This past week has been one of the hardest, busiest weeks I've had in a long time (actually, the past few weeks). Of course, we are moving in less than three weeks. Still no place to go yet. Moving was not on my priority list last week, but I would still make an effort each day to look at the new listings on line. Jeff started soccer this month and I signed the older two up for swim lessons again, which was/is three days a week. Lily is also still in piano and has the occasional homework too. On top of that I had my usual household chores, dinners to make, shopping to do, preschool to teach, children to raise and my pregnant self to take care of.
So, along with my already full plate, last Friday (the 13th) I sang with an all women's choir "We Also Sing" at the Tabernacle on Temple Square. This was my third time participating in the choir and we sang some fun songs. However, if I knew how busy my life would be at this time, I may have passed on the opportunity. We had our CD recording Sunday (Mother's Day), or dress rehearsal on Wednesday, and the concert on Friday. However, I thought the concert went great and I really enjoyed it despite the timing.
This past Friday (the 20th) I had my preschool graduations. As always there is a lot of prep that goes into this. First, I like to do an end of the year evaluation with each child individually. This year I decided to do as many as I could in one day and was testing from 9:20am - 4:20pm. Then I had to write up all the scores, fill out the forms, etc. which takes time. The following week we had our final field trip to Wheeler Farm. My younger class got a little wet, but the weather was tolerable.
However, the two older classes lucked out with a perfect weather day for the farm!
I even got sunburned from being outside all day.
Cedric had fun going three times to the farm.
Besides evaluations, the other prep I do for graduation is making graduation hats. Luckily this year I had one of my preschool moms here tending Cedric and was able to help me make all 27 hats. The other thing I do is I make a scrapbook for each child. This is my special gift for them and something I hope they Cherish forever. However, I always put it off until the last minute so it is always a very overwhelming, stressful thing. I even had another preschool mom help me do some of it this year. Then there's the prep for the actual graduation. Cleaning the house, getting plenty of benches and chairs for 60+ people, buying the cookies, making signs, etc. I again had help with this thanks to my wonderful in-laws who helped me Friday to get it all together.
You may think that with all that help, it doesn't sound so bad. Well, there was one more straw to throw on the camels back and that was Cedric. On Friday (the day of my concert) he woke up with throw up and diarrhea. However, he was fine the rest of the day and I thought it might have been something he ate. However, Saturday he was not acting himself and relapsed, throwing up and diarrhea again! He did this every day for FIVE days! He pretty much lived on my bed watching movies the whole time.
Poor guy, but also poor timing! Here I was up to my neck in busy and then this. Not only was he sick, but the other kids and I were fighting colds and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday my morning sickness skyrocketed! I had hardly been sick at all this pregnancy and hadn't thrown up, until those three days. My stress level got so high that I was absolutely miserable with sickness. I was staying up late working on scrapbooks and was exhausted on top of it all. Finally Wednesday Cedric was feeling better so by Thursday I too was feeling the stress go down and my morning sickness returned to mild.
So Friday night finally arrived. Of course, it had to be the rainiest May in history this year too, which was the forecast for Friday as well. So at Midnight Thursday night, Tom and I moved our couch into the garage in expectation that the graduations would have to be indoors. (BTW, moving a heavy couch, pregnant at Midnight is not easy). So Friday I finally finished the scrapbooks at 3pm, just in time for my in-laws to show up and we all went to work cleaning the house, making signs, setting up benches inside the house, etc. I had three separate programs, one for each class. They were to be at 5:30, 6:30 & 7:30. By about 4:30 the sun started to come out. By 5:30 it was warm and gorgeous outside. However, we had the benches set up around 4, so they were already in the house ready to go. We went ahead and did the first program inside. This is my younger class (I was down to only 7 students by the end of the year since I had three leave for various reasons earlier). Two of the seven didn't show up, so that left five kids for our program.
The nice thing was the crowd was small and we had plenty of room for everyone. The bad news was, when it was time for the kids to do their song, no one would sing. Luckily I had a CD, but I still felt like I was singing a solo. After the very short program (it only lasted about 15 minutes where as the other classes were closer to 30), we had everyone move the benches and chairs outside and we continued to mingle and photograph in the beautiful sun. Needless to say, the second two programs went much better. The older kids did much better on performing their songs.
We had perfect weather for the 6:30 and a huge turn out (of course I have 11 kids in that class). The 7:30 program was great too, but the clouds did return and it got a little cool. It was still a great night though! Jeff was one of my graduating students.
Yesterday was a very busy day too. And it ended with Lily throwing up. However, she's done much better than Cedric did and we were able to have a very relaxing day today at home as a family. Today is Jefferson's fifth birthday too. We are planning on doing some celebrating tomorrow night (as long as no one is sick).
This past week has been full of mixed emotions. It's hard knowing I won't see many of my students again, especially with the unknown of where we're moving to. I think that made this year extra hard for me to say good-bye to those kids.
However, it's a relief to be done with preschool and graduation. Now I can switch my focus onto moving, packing, house hunting and being a mom again.
The past few weeks were very hard, long stressful weeks, but I made it!!!
We have a deal that on the kids even birthdays they get a friends party, and on the odd year they get a family party, but can choose to go somewhere that's a little more expensive. So this year being an odd birthday, Jeff decided to do Laser tag and ice cream at Leatherby's for his birthday. So we went Monday night.
Unfortunately, Lily was getting over a sickness and was a little nervous about laser tag, so she ended up just waiting for us in the lobby while we played and Cedric stayed home with Aunt Maren. However, Jeff was so excited!
We ended up having Tom's sister, Teresa and her family with us and it was a perfect size group. Jeff and I stayed together the whole time, it was so fun to be on Jeff's "team". After we went over to Leatherby's and met up with some more family members.
Now Leatherby's is not the cheapest place, and we wanted to make sure we got enough ice cream without spending too much. So we ordered the dish of five scoops to divide between the three kids. I put the huge bowl of ice cream in front of Jeff for a picture.
However, then we divided the scoops into three different dishes and handed Jeff's to him. He was not happy about only getting one scoop after thinking he was getting five. 
Oops, didn't mean to make him cry at his own party. However, we showed him there were still two extra scoops and he eventually perked up and ate his ice cream (he only made it through the one scoop anyway). Later, the waiters brought him another ice cream, with a candle in it and we all sang to him. 
