Grace is officially on summer vacation. Gawd. I think it's going to be a long summer. *sigh*
Tuesday was her last day, and, because I'm who I am (read: sucker), mom, Mak, and I spent the entire day at school with her putting on a carnival for the kids. The idea of a carnival hit us Friday night, leaving us with having to wait until Monday to get the okay from Teach. After receiving the okay, we spent a couple of hours on the phone with different places and somehow managed to get almost $200 worth of donations from local businesses to use as carnival prizes. AND...the best part...we managed to pull off the whole homemade ice cream in a Ziploc baggie with the kids too. Yum.
As end of the year gifts, Teach and both of her assistants were given a ceramic apple. On the front of the apples I painted "Thanks for a great year," and I painted a quote from Grace on the back of each apple. My favorite was for the teacher's assistant. She gets the biggest kick out of Grace and her four going on fourteen vocabulary. The back of her apple read, "Um, actually...."
And with the help of my computer I made a picture thingy for each of them and the bus driver. I used the photo of the child's face that was my avatar for a little bit and copied the "One Hundred Years From Now" verse on it. It read something like, "One hundred years from now it won't matter what kind of house I lived in, what kind of clothes I wore (blah blah blah)What will matter is that I was important in the life of a child." I printed that out as a greeting card and then used my tossed aside scrapbooking talents to make a nice three-layered mat for it. And I put each of them in a 5 x 7 frame.
As the bus driver's extra gift, I made a survival kit for school bus drivers: There was a rubber band to remind him to remain flexible. A paper clip to help him keep it all together.  A piece of rope to help him when he reached the end of his. Cotton balls for when he couldn't hear himself think. A stick of gum so he would stick with it. A penny so he would have the "cents" enough to know what an important job he had. An eraser to get rid of misunderstandings. A crayon to color his days bright and sunny. And a note that we tried to find marbles to replace the ones he had lost along the way but we didn't have any here either. Ha.
I put the kit in a small box and turned the outside of the box into a school bus. It was pretty darned cute, if I do say so myself. I gave that and his framed thingy to him when he stopped to pick Grace up that last morning. He said, "Bless you, Amy." I laughed and told him that he didn't know what was in the box yet. "It doesn't matter what's in the box," he said. "Just the fact that you thought of me...." and his eyes were full of tears.
He was able to spend the entire day at the school with us Tuesday. He helped to carry the various boxes of carnival gifts inside and laughed at me in disbelief. He told me that I was alright, despite what he had heard. And then, hours later, when we were saying our final goodbye for the summer, he told me that I was an inspiration. That was nice, eh, "an inspiration." I'll carry that compliment with me for a while.
We went swimming at the lake yesterday. Mak had never been swimming before. We stopped and bought one of those inflatable little baby holder things, and she dug it. We only stayed for about an hour because the neighbor on the other side of us had gone to the hospital and I had to be home in time to get her mentally retarded brother off the bus. Fortunately, she was home from the hospital before he was and I didn't have to do that. But I did have to go over there at midnight last night and settle his little ass down for her.
Today has been pretty much a nothing day. In fact, it's going on three o' clock and Princess Grace is still in her pajamas. It's too hot to go outside for any length of time. I would love to go swimming again. We'll see. I know that sometime real soon I am going to have to take Grace to buy her ballet slippers for the day camp she starts on Monday. Mom thinks it's horrible that I am sending her to day camp a week after she has been out of school, but it's only for an hour or two a day, so I feel no guilt. And I think it will be good for her. She is going through that oh so girly girl thing of hers and wants to be a ballerina. We'll see.
Well, I suppose I should go upstairs and check on mom. She has been sick most of the day. She just went through this a couple of weeks ago. I personally think she is allergic to housecleaning because she did this the last time she exerted some effort into cleaning house. And speaking of cleaning house...yeah, I should really head upstairs and get started on that too.
Happy Thursday.