It's probably good that most people don't wear hats anymore.

Last night C's kindergarten class had their Growing Celebration. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I had assumed it was going to be a mini-graduation thing, but it was really more like a concert. All 4 kindergarten classes came together for the evening and performed at least 8 songs for all of the parents. It was really well done - you could tell they had been working on the program for weeks.


C had been anticipating this night for quite awhile. He kept hinting that he had been working on a "super secret project" for Mr. Crackers & me. I was thinking he probably made some kind of picture frame or collage. I was in for a surprise though - I had no idea that the kindergartners had gotten into the accessory design business.




What do you think? I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture or not, but Mr. Crackers' tie is adorned with a green jewel in the center. Very snazzy! I like the width of the tie too - it makes me reminisce about my childhood back in the 70's when ties took up a lot more square footage on a man's chest.


The hats were really cleverly done. C painted mine blue, yellow and green - it was really quite pretty. Large, but pretty. The only issue is that clearly C had no idea that his mother was born with an unusually large head. I've got a freakishly big noggin - it's a family problem. (I blame my father.) Unfortunately, I just couldn't get the darn hat to stay on my head during the concert. It just kept falling off. This probably came as a relief to the parents who were sitting behind us. They might have actually gotten to see their child perform.




The problem with the hats is that they actually created quite a barrier, especially to those of us in the audience who were a bit height challenged (I would definitely fit into this category). It was almost impossible to see anything. I didn't really get to see too much of C's face during the program. Most of my view was blocked by the sea of brightly colored hats in front of me. Picture taking became an effort in futility. Since most people were constantly shifting around in their seats to better see around the wall of hats, most of our photos of C actually ended up being snapshots of the brightly colored bonnets instead.

As part of the celebration, we were supposed to present C with a special memento from his first year of life. Since I really don't hold onto a lot of things (that's why I take lots of pictures - so I don't have to keep all the "stuff") we decided it was probably time to give him his baby book. The only problem is that...umm... well... I never really finished it. I had written in it & filled out about 75% of the information when he was a baby (that would be around 6 years ago now), but I never really got around to putting any pictures or other sentimental items inside the book. So, as you can imagine I spent most of my day yesterday printing out photos to get everything pulled together before the evening's festivities got under way.

We had a great time. It was fun looking at the book with him to see just how much he's grown. One of the things I put in the book, was a shot of him in April 2003 (when he was just 4 months old) and another shot of him this past April. He's certainly changed a lot, but he's still got those cute cheeks though!

It's official, my oldest child is now done with kindergarten (where did the year go?) and I have 3 more years before we go through the same thing with K. That means I have 3 more years to put off finishing her baby book. If I know myself (& after 39 years I think I finally do) something tells me I'll be madly cutting and pasting her book together the day before her Growing Celebration too. I'm nothing if not consistent!