A Season of Last

We have been enjoying a season of lasts- The last whole month before we leave, the last day of school, the last Sunday (where I had to give a talk!), the last time we had to say good-bye to Dad before he graduated from JPME-2 and came home from Norfolk.

The last school projects for the year. Sam's was relatively quick and painless. He did very little research, saying that he already knew everything about Grant. Apparently it was enough for the teacher. His report went something like this, Grant is a very important person in American history. He was born...blah... blah...blah, where he did many important things. He became president in blah... blah...blah and did many important things. That is why he is so important. He had about 10 importants in the report, so I made him redo it. I read it just before he got out of the car to go into school. He had taken out some of the importants and made them into specials or something just as "important!"

Joseph's was an entirely different story. The entire project was way too much to ask a 1st grader to do. They had them pick a subject from the school year. Joseph picked Math and then he had to pick one of the things he learned in math. He chose measurments. Then he was suppose to make a book about it and include a game and a biography of the author (himself.) They were going to use these to help introduce the new 1st grade class to the different things they would be learning that year. Basically, we were doing their work for them. I was not impressed. I ended up doing almost the entire project for him. I had him tell me his biography and I wrote a few of the things down he said that he had learned about measurements. I also let him choose all the pictures we used. Luckily, I think I got an A on my final project!

Emma had her last soccer game and then her last soccer tournament. Their team won the tournament yet again. They got nice trophies. Emma has been on this same team for years. We are excited to see what she can do on another team. I especially was overjoyed to see that her new school has sports. Of course they have all the sports that the High School has, except Soccer!

Rob had his last day at work. They did a luncheon for him. I forgot at first, that the luncheons in the army are more of a roast and got pretty offended before I remembered. There is no way they could do that to a woman as they left or they would go away crying! He got a regular award for his time there and then he also got all the gag gifts.

Some friends of our threw us a couple of goodbye parties . It was so nice of them and we will definitely miss the wonderful people who went out of their way to let us know that we would also be missed. I decided to throw an impromtu end of school, last fling, happy birthday to all three boys at the same time party. We had a bunch of kids over and let them run all over and throw 200 water balloons in a matter of minutes and then have cake and ice cream. It was a lot of fun!

We had our last night in the house and turned the keys over early in the morning. I was glad to have the last of the cleaning done- my hands were toast after all that scrubbing! Thank you Elder's for helping get the heavy, heavy piano loaded!We went to Wolf Lodge and celebrated Sam's birthday then came back and spent one more night in a friend's home in Woodbridge. I picked up Emma from girls camp and we headed out of Virginia for the last time.

It was a good season of lasts and now we are glad they are over, because that means that we are now into the season of beginnings! DC hasn't been our favorite place to live, but we learned so much, got to see so many amazing sites and watched our family grow there. We certainly wouldn't want to take it back, but we are excited for the future ahead!