Thomas Timeline: March 2012

Awards Assembly

Let me just start out by saying that I just love my little boy. He is always trying to please me and it good most of the time, a little too sensitive but a very good boy. About six weeks ago I got a phone message that said there was an awards assembly the next morning, the same time as usual. Since Matthew is in K, and though I believe this was the 2nd assembly they had I never heard about the first one. I was excited to go to this awards assembly and once I called the school to figure out what time usual was, I showed up. Oh. My. Goodness. Talk about boring.
They started off with all A honor roll, but that only goes to 1st and 2nd grades, then they did A & B honor roll and again, 1st and 2nd graders. Then they did the Henderson awards and the Hawk awards, none of which Matthew received. It ended up being a complete waste of my time and Matthew was crying at the end because he didn't get an award. I figured out then that that was probably one of the reasons why my mom never came to our award assemblies growing up, she learned from the first that they are boring.
The night before the next awards assembly Matthew's teacher, Mrs. Greenlee called me to let me know that Matthew would be receiving an award the next day, but he didn't know. I went but I didn't know exactly what he was going to get.
After all the honor roll students they started the Henderson awards. They started saying, "this student is recognized for his excellent reading abilities..." Once they said that I started getting up to get closer to the front. Matthew is a pretty good reader so I had a suspicion that the award was going to him. Matthew was so excited to receive this award and I think Allison may have been even more excited, if that is possible. Here he is getting his Henderson award.

As soon as he got it, he turned around to where he had seen me last to show me, but I had moved. He was excited to show me he got a pencil.

He is still looking for me.

Oh there you are mom!

After the assembly he came to show me. It says:
Henderson Award
We hereby present
MATTHEW THOMAS
with this certificate in honor and recognition of
his excellent reading abilities! Matthew loves reading for us in
class and challenging himself with first grade level books.
Congratulations Matthew!

He is such a good little boy.
I think they only get one award a year, so he is done now. I am glad that I was able to be there for him. It is slightly less boring if your child actually gets something. If I could just know exactly the minute they would do his, it would be so much less boring to show up and then leave. haha
I am proud of my sweet, special little boy.

Gold Fish - Update and pictures

(Update and pictures at the bottom of post)

Matthew has always wanted...a dog:) Chris always tells him that he can't have a dog until he can take care of a goldfish. Then we moved into the apartment and it was way too small to even think about getting anything else in there. I think in Matthew's mind once we moved all of our stuff into our duplex from the apartment that, that meant it was time that he could get a goldfish. We finally figured why not so last Saturday I was already planning on kicking Chris and the kids out so I could vacuum and deep clean withOUT children around. I had some errands for Chris to run but Chris also decided that it was be a good time to go get a goldfish. After he bought the bowl, the guy said that he would throw two goldfish in so both Matthew and Allison got to pick a fish (the fish were only $.15/ea anyways but it sounds good). The kids have enjoyed watching the fish and feeding them but sadly, this afternoon Chris and I discovered that Matthew's fish was not moving anymore. I don't know if the bowl was too small for both of them, or what happened because he didn't even last a week but I made Chris deal with it before Matthew or Allison found it. They were both alive this morning when we fed them and I watched them some today. Chris flushed it and then we told Matthew. He was obviously distraught and blamed it on himself, which was sad but we have been trying to make him realize that it wasn't anybody's fault, it was just his time to die. He was crying a lot and finally got off my lap and went upstairs to his room and cried on his bed. Chris sent Allison up with a game that he had never played before and it was a good detour to take his mind off of it. I am sure he will be a little sad again when he talks about it but maybe that bowl was just too small for two of them, I don't know. I now wonder how long this other fish will live though. We will just have to see.

The other fish only lasted two more days after the first fish died. I could see it struggles and many times not moving, but when I moved the water it would start swimming again. I told Chris that it would be dead by morning and sure enough it was. Thankfully the kids didn't have to see the dead fish. I was more prepared for the second one dying then the first so it was easier. The kids still talk about the fish but we haven't gotten anymore since then.

Happy Valentine's Day

I had really great intentions of doing some fun things for the kids for Valentine's Day, but I was being too cheap and didn't want to pay full price for valentine stuff so I decided I would do something fun the day after. Alas, none that happened.
We at least had lunch bunch that ended up being on Valentine's day so I decided since I had some time before then I would french braid Allison's hair in a heart. It kind of turned out. When I French Braid her hair I usually just have her stand in the bathroom but I knew it would take longer so she got to watch Elmo, lucky little girl. I realized when I got done that I should have started them closer to eat other in the middle but it still showed up a little bit. She was a good sport about it and actually really liked having a heart in her hair when we were done.