Last Day of First Grade / Best Friends Day

Dear Laney,

Yesterday was your last day of first grade. Your class celebrated with a picnic at a local park, followed by a party at the splash pad of your school's playground.

It was also Best Friends Day, which is apparently a thing. I remember when people used to just be able to complain about Valentine's Day and Administrative Assistant's Day as "Hallmark Holidays," fabricated by the greeting card industry. Now there are all KINDS of pseudo holidays as manufactured by social media, like Best Friends Day and Siblings Day. Also Doughnut Day, though I have less of a complaint with that one because I can whine to your dad, "But Thooor! We NEEEED to go to Krispy Kreme. It's a holiday!!"

While you were off celebrating the last day of school, Hagen was celebrating Best Friends Day with his best friend, Finley. Hagen and Finley have deep (for 4 year-olds) discussions about philosophical topics, like magnets and stegosauruses and if a truck could change color by itself and if not, why not. They can do a 40-piece puzzle together without fussing and one of them can assemble a car building set while the other one reads the "constructions." Finley's mom, Ms. Katie, says she's worked with hundreds of preschoolers over the course of her career and has never seen anything like it. 

I told the boys I would walk them up to the splash park to see your class party, which they seemed pretty excited about. In the end, it all came down to waiting for Hagen to get his shoes on. At his former preschool, Hagen was NOTORIOUS for taking forever to get his shoes on. His teacher once told him he'd need to put on shoes if he wanted to go out to recess, and your brother said, "Then I'll just sit here because you're going to come back this way in a while, anyway." To him, it wasn't worth the effort of putting on his shoes for half an hour of outside time. Yesterday, when I got irritated and said, "Hagen - your shoes are literally the only thing keeping us from going to the playground," Finley got down on the floor and put on his shoes for him. That's the sign of a best friend. Or a super enabler. Sometimes, it's a gray area. 

We found you sitting by the splash area with your first-grade-equivalent-of-a-crush, Alex. You've been telling us most of the year that you're going to marry Alex, with his sweet demeanor and exotic allergies to peanuts and coconut oil. I spent a lot of time talking to you about what's appropriate - romantically - in the first grade, but I've since given up and just started being grateful that he seems to come from a nice family. 

The atmosphere at the spray park was wild and jubilant and you all seemed so happy to be celebrating together as rising second graders. 

Of course, you got to share it with YOUR best friend, Laila.

When we got home, you showed me a "word map" project that your teacher had done. The teachers had all the first graders describe each other, and then put the adjectives for each kid in a computer program that would make a map of the most commonly used words to describe them. The bigger the word, the more often it had been used by your fellow students to describe you. This was yours:

That "kind" was twice as large as the next word, meaning that's how most of your classmates would describe you, made me so proud I actually teared up a little.

And then your dad and I discovered this note on the bottom of your final report card:

We do not disagree. 

Happy last day, kiddo.

Love,

Mom

You're Going To Get Sick Of These Posts

Hey y'all -

Summer in Montana: You've gotta make the most of it. We seem to be going on a big adventure at least once a week these days. Most recently, we went to Seeley Lake with some friends last weekend. This time of year, the shores of the lake are full of lily pads, which makes for some fun snorkeling if you're into that kinda thing, which Laney most definitely is. Hagen likes to stand by his teacher Miss Julie in two feet of water and every once in a while yell "NOW WE DANCE!!" and then be-bop around her.

When your dad and I were dating, Peg Peg and Tex came to visit us here in Montana and your dad offered up all sorts of recreation options...We could raft! We could canoe! We could hike! In a moment that has become the stuff of family legend, Peg Peg touched him sympathetically on the arm and said in her best "Bless your heart" tone... "Honey, we don't do stuff."

Credit where credit's due, my mother DID get in a raft on that trip and (attempted to) paddle and was a (mostly) good sport about her hair moving, despite the healthy dose of Rave Mega Hold hairspray she'd applied.

I don't know if there's really a point to my telling you this, other than I like to dig out these photos of my mama every few years, because they tickle me to death.

I've had to adjust to being married to a guy who loves to do ALL the stuff. Turns out I like LIKE doing stuff. Minus mountain biking. Still not sold on that.

So every weekend this summer we'll probably end up doing something like this:

What a grind.

Love,
Mom

The Ninja Sleeps Tonight

Dear Hagen,

Ninja School (a.k.a. Introductory Taekwondo) continues to be a disaster and a delight.

The class happens twice a week, and your dad and I have been taking turns so we each only have to endure it once. You're still having issues with focus and spend a lot of time in each session staring into space and then wondering why suddenly everyone has started running or punching or kicking, because you didn't get the memo. At the same time, you're mad as hell that you don't have a red belt yet.

Last Wednesday, you were paired with a teenage girl as your teacher/helper for the day. As you two faced each other to spar, you stared at a point off in the middle distance...and then she bopped you on the head. "Hagen," the head teacher asked, "Do you know WHY she just hit you on the head?" And you threw out your arms in a giant shrug as if to say, "'Cause girls are crazy, man."

This Monday, your class did a lesson on self-defense techniques, and the teachers ("the bad guys") faced off against the tiny students ("the good guys.") The head teacher, Master Corbin, faced off against you. When he saw your attention start to wander as you probably started daydreaming about Transformers and cheetahs and dinosaurs and grape jelly, he bent down, looked you in the eye and said, "Hagen, I need you to really pay attention because I'm about to try to punch you in the face." "AAAAAAAHHHHH!" you shrieked, and ran away from the line.

You might have focus issues, but you're no dummy.

The whole family carpooled home together. It's a 20-minute drive across town at that time of day, and here's a condensed version of how that went:

Note: You got bitten by a mosquito on the back of your right ear, which is why it's bright pink and twice the size of your left ear. It's not a ninja injury.

Love,

Mom

Fun Run 2016

Dear Laney,

Today was your school's annual Fun Run fundraiser. I'm not sure how this fundraiser works, because back in my day*, you had to get folks to pledge a certain amount of money per lap (or per word spelled correctly at a spelling bee, or successful jump at a jump-rope-a-thon). But for the Fun Run, people just pledge a flat amount, so you're not really incentivized to run. I blame the Millennials. (Just kidding, youngsters!)

I went even one step lazier and just wrote a check instead of having you ask grandparents for pledges. Grandparents, you each owe me $10. Every year, I tell the teachers that the fundraising forms that come home in the kids' folders should include an "opt out" fee...like "For $40, you can pretend this race isn't happening."

Hagen and I walked up to the school to watch you run. He's available for these sorts of social engagements ever since I pulled him out of his school in a snit.

He was so, so, so excited to stand on the side of the race route and put out his arm for a high five every time you came around:

But then, of course:

He took off running after you, and crashed the Fun Run. You and your friend Jude held his hand all the way around the school. 

You ushered him across the finish line, where Mrs. Carter noticed, "Hey, you look a little small to be a Fun Runner!"

For the last several laps, you mostly hung out with your friend Laila, walkin' an little and talkin' a lot...

...and then consoling each other over how exhausting the whole thing was.

Great job raising money for your school! (I guess. Maybe.)

Love,

Mom

* This is one of the phrases you think you'll never say, until you become a parent and find yourself saying it. "I can't have anything nice" is another popular one around here.

Whitefish Lake - Memorial Day Camping Trip

Hey y'all - 

I waited so long to make Memorial Day plans that by the time I got my act together and decided that we should put together a camping trip with our friends, the only campground in all of Montana that still had three spots available was almost three hours north on the outskirts of Glacier National Park. At the time I booked the campsites, the Weather Channel (or "That Evil Cabal Of Misinformation," as I now refer to them) was predicting clear skies, highs around 77 with overnight lows in the 40s. They were zero for three, because it rained every day and was crazy cold and we basically spent a long weekend in a mud pit. But boy was it fun!

Here are the pictures I put on Instagram from the weekend, which give a pretty good glimpse of the fun had by all:

Bigfork, MT

Awesome girl. having an awesome time.

"OK, you can hug me. But I do NOT want any kisses."

Rained all night. They didn't notice. 

A Hebrew National religious experience. 

Camping is so much fun, it can blow a 6 yr old's MIND. 

"Well, *I* think we should go get ice cream. What do YOU think?"

This one I captioned: "Note to self: If you don't want to wake up in a muddy, 30-degree tent in the middle of the woods, maybe don't marry a furry mountain dude named Thor." That one got a "like" from the Montana Parks Service, so I suspect someone there has also been in this situation. 

Soooo much mud. 

Canadian Geese

"MOM! We need to go cheetah speed!" I am too old for cheetah speed.

When you travel with preschool teachers (or gorillas) everyone gets checked for ticks and lice.

This one maybe had the most fun of all. 

Miss Katie is practicing the fine art of piddleboarding (not a typo)

This one I captioned, "Y'all, I can't imagine packing all this crap up tomorrow. I think we live here now. Y'all come visit."

On day 3, I was so tired of having wet feet that I asked your dad to drive me to the dollar store in a nearby town so I could by the only shoes and socks they had in stock. 

Correy, taking in the lake. 

I asked your dad to see if he could dry my shoes off by the fire. He accidentally toasted them. We didn't notice 'til we saw they were smoking. 

We went for a great hike on the Whitefish Trail:

There was a fun Kids vs. Grown-Ups baseball game. The kids named their team the Saber Tooth Rattlers...or maybe it was the Titanoboas...something scary like that. Basically, the kids are better at marketing.

We set up a hammock at our campsite, which was a big hit. Let's face it: we brought one of everything. You dad said when we pulled out of our driveway that we looked like we were on our way to invade Canada. 

The biggest hoot was when I pulled out a bag from the dollar store and revealed that I'd bought glow-in-the-dark ears for each kid. I told y'all they were cheetah ears, and you could all become a roving pack of cheetahs. Hagen's big on cheetahs lately, and Finley's brain is packed with cheetah facts.  

We lost Hagen for a second, but quickly found him chatting up some teenage girls.

This is maybe my favorite photo from the trip:

...because it sums up exactly how I felt most of the trip. But I'm so glad we pushed through, and held on in the rain and the cold. Because we drove away with nothing but great, muddy memories. 

Right, Ella?

Love,

Mom