Bible Museum, Kindergarten completion, commended, & the beach!

Busy, busy time of year! School is almost out...yippee!

Gracie has had 2 fantastic Bible Class teachers on Wednesday night for the past couple of quarters. This last Wednesday, the 3rd-5th grade students put on a "Living Bible Museum" for all of us. It was really cute! The students dressed up as a Bible character and stood like a statue until someone touched them. At that point, they would begin talking, telling about who "they" were.

Dressed all in purple....can you guess who Gracie was?

Yep! She is Lydia, seller of purple! Found in the book of Acts. I love her costume because that purple bathrobe was made for ME by Maw Maw, my precious grandmother who passed away when I was pregnant with Katie. It has been worn by Gracie and now Katie, and served as a great part of Gracie's costume!

This was one of my favorites: King Agrippa...eaten by worms! He had gummy worms hung all over him. It was great!

Thursday was the Kindergarten awards ceremony and picnic at school. They sang some really cute songs for us, received Kindergarten completion certificates, then we got to go outside to the park and have a picnic and the kids were able to play.

Katie has had a wonderful Kindergarten year, and we are so proud of her! She has a great teacher who has helped her to be successful. It is amazing how much she has learned. We were able to take home her journals from throughout the year. I LOVE looking at how far she's come and how well she is doing now with her writing. I LOVE a teacher who encourages writing. I mean, DAILY encouragement and then taking the time to express to the students how far they've come and CELEBRATE that!

Katie is all about dragging books around these days which I LOVE! She loves to read the "I Can Read" books because she can read them well. She will read them over & over. She has ventured into a couple of chapter books...Magic Tree House, Rainbow Fairies...but seems happier sticking with the smaller books. I think she got frustrated when she tried to do too much too soon, but her confidence is getting bigger each day, and she's doing GREAT! She likes to have her turn when we do their Bible reading and can really do even more than she thinks she can! Last night, she took books to dinner. LOVE it!

One day, she wanted to read as we walked to school!

Here is my pretty girl at her Kindergarten picnic.

Here are some funny pictures of Ellie. She is a silly goofball and can say, "CHEESE!!!!!" really well!

One of the not-so-charming things she does is rifle through her sisters' backpacks & bags! Not much is safe around her!

I'd like to say a couple of things about my wonderful, sweet, amazing 9 year old daughter. I asked a friend the other day if it's too weird to say that I want to be like my children when I grow up? She just possesses so many qualities that I admire. This is my blog where I record memories for my family, so I want to make note of her TAKS scores for this year. I hesitated to put them because I don't want to just look braggy, but Chris & I are SO proud of her, and the main purpose of this blog is not for others to read it (although I love it when people do) but to record memories for my family and to record my thoughts.

Part of what makes me proud of her is her attitude about it all. She is so unaffected by it all and so non-stressed out about things. I ADMIRE that and so wish I was more like that! LOL Yesterday, apparently, her teacher pulled the students out of the classroom and individually told the students their TAKS scores. For those of you not in Texas, the TAKS test is the BIIIIIG test here. So many stress about it..teachers, students, parents, etc. Houston ISD (not our school district) has BIG cheating accusations made against some of the administrators, teachers, etc. RIDICULOUS! Obviously, the testing in general isn't perfect, but this isn't about the positives vs. negatives of standardized testing. It is what it is. We're in the public schools in Texas, so it's what she needs to do. I'm okay with that. I admire the way she just does it and doesn't stress. I feel for those students who do stress, but I admire the way Gracie just does it because it's something she's supposed to do, and that's that.

She took Reading, Math, & Writing. In 4th grade, the writing test is a pretty big deal. In 3rd grade, she only did Reading & Math. For the writing test, they have a "question" part and then also write a composition which can be scored 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (highest score). Obviously, you want to pass the test, but if miss only a specific number on each test, you get "commended" for that test. I'm not sure what the magic number is for each one. I think it just depends on how many are on the tests.

Well, Gracie got what her teacher referred to as a "Grand Slam!" She got commended on Reading, Commended on Math, and Commended on Writing with a "4" on her composition!!!!!!! We are soooooo proud of her!!!!!!! She said only 2 people in her class got a "4." The funniest thing about her receiving her scores is that she nonchalantly told me this morning, "Oh. We got our TAKS scores yesterday." like it was NO BIG DEAL! She cracks me up! I just love her so much and am so proud of the way she works hard, has such a desire to please, is easy to get along with, is such a good big sister to Ellie (she & Katie have been fighting a lot lately. grrrr), and is sooooo laid back. (She gets that from Chris 100%!) I credit her teachers with doing a great job of teaching her and apparently not stressing her out too much while doing so. Of course, I give God credit for giving her the ability to learn and the motivation & self discipline to do well in so many areas of life. I truly wish I could be more like her!

Today, we went to Galveston to spend the day at the beach. It was great! Gracie got a last minute invitation to sleep over at a friend's house last night. We told her she could but we'd have to pick her up around 7:30. Her friend's parents said that was okay, so this morning we picked her up at 7:30 and off we went! We got to the beach around 9:30. It wasn't very crowded and even when more people showed up, it was mostly families which was really nice. It, of course, got hotter as the day went on, but we had an umbrella (probably need 2 so all of can be in the shade more often) and the water was nice, too. At one point, Chris was going to leave to get more sunscreen and pick up some lunch. He said he would take Ellie to get her out of the sun for a bit. Well, Katie & Gracie both wanted to go with him, too. So..........that left me by myself at the beach. Wow; that was tough sitting there under my umbrella ALONE with a nice breeze blowing and my book to read. heeheehee

They stayed gone about 40 minutes, then they were kind of ready to play some more after taking a break in the a/c. We stayed til about 2:30. When Katie curled up on Chris's lap and Gracie was just sitting there trying to get as much into the shade of the umbrella as she could, and Ellie was just wanting to snack, we decided it was time to go!

Chris & I wanted some seafood, so we found a place called Shrimp 'N Stuff. We didn't want all of us to go in; Katie & Ellie had already fallen asleep (of course they woke up when we stopped) but he went & got himself some fried catfish (which isn't technically seafood I don't guess!), cole slaw, fries & hushpuppies and got me some boiled shrimp, cole slaw, & hushpuppies. It was good! Gracie & Katie snacked off of ours while Ellie just tried to roll the hushpuppy like it was a ball.

Here are some pictures of our day!

We saw several dolphins jumping out of the water, and I was lucky to actually get a picture with one of the fins! It was neat because Gracie said, just as we got there, that she wanted to see a dolphin!

Here, Chris is showing the girls some crabs who were fighting under the water right near them.

Ellie was hesitant at first but warmed up to the water quickly. She especially liked being with Gracie in the water.

Gracie wanted us to bury her. Of course, then Katie & Ellie wanted to join in.

Ellie enjoyed snacking and didn't mind a little extra sand in her teeth!

It was a good day!