Kids Day 2010

My good friend Gina told me about her Mom's good friend who used to do this for her kids. Each year on the day after the last day of school, the children wake up to balloons filling their rooms, candy for breakfast, and the kids get to set the agenda for the day. I have been dreaming about the last day of school ever since so I could do this with my kids. Last year, the day after Ellie finished Kindergarten, I had to WORK. Boo. This is the first Douglas Family "Kids Day" and I hope to make it a yearly family tradition.

It was so fun to fill the kids rooms with balloons last night. I was so nervous one would pop and jolt them out of a dead sleep. All was calm as the balloons floated over my sleeping babies, until the tornado sirens started blaring and the kids ran to the basement so fast they didn't even see the balloons through the terror!

After ducking and covering, we came upstairs to enjoy the party atmosphere and found 2 little baby guinea pigs in Millie's cage. Our friend Carey was right, Millie WAS giving Vanilli "piggyback rides" while she was g.pig-sitting for us during our trip to Florida. Two baby mini-Millies are a great start to Kids Day. I've already talked to Pet Land and apparently there is a "guinea pig shortage" and they will be thrilled to take them off of our hands if none of our friends do, so we're good. We celebrated the twins birth...

Then had a dance party in the basement. Obviously. It's Kids Day!

Here is a yard sign I picked up at the Party Store while wandering the isles waiting on the balloons. I'm such a sucker for Party supplies. I thought it would be cool to take the kids picture every year with this sign to see how much they have grown from the first day of school.

First Day of School - August 2009

We had to add Luke to our Kids Day shot since he was in my belly on the first day of school!

After a game of Apples to Apples (so we could celebrate that they can both READ), a little outdoor time, and an Italian cream soda for Mom (fill a glass with ice, add 1 shot of Torani Raspberry syrup, 1 shot of heavy cream, fill with club soda... from my High School job at the Coffee & Tea Company. Yum.) we were off to see "How to Train Your Dragon".

Which lasted 5 minutes. I knew Luke might not handle it, so I gave the kids a big pep-talk about Mommy bouncing the baby in the hallway if they could sit by themselves, blah, blah. We were the ONLY ones in the theater - SCORE - I thought, "I can nurse! Brilliant!" until Ross started crying 5 min. into the movie. My boy who has seen Avatar twice could not handle the fire-blowing and the gnashing of the teeth dragon movie. We got our 30 bucks back and got to keep these awesome 3D glasses...

A little Dip&Dots and an arcade game later, we were all good.

We landed at the library and got some good books. The kids took great joy asking the librarian (Ross) "Excuse me, 'mam, could you please show me where the FIRST grade books are?" So proud. Also proud that Luke laughed and giggled the whole time I was reading to him.

It's going to be a fun summer.