A Year of Kindergarten

Our sweet girl finished Kindergarten today. The photos above show her first day back in August and her last day today (click on the photo to enlarge). It's hard to tell much of a difference until you look at the poster behind her head. The poster didn't move, but our girl gained a few inches during the year!

I have such mixed emotions today, much like I did on her first day. I am excited for two whole summer months to be with her, and feeling so blessed for an incredibly wonderful school year. And yet so sad to say goodbye to her amazing teacher, Ms. Miller, and extremely sentimental that my baby girl is now a first grader. I keep asking time to slow down, but it just doesn't listen.

I took a few pictures of her at home this morning, ready for a great last day!


For another fun comparison, here's Lauren and Jon together this morning...

...and Lauren and Jon together on her first day of school. (He has changed quite a bit!)
Lauren had a couple of final hours of Kindergarten, and then all of the parents were invited for a party to celebrate. Her class lined up to sing a good-bye song for us (and now you can see the video at the end of this post!).
Then the kids enjoyed lunch:
And I enjoyed being with my girl:
We said good-bye to Ms. Miller, the best teacher we could have asked for:

And Lauren had some time to play with her best friend:

Lauren brought home an awesome book made by her teacher, with a variety of her work through out the year. It will be the perfect keepsake for Kindergarten!
(I know she looks like she lost her bottom tooth in this picture, and she almost has! She's been wiggling it every day, and it's now kind of awkwardly pushed to the side. I just finished making her "tooth fairy pillow" yesterday--just in time!)

I'm getting a little teary-eyed just looking at the pictures from today, so I should wrap this up and go celebrate summer with my favorite kids. I hope to be back soon with an update on Jonathan (since it has been so very long since the last one). Happy summer, everybody!

Update: Here's the video of Lauren's class singing their goodbye song. Things to note:
*Lauren is clearly the star of the show--even with her itchy nose. :)
*The boy on the left is almost comical in his refusal to participate.
*The girl on the right seems to have no idea what's going on.
*The girl on the far left has a deaf mom, so she signs the entire song.
Enjoy!