Something cool in our school library!

I laughed when I checked out this book at the school library to read to Ashley-Greg's grandmother, Helen Elliott, used to run Peachtree Publishers, followed by Greg's Uncle Wayne.  I need to ask and find out who is running the company now.

I never had the privilege of meeting Grandmother Elliott but love hearing Greg's stories of how they had very formal Sunday lunches at their house and we have many Peachtree Publisher books.  I have read newspaper articles about her and think that it is really neat that she knew Ferrol Sams and Lewis Grizzard because she published their books.  I loved hearing about Bev trying to copy her recipe for a special cake that she made for Larry's birthday, having trouble with the icing, and loading up all the children to go to Grandmother Elliott's for a lesson.  Through Larry, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Gretchen, and Aunt Nancy I have gotten glimpses of this beautiful Southern lady!  Also because of their gifts Greg and I are privileged to have her silver tea service (which is staying with Bev while we are in Manila) and LOTS of Peachtree Publisher books.

Another cool thing that Greg and I discovered a few years after we got married was that Peachtree Publishers published a children's book called If I had a Wistful Unicorn and it was a favorite of Greg's when he was little.  My mom and grandmother got me a copy autographed by the author when it came out!  A neat childhood connection!  I look forward to meeting this sweet lady in Heaven one day and had fun telling the kids about their great grandmother who published books!

Here are 2 lovely pictures of her!

APAC

2nd post of the day-

The competition this time was track and field and we had 4 girls stay with us from an international school in Shanghai-it was fun to have them and we enjoyed learning about their school and what we should do in Shanghai on our China tour this summer before home leave.

Here are some pictures of the competitions we saw-sadly I let the girls get away without a picture of them!

Watching the high jump

 This is the gym where Ryan has PE class-the high jumpers were fun to watch!

 I REALLY don't think that Ashley believed me when I told her that the big boys would run and jump over these things called hurdles!

 She saw them do it and was fascinated watching-the race was so quick that I didn't get a chance for any pictures.

 Any trip to school is made better with a chance to play with her buddy, Hannah!

 Here are some of the runners-3 of the girls who stayed with us were runners-some even long distance.  I asked how many times around the track was their longest run and they said 7 1/2.  I can't imagine, especially in this heat-it has been in the low to mid 90s here for the last several weeks!

 This is how Ashley and Hannah do the hurdles-they run under them!

 In just a couple of Saturdays-the school is having a track and field day for the lower school-3rd to 5th grade.  Scott is going to do high jump, hurdles, and run the 100m dash-I will be sure to post pictures.  He is looking forward to it!

An award for Ryan

 Ryan and Daniel sitting with their class in chapel

 Ms. Jingco-who will be the elc/lower school principal next year

 Here is Ryan on his way to get his Brent Pride Award

 Getting 5's from all the teachers as he goes by!

 His award was for jumping the farthest in their class-long jump competition-aka a sneaky way to teach about measuring length.  One day for boys and one day for girls measuring in feet and inches and then meters and centimeters-Ryan is blessed with a very creative teacher!  Congratulations Ryan-those long skinny legs can really jump!

Ashley is silly!

2nd post for today-I was making egg salad recently and she wanted to help crack the eggs.  Another of her favorite kitchen jobs is using a spoon to beat things-like cashews or crackers-into small pieces!

Sometimes being destructive is fun!

We laugh at her imagination ALL the time.  Recently she told me about all of her imaginary pets-

Lavinia the fish-who does not have to stay in water

Marabelle the butterfly-who is strong enough to carry the fish

Then there is Annabelle-a pretend dog who can go up on pointe in her ballet shoes!

Quite often some or all of these animals are with us when we go shopping! Don't you wish they could come visit you?????

Fun Friday

 Here are Hannah and Ashley sitting with big brothers, Daniel and Ryan in chapel

 These are all the parents, waving during the hello song and taking pictures and videos!

 A Kindergarten class did the story of Joseph and talked about him forgiving his brothers

 Below are the 2nd grade teachers all in red-just coincidence!

 After chapel, we got new library books, played on the playground, and went to Hannah's house to play.  We got to meet their ducklings-Circus and Chocolate

 The girls played, got all dressed up

 had a snack,

 read a little

 Ashley shared one of her headbands with me

 They did some painting, we had lunch, and then went back over to school to see Scott's class chapel presentation.

 

 Scott's class sang "Let There Be Peace on Earth" and did sign language along with it as they sang-he is in the middle of the back row

 After the program


On the way home from school that afternoon we stopped to try out a new cupcake restaurant that has opened here recently called Vanilla Cupcake Bakery

 Studying the list of all their cupcakes

 Ashley loved the outside of the restaurant-then we went in and everyone made their selections from the cases-Ashley got strawbery oreo, I chose salted caramel, Ryan got a smores cupcake, and Scott a chocolate brownie one.  They were very yummy!

It was a super fun Friday!