Life is Good, Life is Great

They sang those words as reassurance. To us — the stunned parents — as we watched our fifth graders file out of elementary school, for the final time, stunned that it went so fast, and yet they seem so ready. The Mini-Mall kids are now graduates of Elementary School (yes, of course, there was a ceremony.) Before they left elementary school, they wrote their very own, I Am From Poems, and I share them here. And, you can watch a you tube video of the balloon arc, that took 4 hours to make, with not enough volunteers, as it tumbles around and falls. (My second grader thought it looked kind of cool.) And, their cute little voices singing that song at the end, “Life is Great, Life is Good.”

And, this does not work for the Egg Drop. It’s a strawberry box, with plastic grocery bags for cushion. This was a truly, a last-minute, what-do-we-have-around-the-house-this-morning-before-school-starts attempt. We tested this on the tree house outside — and it worked fine. If he would have had foam, like Kim suggested — things would have been different. But I was de-cluttering, literally, two weeks ago, and threw that “useless” stuff away. There are no pictures of the egg drop, as promised. The teacher said, “Emotions run high on the last day of school — better off to keep things low-key.” And so the parents stayed out of it. This teacher knows pre-teens well.

Speaking of the ceremony, what a story that was … they used to have a big ceremony in the stadium at the Middle School — the tradition got nixed this year — and there were a lot of unhappy Moms. Me? I’m just glad they’re all healthy, and they made it. The less pomp and circumstance the better. So, to appease everyone, the PTO did a very great job of making it as spectacular as possible — a clap-through, where the graduates walked though the entire school, and we’re applauded by all of the underclassmen, (A map was made, ensuring that all parts of the school were included, with no back steps.) the balloon walk, and the party. And, I watching them makes me proud to know them. I admire these kids.

Geesh, all this moving on makes me ready for some Summertime. Lemonade, picking strawberries — what else am I missing?