Family Night Out

Last Sunday evening we joined three other kindergarten families at a hibachi restaurant across town for dinner.  We ended up in a private room in the back that had two hibachi cook tops.  The children sat at one and the adults sat on the other.  It worked out perfectly for our party of 17.  I’m sure the patrons of the restaurant who were there to enjoy their meals appreciated us being contained to the back too.  The kids, while very well-behaved, were so excited to see each other and could hardly contain their joy.  It was really adorable.  Sadly,  I left my camera in the car so I didn’t get any photographs of our dinner.

Somehow, we managed to still have room for dessert and caravan-ed over to a local ice cream institution, Del’s Freez.  The tiny little walk-up ice cream shop on US-1 has been in business in Melbourne since 1956.  It recently re-opened after closing for repairs.

LOL!  Anyway, the place looked great with it’s new paint job and it was as busy as ever with lines almost out onto the highway.

The ice cream is all soft-serve and comes in four flavors- chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and peanut butter (my personal fave).  Twists of these flavors are possible too.  The topping selection is pretty impressive as well.  As you can see, the kiddos loved it!

And just like in 1956, all transactions are cash only 🙂

I hope we’re able to get together with these families again this summer.  Wildman’s kindergarten class was a close little group and I hope that we can remain friends even when our kids get split up among 3 different first grade classes in the fall.

Our family drove down to the end of Mathers bridge to watch the sun set after getting sufficiently sugared up at Del’s.  The boys (including my husband) enjoyed climbing all over the rocks while I took a few photos of the huge orange sun dissolving into the purple haze on the horizon.

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Wordless Wednesday

School’s Out for Summer!

  

Somehow we went from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of kindergarten in the blink of any eye.  Yesterday was Wildman’s last day of school.

It was also his teacher’s last day of work before retiring.  Her room which is normally visually overwhelming was pretty much empty.  Nothing on the bookshelves, nothing on the bulletin boards, nothing on the chalkboards, no art hanging from the ceiling, even the tables had been cleared of name tags.  Everything had been taken down.  It was really sad to see.  But don’t get me wrong.  I’m thrilled that Mrs. Lacy is entering a new chapter of her life after 42 years in the trenches of public schools but I’m sad that her light won’t be lighting up the school anymore.  Her hallway and room just won’t be the same without her.  She is an amazing person and a truly gifted teacher.  Cutie Pie will have one of the other wonderful kindergarten teachers in a couple of years but she will not be Mrs. Lacy.

The class had a little party for Mrs. Lacy yesterday.  There were gifts, pizza and cupcakes.  One of the parents the manager at the Publix sushi counter and brought in a huge tray of samples for the parents.  YUM!  The afternoon was bittersweet and lovely all at once.  Yearbooks were signed, hugs were given, and a few tears were shed.  Wildman and I pried ourselves away from the party with many of the other parents who were checking their children out of school early.  I had less than an hour before a bunch of Wildman’s friends were coming over for an end-of-the-year pool party at our house.

We had ~15 kids ages 6 and under in our pool that afternoon!  Even though most of the parents stayed to hang out, I was happy that I hired a lifeguard to watch the crazy kids in the water.  You just never know.  It was pretty chaotic, as you can imagine, with children splashing, swimming, diving and running around.  An extra set of eyes keeping tabs was just what we needed to watch the kids of varying skill levels swim.

In 15 years, this picture will probably look totally different with those colorful ice pops being replaced by beer or Zima (do you remember that) or something…  But for now, don’t they look adorable?  That’s not even all of the kids either.  It was such fun.  All of the children got along really well like they have all year long.  I’m looking forward to hosting another party like this sometime this summer.   Maybe a back-to-school party?

For the record I didn’t heat the hot tub very much since it was so darn hot outside.  It was set at 95 degrees.  I think the kids just like the bubbles and the idea of it being slightly warmer than the pool 🙂

These sweet girls crack me up.  I just love them  The three on the right were in Wildman’s class and the two on the left are little sisters.  So cute!

J went into work super early so that he could come home for the party in the afternoon.  He was one of three dads who came to hang out.  Here he is chillin’ in the blue floaty probably contemplating how murky the water is…  Ha!  He ended up cleaning the heck out the pool the moment the party was over.  He found all sorts of tiny toys, ice pop stick, mulch, etc. at the bottom.

The get-together was a nice distraction from thinking too much about how grown up everyone seems and how our sweet little class will be broken up into several first grades and the TK-1 class in the fall.  I only know of one child who will be joining Wildman in the class that Mrs. Lacy recommended for him.  Ugh!  I hope there are more familiar faces than that.

Anyway, today is the first day of summer break!  The kids and I slept in and now I’m off to get dressed.  I think we’ll take a bike ride somewhere before lunch.  The day is ours!!!