Samantha Piano - "Lightly Row"

My favorite part of Samantha playing piano now is how comfortable she is getting at reading music. It is like the lights when on one day for her with understanding the notes. Piano is low on the totem pole for her as far as activities that she does but it is a "must do" in my opinion and I'm confident that one day, ONE DAY, she will thank me for that practice time I make her carve out each day. 

Thatcher's Kindergarten Patriotic Performance

Another Kindergarten Sing for the books!

Mr. Silva kicked it off with the Pledge of Allegiance. 

As usual, Thatcher is a mix of looking like he is being tortured, to singing his heart out, to staring off in space, to shaking his booty. 

Look at Sweet Sammy during this time two years ago.

I could dress her how I wanted too!

There's just 6 weeks left until school is out and kindergarten is a thing of the past for both kids! 

Jog-A-Thon 2016

One of Peabody's largest fundraisers is our jog-a-thon.

I volunteer on the committee which means I volunteer Todd to help ;)

Late night sign painting leaves large margins for error. ;)

These signs are for the assembly leading up to the actual event. 

We entice the kids with prizes and encourage them to go out and get as many pledges as they can.

Every single corner of our house was taken up with signs. 

This year's event was Star Wars themed hence the giant light saber Todd made. 

Cute kinders ready for the show!

Our Assistant Principal made a pretty good Princess Leia. 

I took the kids down to city college and spent about 20 minutes taking random video on my iPhone of them so that I could make a quick video asking for pledges. 

I edited everything together and made this video. I sent it to friends and family as well as posted it on Facebook and well, my kids raised over $1000 in the matter of days! We are still in the process of making thank you cards so if you are reading this and haven't received yours, we have quite a few to send. ;) 

Samantha and Charlotte also paired up and had bake sales around town. 

These two would chase after anyone and try to sell a rice krispie treat or two. 

We had several sleepovers during this time period so that we could bake and paint signs and then get back out there to get more donations! 

I even had the crazy idea to take the girls out to Isla Vista for a bake sale. 

There was a group of Girl Scouts selling cookies at one of the busiest intersections in IV, Embarcadero Del Norte, so we set up shop on Pardall Road. 

IV was a total bust.

So we moved on to Shoreline park which was okay. I will tell you that the Mission Rose Garden is by far the biggest money maker for donations ;)  

I am in charge of gathering sponsors for the event.

My favorite sponsor. 

I'm happy to say we lined the entire fence with banners and beat our sponsor fundraising goal from last year. 

Thatcher looks a littler nervous here. He had it in his heart that he would be the top runner out of kindergarten but also beat his sister's kindergarten record. 

He's got the fastest mile time in kindergarten so I assured him he would be just fine if he PACED HIMSELF!

Off he went!

Kinder runs ten minutes less than the rest of the grades. 

For a half hour, Thatcher ran and ran. 

We were probably five minutes in and he was sprinting! I gave up on yelling, "PACE YOURSELF" each time he passed me. It seemed like a lost cause. 

He would not even stop for water. 

Done!

I knew he did pretty good because he was one of the few that never stopped. 

The perk of being on the jog-a-thon committee is you can see the results. Otherwise, while we let each kid know how many laps they ran, they do not know where they placed until the awards assembly a month later. 

When I grabbed Thatcher from school that day the first thing he said to me was, "Mom, I got first place and ran more laps than anyone in kindergarten!" 

His kindergarten teacher, Mr. Silva, thought that news was too good not to share right away. (I probably would have told him anyway) ;) 

Samantha's class came over to the park about an hour later for the second grade run. 

Samantha was pumped and excited! She is a top runner at Peabody but definitely has some competition. She was the #1 runner in kindergarten and #2 in first grade. 

Samantha seemed pretty confident the first ten minutes around the track. 

And then there were looks of pain and even tears!

She mouthed to me, "My side hurts!"

Uh oh.

Despite having a side ache for 30 of the 40 minutes she managed to keep running but definitely was not going her normal pace. 

She ended the 40 minutes in tears.

A blue popsicle managed to get her to crack a little smile.

Here's some video from the day. 

Lunchtime silliness now that all that running is over with!

By the way, I LOVE our jog-a-thon shirts this year. Not only was the artwork cute but they were dry-fit tees! 

Last month, the jog-a-thon awards assembly took place. 

Thatcher received his first place medal. 

25 laps! (he still didn't beat Sam's 26 in K)

Top kindergarten boys. 

And even Little Miss Side Ache retained her second place from last year! She ran 34 laps compared to her 36 in first grade. Darn side ache! 

These two have placed all three years. 

It's going to be hard to get that first place back from Ashley, she is FAST! 

Not only did Sam and Thatch walk away with medals, but they also raised enough money to qualify for both the over $300 and $500 Club to attend TWO off-campus trips (a movie premiere and a dance party on the Land Shark). Also, for the first time ever at Peabody, we entered all the runners who placed 1st through 3rd into a drawing to be eligible to have a pick at a grand prize. This was actually MY idea and every year something similar to this comes up with rewarding runners more than a medal and it gets shot down by someone at the school saying, "it is not about the running." Well, I agree, it is not ONLY about the running, BUT there is a percentage of kids that are working super hard to run and beat a lap goal that I think should be rewarded especially when some pledges are per lap so the more you run, the more money you raise. I even said, "you can take my kids out of the running" because I figured both would make it in the drawing. Somehow this got approved and guess whose name was called?!  

SAMANTHA!

She walked away with TWO summer camps. Cha-ching for me! (and I am glad they didn't take me seriously when I said to take the Fallon kids out of the running) ;) 

Enough of the prizes and medals and making my kids compete for who can run the most laps......

Our school went above and beyond our goal this year and raised $110,000!