Carter's Kindergarten Graduation.

Monday night, Carter graduated from Kindergarten at Presbyterian Christian School, where he has been attending since our move to Hattiesburg in October.  Carter has truly had a wonderful school year.  He began his year in Kindergarten at Powder Springs First Baptist Church with Miss Sandy, and then finished at PCS with Mrs. Gibson.  I am forever in debt to both teachers for the love and encouragement they have shown Carter this school year.  Even more, they renewed a love of learning in his little heart all the while sharing with him the love of Jesus.  

These first few pictures I took with my iPhone because my other camera was in the gym with David and Summer.  

Carter was part of the hand bells group, and he did so great!  I loved watching him play never taking his eyes off the music teacher the entire time.  

Carter outside the cafeteria just before joining his classmates.  

Carter with E, one of his sweet classmates.  I was talking to her mother while we were waiting, and she shared with me that Carter had given E his phone number, all written out on a sheet of construction paper because he wanted to have a play date with her this summer.  Apparently, E was not the only young lady who received our son's phone number because two other mommas shared that their daughters had as well!  Too funny!  Even funnier, the phone number he gave them was his daddy's cell phone, ha!  

Carter and Summer before the program.  Okay, now the next few pictures are of stellar quality.  What? They are.  I have to share the story behind it.  I have been trying to learn more and get better at taking pictures.  One of my sweet friend's husband, who is a professional, let me borrow his phat camera with a phat lens for Carter's graduation.  It was my first ever experience with taking the camera off auto, and I'm a little proud of how they turned out!  Thank you, Chad and Sherry, for sharing your skills and your equipment!  

Dr. Smithers, the headmaster at PCS.  Small world.  Dr. Smithers has a son, Chas.  Well, Chas and Amanda were members of the same church as us for a time in Atlanta and have since moved back to MS.  We had no idea of this connection when we registered the children for school!  

Here is Carter's class walking into the gymnasium.  

Their program was awesome, so sweet, and not very long either!  I was really impressed.  Carter graduated with 93 other students!  That's a whole lot of 5 and 6 year olds!  

Here are some of the songs they sang:  The Continents, God Bless America, Love One Another, Pray (my favorite, I got teary at this point!), Tumbleweed (from Saddle Ridge Ranch VBS a few summers ago), Whacky Do Re Mi, May the Lord, and the Alma Mater.  

The children also recited Bible verses for each letter of the alphabet.  Carter has been so cute these last weeks leading up to graduation.  He has diligently studied his red book with all of his verses to make sure that he was ready.  One night, we also caught Carter and Summer up way past their bedtime.  He was teaching her some his songs, so cute!

This is from the song, Tumbleweed.  I remember these motions from VBS.  I love the look on his cute face!  

And this is just pure Carter mode.  I can hear him now, "Girls, we have to go!  The line is moving!" 

Carter is waiting in line to get his diploma from Mr. Griffith, the principal of the elementary school.  At the beginning of the school year, Carter called him the President!

Shaking Mr. President's hand and getting his diploma.  

Taking a minute to smile at us as he walked back to his seat.  Tilly and Story stayed home with two of our college interns during graduation.  We felt like it would have just been too crazy to keep them all still and quiet, and we were just going to be outnumbered, ha!

Carter and the hand bell group playing the Alma Mater.  So sweet!  

Carter's teacher, Mrs. Gibson.  He adores her!  I asked him this week what he thought about being done with Kindergarten.  He replied in all seriousness, "Mom, I'm kind of sad."  Sweet thing!

None of our grandparents were able to attend the special event, so we let Carter open their presents in the car afterwards.  He was so excited!  

Carter and Summer in the parking lot after graduation.  

This was taken with my iPhone during the ceremony.  What you see here are only 1/2 of the kindergartners!  There are this many more on the other side of the podium.  It's the largest Kindergartner class ever at PCS.

Daddy treated us to Outback after the ceremony.  It was really dark inside, so the pictures didn't turn out so well, but I wanted to at least document our evening.  

Carter, we are so very proud of you.  We are so proud of how hard you have worked this year at school.  We are proud of how you are a sweet helper to your teacher and a kind friend to your classmates.  We are thankful that you have begun to hide God's Word in your heart and to think about heavenly things.  We are excited that you have learned to read this year and that your handwriting is getting better and better every day.  We are most excited that God gave us you.  We love you to the moon and back a whole bunch of times!  

End of school fun.

The last few weeks bringing the end of the school year to a close have been crazy!  This week, being the actual last week of school, has been so full of fun!  

We began the week by celebrating Summer's birthday at school.  She has a July birthday, so her teacher offered to celebrate with her friends.  After singing some songs, reciting some poems, and practicing some sight words, we played Alphabet Bingo.  

Summer loved having Story in her class.  Story even joined in on the fun!  

Wednesday, was Tilly's last day of school, and they had their end of the year party at one of the jump places in town.  It's actually the same place we went to celebrate Story's birthday the week before.  

Here's Tilly playing with her sweet friend, E.  

I took Story with me, so she could play, too.  She had so much fun.  She recognized the place when we pulled up in the parking lot and was so excited!  She kept saying "Jump, Mommy, jump!  I had so much fun watching Tilly and Story play.  Happy last day of school, Tilly!  It's so hard for me to believe  that you will be in K4 next year!  

Thursday was Summer's last day of school.  Her party was at Planet Gymnastics, and Summer could not have been more excited!  She loves to tumble and flip and has been begging us to sign her up for gymnastics.  

I love her face in this picture.  She's like "hurry up, Mom, I wanna play!"  Summer, you will turn five this summer and begin Kindergarten in the fall!  Wow!  We are so very proud of you!

Friday, was Carter's last official day of school, we celebrated in his class with an ice cream party!  The children were so excited and had so much fun!

Carter took my phone to snap some pictures of his friends.  Not too shabby for a beginner.  

I love this picture!  How big does he look?  I will also share that the cutie in the middle may or may not be the recipient of his first ever love note, gasp!  

After school, we met some sweet ladies from our church for lunch to celebrate Carter's graduation.  Mrs. Ward (she's sitting over Carter's left shoulder) is the wife of the gentleman who started Ward's restaurant back in 1978.  They are all over Hattiesburg.  I told David today in the car that I think it's so neat to have lunch with her in the restaurant she and her husband began so many years ago.  

After lunch, it was ice cream for everyone!  I tried to capture a picture of each of the four enjoying their ice cream to the fullest.  I think I succeeded!  

Story loves sweets, loves them!  I think the only thing she ate for lunch today was french fries with ketchup, of course.  And ice cream.  Eh, pick your battles, right?  

Summer, sweet Summer.  She's in the zone!  So cute.  We loved our time at lunch with some sweet friends from church.  

I snapped this picture last night on our Friday family date night.  Carter is singing his school's Alma Mater for his daddy.  I am way biased, but that boy can sing!  Apparently, according to his children's choir teacher, he's already reading musical rhythms, too. We have gotta get that boy signed up for piano lessons or something, soon.  Monday night, he will graduate from Kindergarten.  What.  He was chosen among several Kindergartners to play the hand bells at the graduation.  I know, I'm so proud.  Carter, we cannot wait to watch you play!
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Contact glasses.

Children are fascinated with glasses, ours are no different.  Each of the children has a friend in their class at school who wears glasses.  Somewhere along the way, the children, I think Carter was the ringleader, coined the phrase contact glasses, so that's what we call them! While still in Atlanta, Summer did not do so well on her eye exam at the pediatrician's office.  Partway through the school year here, Carter began complaining about not being able to see the board at school. So we knew that once we were settled in our new place, it was imperative that we have the children's eyes checked, and we finally made it happen. Tilly went first.  Her first appointment was about a month ago, and she handled it like a champ!  I've never had my eyes dilated before, ever, and she's done it twice now!  Dr. A. recommended that we take her to a specialist, so that's just what we did.  The week after I got back from my grandmother's, we took Tilly to see Dr. K.  She recommended we start with glasses to see if that can help correct Tilly's eyes.  Tilly will go back in two months for a check up.  

Here's Tilly with the 3D glasses on during a portion of her vision test.  

About a week after Tilly's appointment, I took Carter and Summer to have their eyes checked.  They both did really well until it was time for the eye drops.  I remember when Carter was a baby and had pink eye.  David and I had to hold him down to put them in his eyes.  Well, it was a lot easier to hold him down as a baby than when he is 4 feet tall and almost 6!  He's strong as an ox, too!  

As you can see, we survived and got through two more eye exams.  You have to imagine that I was shocked to learn that both Carter and Summer (in addition to what we already knew about Tilly) would need glasses!  What!  Summer is set for another 6 months.  Carter will have to come back in two months like Tilly to see what progress he is making.  

Well, the glasses came today, and Miss Amber called to tell us we could come and pick them up.  They were SO excited!  I have to interject and say I was really proud I took all four of them into the doctor's office all by myself, and we survived without breaking anything, ha!  I always want to remember this.  When Carter first put on his glasses, he exclaimed, "Mommy, you look goooooood!" Amber and I about fell out laughing!  Makes me kind of wonder how I looked before ;)

 Summer was really funny in the car.  She said to Carter, "Mommy is nervous to take us all in the office because we are a lot of kids!" Doesn't she look beautiful?  You cannot really tell from my blurry iPhone picture, but her glasses are purple, and she loves them!

Tilly's are pink.  Of course.  So cute!  

And there they are.  Our big 3 in their brand new contact glasses.  

Tilly doesn't like for me to take her picture.  That's why she is often missing in my Wordless Wednesday post, ha!  This one was just too cute to pass up.  She's holding her glass case in her hands.  Tilly and Summer got these adorable mini pocketbooks to hold their glasses, so cute.  

And you have to know little Miss Story was not about to be left out.  The sweet ladies at the desk gave her a pair of glasses, too!  I have a feeling we are going to be buying some sun contact glasses for this cutie very soon.  
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Wordless Wednesday.