Lasts

I once heard a mother say that you treasure your child's 'firsts'---first smile, first steps, first day of school--but we rarely stop to treasure the 'lasts'. In many cases, we don't know when the 'lasts' will be---the last time they ask us to kiss their scraped knees or the last time they want us to tuck them in at night. But the last day of school is one of the lasts that we can predict....so each year I take pictures of the kids' first days and their last days. I already posted about Sadie's, since her last day was almost two full weeks before Wyatt's. So here are a few pictures of Wyatt's last day of 1st grade....

Sadie's attempt at a picture of Wyatt and I 

(boy, i didn't realize how badly he needed a haircut until now!)

And of course I had to have one with my girl!

And thank goodness for my little girl, because she is the first to stop and 'smell the roses'....like pointing out this white moth on our front porch!! 

I really enjoyed my time with Sadie and Blake all day during the few weeks when Wyatt was in school, but boy were we all excited when he was finally done and could join us!

Do you think these guys were excited to see him get off the bus? Look at the air under Blake's feet!!

seeing the bus pull up....

...meeting the neighborhood kids on their last day of school.

I now have a Kindergardener and a 2nd grader....how did this happen so quickly?? It doesn't seem like all that long ago I had three little ones at home and I was trying to find things to fill our days or make the days exciting, and soon, I will have two kids gone to school during the day (thank goodness Sadie is only half-day Kindergarten).

Some things haven't changed since I was in school....like bringing home what seems like endless papers and projects and junk to sort through. Wyatt had a great teacher, Mrs. Edwards, and she put together memory books for each of the kids with monthly journal entries that they wrote as well as some of their artwork. So I will have that as a keepsake of his first grade year. He also brought home his animal report that they did and I have to say, I love that he picked the badger!! And we all learned a few things about it as well.

And on the 100th day of school, they drew pictures of what they thought they would look like at 100 year old....love the wrinkled paper for his face and the hair on the sides (he is already embracing the baldness)....and interesting that he still has glasses. Because I am sure in his mind, he will always have glasses!!

Wyatt had a really great year and it was also a learning experience for me as well. Prior to this year starting, once we found out who Wyatt's teacher would be (we get a letter about 2 weeks before school starts) I had several parents tell me what an awful teacher she was for their kid. Now obviously every kid is different, but I was pretty concerned and was tempted to march right into the principal's office and request a different class for Wyatt. But I remembered a sermon we had heard a while ago, talking about what it would teach our kids to just go in a fix a problem for them or to help them by praying through it and dealing with it like it will be in 'real life'. So I prayed about it and found that God used this situation to teach me so much! We ended up LOVING his teacher for the first day and on the last day of school, I said to Wyatt, "Aren't you excited? It's your last day of school and then it's summer break."
He replied, "No....I'm sad." He leaned in to hug me and then said, "I just want Mrs. Edwards to be my teacher next year. I don't want to be in 2nd grade....I won't know my teacher or the kids in my class."
I emailed his teacher to tell her right after he got on the bus and when we went to meet him for lunch that day at school (at his request), Mrs. Edwards came up to me and said that Wyatt gave her the biggest hug when he got to school and she teared up!! What a blessing she was and hopefully Sadie might have her! (It was also a reminder that our school can have some seriously overbearing 'helicopter' parents that want to make sure their kids' life is easy!)
Wyatt is an avid reader, loves art and recess and LOVED going to school everyday! He grew so much this year and I am excited to have him all to myself this summer!
And it's now officially summer in the Sorensen household!