The structure of the 2-hour exercise was that kids were assigned to groups of four. The older kids were on their own, while the kindergarteners each had a parent to herd them around. I drew the crew of Carson, John, Tommy, and Austin. Tommy’s dad arrived soon, so we weren’t aggressively outnumbered.

Austin, Tommy, John, Carson

Each group of four got a 5×5 “bingo card” that had the numbers 1 through 24 (and a free space in the center). As they went to each station, they got a number marked off their card. Any time they got enough Xs to complete a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal set of boxes, they got to go to the prize table to pick up a prize. I think we knocked out 18-20 of the stations — wound up with 5 bingos.

The activities were many and varied.

Hippity-Hop Race

Sack Race

Water Cannon Shooting (Tommy and Carson)

Egg Relay

Washer Toss

And there were some activities that require a bit more description. For instance, take a kiddie pool and put a bunch of marbles in it. Do this on the concrete, by all means. Then, get 4-5 kids to take their shoes off and climb in the pool. When the referree says “Go,” they try to pick up as many marbles as they can…with their feet…and put them in a dish outside of the pool. The volunteer working this station actually admitted that she could use a beer…!

Or, there was this one: Line up four kids in a row, holding hands, with a stack of hula hoops on the ground next to them. They then need to pick up each hula hoop and pass it down the entire chain without every letting go.

We crossed paths with Benton a couple of times. Once was at a frisbee tossing station:

His friend Josh is right behind him in all red, Alec is in the striped shirt, and Nick is the last kid in the line. This entire gang was at our house Friday night (along with Collin and Hunter) for Benton’s much-delayed birthday party. I’ll let Julie blog on that, as I escaped to the movies with Carson.

We also ran into Benton at the prize table on one of our trips. Seeing as I had told Benton that I just might come to school some time so I could take a picture of him not wearing his camouflage fleece pullover…I had to get a picture to prove that it has not actually grafted to his skin.

Start with the Glacier Ridge Elementary Spring Meltdown (read: many kids, running wild, throughout the school). Carson was pretty hooked on the inflatable bouncer/slide/caterpillar/Velcro wall set up in the gym: 

And there was face painting. Shocker: Carson went for the camouflage and Alana went for the butterfly.

That was followed up by a birthday party…at Pump It up (all inflatable stuff — like in the gym) for 2 hours.

The kids recovered well enough on Sunday that Benton and Carson actually co-existed in one of the trees in our cul-de-sac. Pictures that are so few and far between these days:

And Alana continued her eclectic attire. Yes, those are sandals. And, yes, that is snow in the background. And, yes, she walked in the snow in her sandals and commented that her feet got cold!

We’re still getting the hang of the new blog software — experimenting with different options for the pictures, but we’ll get it figured out.

All the kids took turns riding it. When I surprised Benton by snapping a picture of him rounding the corner of the island in the kitchen, he immediately blurted out, “Don’t put that on the internet!” The little bugger is a fast learner (still recovering from the trauma of the dogs putting a picture of him without a shirt on in their holiday missive).

Alana had no such qualms (give it time…):

On the recreation court at the boys’ school, with a steady drizzle coming down, I took a quick break from Benton’s and my tetherball matches to catch Alana tooling across the pavement on her Princess Hog:

Carson decided that slick concrete was perfect for skateboarding. He only took one or two spills:

The two pieces of information about the meeting that she relayed to me were: 1) that she sat next to Carson’s teacher, and 2) that Glacier Ridge Elementary (GRE) has a monthly “CiCi’s Pizza” night where a small percentage of earmarked proceeds from the evening’s take go to the school. CiCi’s does this for several schools and, at the end of the year, the school whose parents have spent the most money at CiCi’s get an end-of-year pizza party. I haven’t quite figured out how the teacher’s reconcile lessons on balanced, healthy meals with “don’t forget to go get pizza tonight” reminders, but that’s beside the point.

What came up at the PTO meeting was that, last month, GRE had a rather dismal showing on their designated CiCi’s night. Julie spoke up and said, “At the school my son went to in Austin, when the local ice cream parlor did this sort of thing, they always sent the kids home that day with a sticker on their shirt as a reminder.”

Any guesses as to what Carson had on his shirt when he came home from school today?

We went to CiCi’s for dinner.

It was mobbed.

With GRE families.

I mentioned in passing to Julie that this was a good, albeit simplistic, example of the sort of thing my company, Bulldog Solutions, does with our clients. It’s all about the timeliness (within a few hours of dinner time) and relevance (we have to eat…and should also support our school) of the Marketing!

Her eyes glazed over at “example.”

I do think she might be convinced now that PTO involvement is time well spent!