Mom here posting for Lila. I'm in Wyoming and she's in Pittsburgh and we've been chatting about "the next post" since before I left. Last post, Lila mentioned wanting to write about all of the wonderful things that happened the last week of school . . . here are the highlights:

• A Tuesday tie dye extravaganza where each child in the grades tie dyed their own Waldorf School shirt.
• An end of the year Fiesta on Wednesday with their Spanish teacher where they broke open the pinata they made and had chips, salsa, and guacamole! Ole!
  
• Thursday was a field trip and picnic - all the children wore their tie dye t-shirts. Then Lila's class went on a hike into the woods with their teacher and were surprised to find that the Gnomes they had spent so much time knitting throughout the spring, had made it to the forest to surprise them! Lila's had climbed a small tree and she had to ask for help to get her down. The children had a kind of watermelon treat tea-party with their Gnomes, children and Gnomes together (can't wait to see and post the photo of this, the knitted gnomes are amazing!).
  
• On Friday they cleaned their classroom and desks and then moved all of their gear to the third grade classroom - Pebbles their turtle will spend the summer with their teacher.

What a wonderful 2nd Grade year!

Lila's last day of school was a half day, followed by an all-school picnic. After the picnic we came home and began working on our first batch of homemade ice cream for the summer, beginning our ice cream experiments with mint chocolate chip in icy blue . . . . It took awhile of churning and the ice cream still needed to freeze up some in the freezer but it was pretty tasty! (We've since made pumpkin ice cream trying to replicate that of Campground Ice Cream in Holderness, NH . . . ours was rich, but still not quite as good, we're sad to report . . . .)


The next week was "Mom Camp" and while we both had so much fun and did so many cool things, turns out we can hardly remember them all . . . . On Wednesday we went to the Mattress Factory to volunteer and help the museum get ready for a big party they had coming up that weekend. We worked together in a team (Andy says, "You can't have (fill in the blank) without T-E-A-M!") to put tags on 300 pair of sunglasses - whew! We celebrated with some lunch at their delicious cafe that has food by M Catering (our neighbor). And get this . . . for dessert, we had gingersnaps with Nutella - WHOA! Try it!

After the Mattress Factory we went to the bike trail on the South Side (our bikes were handy in the truck) and rode the trail from REI to almost where Andy parks downtown. Lila put her brakes on every other mulberry tree and proceeded to gather a good amount of mulberries in her basket. Then she ate them, and then later . . . she didn't feel so well because of eating so many (but the Nutella might have played a roll in this too, I see now).

Lila also worked on some very important clay sculptures, one a replica of Princess Kate and Prince Williams' wedding cake. While we don't, unfortunately, have images of that cake before packaging it up to send to them, I did scan the front and back of the envelope that contained Lila's letter to the Princess, now Duchess . . . (decided to only show back, the front was gorgeous but has just too much personal information to share here).


Since Mom camp, Lila has enjoyed the Science of Sports at the Science Center and last week she had Comics and Cartoons at the Art Museum with the good fortune of having one of her former Waldorf teachers lead the class. They even had an art opening in the museum on Friday! (She's made the museum before me - bah!) Dream House, an architecture camp, is this week after the holiday festivities, and she will end her week with fanfare by celebrating her 9th birthday! Next week she and her dad join me in Wyoming - can't wait!

We always attempt to ease the sadness at parting, when one of us will be gone for a period of time, by taking Polaroid photos - one for each person - so we can have them at home and during travels. Lila mentioned how much she likes this ritual - as I became more and more behind schedule in my leave taking - and you know what . . . I like it too.

Perhaps some Wyoming adventures next? Or some birthday pictures? Stay tuned . . . !