was a girl who was a little older than her and she gave Rebekah a lot of direction during the dances. Her most recent dance partner, Claire, is almost as young as she is, making them the most unpredictable {and funniest} couple on the dance floor.


 Rebekah and Claire kept overtaking the spot in the circle that their neighbors should have occupied, and at one point I think they even switched positions with them in the circle.


 But they could not have had any bigger smiles or any more fun compromising the technical details of the dances.


 And I'd like to argue that they looked pretty cute too!!

















Tonight we are praying hard for Dave's grandmother. On our drive home this afternoon we got a call from his sister saying that Grandmommy fell and broke her hip. She may even be in surgery right now. We are thinking of her so much and praying for the surgery and for her pain to be under control! XOXO

Emma's First Piano Recital

Here is a short video and a few photos from Emma's piano recital last week. She only plays for about 30 or 40 seconds and the rest is the children singing.
I loved her abrupt tiny bow at the end, so Emma-like in every way.


 Emma and Summer.


 A startling amount of concentration from a usually giggly and relaxed girl.


 Emma and Carlos enjoying the singing portion of the evening.

Thank you for the pretty yellow dress, Aunty Ku'u, Uncle Addison and cousins! Emma loves it!!

A Science Experiment

Okay, so we can't decide if this is cool or a little gross. We were attempting to grow a salt crystal garden, and the jury is still out on the success of the experiment.

My friend Tanya passed along the instructions and some Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing that we would need to do this little science experiment. Here's how it all started:
 The first day we put some porous materials in the bottom of a dish. Because I can never follow instructions exactly to the "T" I chose both a sponge that we cut up and a couple pieces of charcoal. I think you were supposed to choose 1 base material...Next we covered the base with 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of water, and 2 tablespoons of the Mrs. Stewarts. I had never heard of this cleaning detergent before, but apparently when used in the laundry in makes your whites very white. I have a hard time imagining this as it stained my hands blue. The experiment then sits for a day.

On day two, which I don't have a picture of because it looks exactly the same as above, we added two more tablespoons of salt. Again, let it sit for a day.


 On Day 3, we added two more tablespoons each of water, salt and Mrs. Stewart's, then added drops of food coloring. Up to this point, I hadn't told the girls exactly what we were doing, they knew something was supposed to be growing in the dish, and I wanted to them to guess along the way what was happening so I had not been specific that crystals were maybe going to form.

The instructions say that by day 4 there should be some growth, and if there isn't, add a few tablespoons of household ammonia. We had nothing growing, so I added the ammonia and set it on our patio table, instead of in the house. It stunk! The one thing the girls said throughout the process was that it didn't smell good ~ they were right.


 Finally after sitting outside for a few hours, this was the result.


 It's kind of cool, but I think it looks just as much like a fungus as it does crystals. The pictures look much prettier than it actually looks, the green areas have a very strange mold-ish appearance in person. Rebekah's first response was, "What is all that green?" Alyssa just wanted to know what happened to it.


 Hmmmm...do I see a brain-like formation in there? It was neat and fun to do, and the instructions provide an explanation of how it grows by using words like nuclei, capillary action, and silver iodide cloud...I'm not sure that the girls took all of that away from the experiment, but we definitely score an "A" for effort :-)

How Far You've Come

Yesterday, I mentioned finding some posters from Ka'iulani's Kindergarten year, and below are a few of the photos from the collages I found. I was taking pictures of pictures which is never a great idea, but I think they came out clear enough.
 One of the things I love so much about our church is what a great job they do reaching out to the children of the church and providing awesome learning and ministry opportunities for the kids to be a part of. I never have to beg the girls to get ready for church, they are excited to go! It is a place they truly love to be!


 Five year old Alyssa. I think Rebekah looks just like Alyssa did in all these photos.


 Hard at work in Daisies Class. All the kid's clubs at church are held on Wednesday nights which sometimes means being out pretty late on a school night, which in turn leads to some very sleepy Thursday mornings. Alyssa recently had to take a test over all the memory verses her Stars class has studied for the past three years. As I helped her study for the test, I was so encouraged to hear her demonstrate knowledge of all the units she has been studying in class. She was reciting all these amazing verses about salvation, making right choices, the armor of God, integrity, the Fruit of the Spirit, being created in His image, Esther, and the list goes on. The most challenging Thursday morning with the girls could never outweigh the security of knowing she has those words in heart to draw upon as she grows older.


 




















Alyssa still carries this same pink Bible to church every Wednesday and Sunday. A long time ago, she lost the strap that makes it a purse. She saw this picture and it was a sudden memory that the Bible used to have a purse strap, and she remembered how she carried it everywhere across her shoulder like she's doing in this photo.


 Although there are some of these girls that no longer attend our church, and there are new friends that have been added since this was taken, as I look at this picture, I'm so happy that Alyssa has this group of girls as her friends. In just a few weeks, they will "graduate" through the first level of the MPact Girls Clubs, and there will be a crowning ceremony for them and many other girls who will be recognized. It's awesome to think about both the group as a whole, and the individual walks of faith that are being developed in these children. I'm excited for them and finding these pictures was such a sweet surprise and a tangible reminder of how far they've come in the last few years.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

...Or maybe more May showers?

We've had a few really warm and sunny days in a row here, which have been nice after a unusually cold and very rainy start to Spring. The weather can't decide what it wants to do, and it sounds like we are in for a chilly and rainy weekend, so I was soaking up all the beautiful peeks at the pretty flowers that have just recently bloomed in the yard. The tulips are my favorite.
 


 


 


 


 Rebekah loves the flowers too, and initially she was going around picking every flower just as they were blooming. She couldn't imagine why we would want to leave something so pretty outside of the house. We finally got her to ask before picking anything and have since let her help cut only the ones that are "ready." Then, ever since the day during teacher appreciation week where all the children brought in a flower to be assembled into a bouquet for their teachers, she has wanted to bring a fresh cut flower to her Frau every morning. She inspects the flowerbeds each morning, looking for the special one she wants to give, and she sometimes gets on the bus crying over having to leave the flowers in the yard. It makes me so sad to see the bus drive away with her upset in the window! Yesterday was a happy morning when I let her cut a couple and bring them in to her teacher.


Unrelated to the flowers...

A few things I'll need to post pictures of later: Emma was excited to have her first piano recital this week! Rebekah got the cutest little German dress called a dirndl for her German Dance performances. It is the sweetest thing I have ever seen and she is so proud of it! Also, while cleaning up the classroom I teach in at church I found 3 old posters from when Alyssa and her classmates were Kindergarten Daisies. The posters were collages of old photos that their teacher had put together and it brought back such great memories when I pulled them out from being tucked in the back of the cabinet. I promise some pics of all of these later :-)

Have a nice weekend...

Sweet Gifts

Happy Mother's Day!

These girls sometimes wear me out, but taking care of them and watching them grow has been without a doubt the greatest, most rewarding adventure! Being their mom is both harder and more wonderful than I could have ever imagined it would be, and they are the best gifts ever! They make beautiful homemade gifts as well...
Alyssa painted this most beautiful teapot for my collection.


Emma handmade a precious pink corsage for me to wear.


And Rebekah gave me this perfect plant with her little face in the flower. She wanted to be sure I knew that the "real flowers" in the cup were going to bloom soon.























We spent Mother's Day with my parents and it was my Dad's birthday too, so we had a lot to celebrate. Happy Birthday to my awesome Dad!! Happy Mother's Day to my sweet Mom!!

And of course Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Moms, Grandmothers, and Aunties that we couldn't share the day with, we miss you all {and we'll see you soon}! All our love to everyone...

RIF Reading Challenge= a pizza party for 3 very happy girls

Every year there is a RIF Reading Challenge at school in which the kids earn points for each book they read, the amount of time they spend reading or being read to, and they can earn bonus points for reading books related to topics they are studying in class. A couple of weeks ago, I had three very excited little girls run off the bus telling me they were each winners at their grade level.

Alyssa told me the play by play of how all the awards were announced over the intercom at school and they started with the youngest kids first. When Rebekah was announced as the 2nd place winner for K4, Alyssa's whole class cheered. Then Emma was announced as the 2nd place winner for the second grade and again, Alyssa's class cheered. She sat there through the rest of the announcements just wishing to hear her name called for the 5th grade, and it was ~ 1st place :-) So by the time they arrived home on the bus that afternoon they were so giddy with excitement that I could hardly hear and understand what they were saying.
 Last Thursday was the Pizza Party they received as a reward. They had cute little invites and entrance tickets that made the girls feel like real VIPs in the school cafeteria.

When I heard the party was Thursday, I was disappointed because I had an appointment that I knew was going to prevent me from being to school in time for lunch. As I rushed to get there, I was telling myself it's okay, you've seen them eat pizza before, if you don't make it, you don't make it...but truth be told, it felt like kind of a big deal. This is the one and only year that all three girls will be in the same school and I'm quickly running out of opportunities to visit all of them for special occasions under the same roof during the school day. Not only that, but with only two people being recognized at each grade level, it was a pretty slim chance that all three could earn a prize, and since they did, I wanted to be there to congratulate them in person.


 




















I arrived just in time to see Rebekah throw her garbage away, but she was so happy and didn't seem to mind that I was late. Since they eat in shifts I was able to be there for the entire time A and E enjoyed their pizza. The girls were also introduced to cake pops, which they loved so I know what we'll be making for dessert sometime soon! A fun and yummy reward, and even better than a reward (maybe not to them, but surely for me) is that I have always loved the girls' appreciation for good books. The challenge wasn't some chore we needed to keep up with, or an extra assignment to complete at the end of the day, it was just fun.

Little Duckie, Soccer Girl

Yesterday, Rebekah started soccer after school. She doesn't entirely enjoy organized sports, but she loves kicking a soccer ball around our yard, so we figured she should give it a try.
 She was all smiles from ear to ear the entire hour of practice, which I now realize is hard to see in many of the pictures unless you click on them.


 Even when she fell in the grass doing a crab walk, her smile stayed bright.


 Her push ups were hilarious. Over and over again, she went right from this position here above,


to this position here:
 There was absolutely no bend in her arms at all. Again and again she counted off her push ups {essentially butt ups} feeling like she was working very hard :-)


 It was amazing how quickly the coach organized the chaos of the children running in all directions at once. As soon as he put his arms up like this (look at the top left of the photo), the kids knew to make a line in front of him. He only needed to explain it once too! I might start implementing this technique with the girls around the house.


She dribbles...
 


She shoots...
 


She scores!
 GOAL!!!


It was her first attempt, and the coach was being pretty easy on them, but a goal is a goal! It's safe to say she loved every minute of her first soccer practice, and she'll be so excited to go back next week.

She's growing up so quickly lately ~ there would have been a time, maybe even as recently as a few months ago, when she would not have wanted anything to do with running up and down a field with kids who seem so much bigger than her. The coach was already lining the kids up when we arrived at practice, and he called out to her in a booming voice, "Well who do we have here?" I thought I might have to answer for her, as I sometimes do when she is approached by someone she doesn't know well. But I was so glad I paused before responding because she belted out an equally huge "Rebekah!"

And now she plays soccer, just like a big kid.

Birdhouses and Earth Day

On the day after Earth Day we went to Lowe's where the girls built some cute little birdhouses. Both Home Depot and Lowe's occasionally offer family projects on Saturdays, and the girls enjoy them.
I'm not sure what Kamele is telling Dave here, but it looks intense as she waves the hammer in front of his face. In the past, she has always liked the idea of having a completed project, but she wasn't really into the whole process of building it. This time she enjoyed it a lot and did a surprising amount of the work herself.























Alyssa, being the perfectionist that she is had to have everything just so...several times I saw her pulling a nail out and straightening what she called a "major mistake." Yet she wouldn't take her puffy coat off, which in theory should have made things a little easier.


There's something sweet about a little girl in an apron, hard at work.


Our most intense builder of the morning. She was loving the project until she hammered down her little pointer finger. It turned into a tiny blood blister that now looks like a polka dot of permanent marker on her finger.


She wore her protective goggles for a little while before she decided she could see better without them. Then they sat upside down on her head, flipping up her hair like a macaroni penguin. She wears sunglasses upside down too, it must feel right to her. Just like having shoes on the wrong feet.


The finished houses that the girls have since painted in every color of the rainbow.


When we turned in our tools, the girls were given a baby tree as part of a Lowe's Earth Day tree give away. On Easter afternoon we found a pot to plant our little tree in, and we also planted some strawberries. I don't usually have much luck growing anything, but we are going to do our best to take care of these!


A funny memory from Earth Day this year: we had been reading a few books about taking care of the Earth and how we can all do small things that over time will have a great impact on the Earth's health, and so I wanted to ask the girls about things they thought they could possibly do more of, or maybe do better than what we've been doing.

Alyssa immediately chimed in about my overuse of water when I am washing dishes, brushing my teeth, and taking excessively long showers. All areas I need to admit guilt in. She has since stood next to me several times supervising my teeth brushing habits. Mostly because she was not being at all sassy about it, just letting me know from the perspective of expert , it struck me as funny that as I asked her to examine what she could do differently, she decided to instead critique my conservation efforts. Later that same day I asked Dave if he would run to Pick N Sav and grab some milk. We live right around the corner from the store, and borrowing a line from Fancy Nancy, Alyssa called out to him, "Less than a mile? Then bike in style!" I was laughing trying to picture Dave riding a bike while balancing a gallon of milk in one hand and a grocery bag in the other. Or better yet, I know the girls would be happy to get him a basket (most likely one with flowers on it) that he could attach to the front of his bike. Now that would be biking in style!