The Vandenberges: May 2012

Anna graduated from Preschool on Thursday night. She was very excited!! Anna has had a very very wonderful experience with Mother's Day Out and Preschool at our church. I am so thankful for all her loving teachers over the last few years. She loves school and learning. We are so blessed with our church and school!

All the little graduates processed in to the sanctuary. She was the first to come in - I realized they were alphabetical by first names.

Then they all sat down.

They called her name.

That's her teacher Mrs. Kimberly (who also happens to be the mom of one of Emma's good friends Maggie).

Anton came over from work. He's selling Cutco knives, so he has to dress up a little. It has been a great experience for him so far!

That's her other teacher, Mrs. Nancy.

Anna's class.

We had some cake in the gym.

Her good friend Kaydee.

BFFs!

Her first diploma!!

Here's Anna with her growing garden last Saturday. She loves it! She keeps asking when they will be ready to pull out and eat. Hopefully they will stay alive until Tony comes home!

If you look close you can see Tony on the computer screen. He's still in Australia and we were skyping with him. I LOVE Skype!!

Later on one of Anna's classmates had a birthday party at a place called Cowboy City in Humble. It was really cool. I had no idea it was there. Here's some kids lined up to ride a horse.

Anna's next. Emma didn't want to ride. She was scared.

She got to go around several times. She loved it!

Then she got her face painted.

There's the birthday boy blowing out his candles.

Anna had choir practice in the afternoon, and Anton's prom group was meeting up at a house near the church for pictures, so I headed over there with Emma. Here's Anton and his date Allie.

And his two siblings who were present at the time.

When it was time to go get Anna, not all the teenagers had gotten to the house yet, so I brought the girls back over. All the teenagers had arrived by then and were taking pictures on this pretty terrace overlooking a little lake. This is just the guys - I don't know where the girls were at this point.

Sean was playing angry birds on Anton's phone. It kept all three of them entertained for a while. The girls didn't seem to be all that interested in the pretty dresses. They were much more excited to get to play with Anton's little brother.

Emma was being grumpy and wouldn't get in the picture.

Most of this group has been good friends since Middle School. He said they had a great time!

On Sunday morning the choir did a little preview for their musical - "Moses and the Freedom Fanatics". Those are frogs on their shirts - as in the plague of frogs, just in case it's been a while since you read Exodus.

On Tuesday, we had a parent tea at school for Emma's class. They sang us a song.

I think Emma is shy like I was, but isn't she so cute??!!

Emma H. and her mommy.

I love that girl!!!

On Tuesday afternoon, I took Anna to the Kindergarten round up at the Elementary school she will be attending next year. We listening to the 3 Kindergarten teacher talk a bit about grown up stuff, then we got a little tour of the Kindergarten classrooms. Anna was very excited!! She hardly ever seems shy. She is quite an extrovert and gets very restless if she doesn't have time with friends on a regular basis. She probably gets that from my mom and/or Tony's dad. I think she will love big kid school!

On Wednesday the childrens' choir performed the musical. The littlest group (that Anna was in) were frogs. I took a good bit of video for Tony, but I had a hard time posting just one to the blog. I lost everything trying so I am not going to try again - maybe on a separate post. It was cute and everyone involved did a great job. If you want more action shots, you can go to Jessica's blog http://www.txpencefamily.blogspot.com/ (I don't think there's any pictures of Anna though since she and Joanna weren't close to each other). Just don't compare my blogging skills to Jessica's. She posts about 20 pictures for every one that I take, along with lots of play-by-play descriptions. That is great fun for the rest of us to look at, but I don't know how she has time to do it.