Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Mother/Son Dance - Friday February 1, 2013

Last Friday, February 1st, we went to our annual Mother/Son Dance at school.   I.adore.this.tradition!

We have such a great time when we go and this year was no exception!

The theme was hoedown and as Texans, we did not disappoint!  Thanks go out to Grammy and Grandpa for helping us out with our outfits!

The gym was awesome and totally cute!  The gals here at Sacred Heart really know how to throw a party!

Michael at the popcorn stand with his buddy Ryan and his mustache:


The kids feasted on chicken nuggets, chili, french fries, and onion rings.  There was A LOT of running around.  That's what the kids did - ran around and around and around.  Us moms talked, and we had a fantastic time!

Michael is a dancer.  He feels that house music and he gets down.  Michael and his friend Geno from his class were completely bustin' a move with the older kids:

Yes, that's Michael at the front.  You can guess who he takes after as far as dancing is concerned.  
Thankfully!

In the middle of the dance, they had a dance company come out and show us how to do the Cotton Eyed Joe!  It was so fun - and Michael did his best to keep up.  It was much different than what I learned growing up, but these are Yankees we're talkin' about here.

And then they of course, played an obligatory slow dance song, which was Rascal Flatt's My Wish and I could feel myself getting a little teary eyed.  :(  Michael didn't want to dance at first, but then he saw Geno dancing with his Mom, and she was carrying him around, which Michael DEFINITELY would have preferred to do!

While we were dancing, my neighbor (Kelly) danced over to me with her 13 year old son and said, "Enjoy this while you can before they grow up to look like this and are too big to carry!"

*almost waterworks again*

We finally corralled some of the boys from his class together to take a picture with the Wanted sign with their Kindergarten teacher on it:
(L to R):  Luke, Geno, Liam, Michael, and JP
Missing:  Ryan and Darian

Then, I told them to make fun of it:

Back to running around and making conga lines.  That's a saddle in the foreground:


At our school, Michael gets a lot of heat for looking just like Ethan, our neighbor's middle child.  Here, you can see why:

Ethan is so good with Michael and they have a lot of the same interests!  Michael thought it was super fun to get piggy back rides!

Eventually, the principal put an end to the running around because he was afraid someone would get hurt.

We got bowls of ice cream and I made a coke float and our night was complete!  We stayed after to help clean up and had a grand ole time together! 

I'm so thankful for our school, which creates all these opportunities for us to make memories like these together.  Sometimes, I feel down on myself for all the ways I fall short of being an amazing mom.  But then my mentor mom reminds us:  "Children don't remember all the little things that we do wrong.  They remember all the beautiful and happy things that we do right.  That's what they keep with them - all the little traditions, all the little memories that remind them of happiness."

I sure hope that's true!


Division et al

Yesterday, Michael and I went to the library as Monday is library day at school so I decided to continue it to our "after school activity."

Michael always loves to play the chess set there.  He is getting better and better, shouldn't be too long before he beats me.

Yesterday, he picked up multiplication and division bingo and asked me to play with him.  I said, "Hmm...I'm not sure you are old enough."  To which he said, "Well, how old do you have to be?  I can multiply already."

Ok - so we played it.  Because more often than not, Michael will surprise me and be able to completely do something that I didn't expect him to be able to do.

And sure enough - he has started dividing.

I started with an easy one:  "9 divided by 3 equals..."

Silence.

"How many groups of 3 make nine? "

"Easy, Mom!  Three!"

"OK, so nine divided by three equals?"

"Three!"

We did 25 divided by 5.  12 divided by 1.  14 divided by 2.  He got all of them right except that last one, but he thought about it a second time and got it right then.

SO yea - he dominated that multiplication/division bingo.  Multiplication definitely comes easier to him, just as addition is much more natural to him than subtraction.

Between the chess and the math, I better be prepared to have a little nerd on my hands.  We'll start watching The Big Bang Theory together from now on.

Downton Abbey Season 1 is ready for me to pickup at the library!!  Woot!

But I'm still 77th out of 117 holds for Homeland.  At least there are 25 copies of it!