Last Day of School!

Today was the last day of school for the kids. Or as Noah corrected me, "It's not the last day of school, mom. It's the last half day of school." Okay buddy, however you want to look at it.

My soon to be 2nd grader and 5th grader below:

And, as always, they insist on getting to take a silly picture after all other pictures are done. Madison is definitely being a dork, but not sure what Noah is trying to do:

I usually try to think of something creative for the teachers so they don't always get the same thing. A lot of times we do Barnes & Noble gift cards or Tastefully Simple food items (YUMMY!). This year I searched online for ideas and we found some pretty cool ones.

We decided to do a starter plant in a pot. If you look at the picture below, the large pots were for the main teachers and the little ones were for the classroom assistants. Madison colored the wood crosses that we inserted into the plant for a little decoration.

With the plants that we gave the main teachers, we attached a little homemade card that read, "Thanks for helping me grow this year!" I have to admit, they were pretty cute!

One last thing that we added for the kids' main teachers was the poem "Why God Made Teachers". We printed the poem off on colored paper and placed in a magnetic photo holder. (If you can't read it very well after clicking on the picture to enlarge, I can send you the poem.)

Here's a picture of all of it together and completed!

We hope the teachers really enjoy this gift. The awesome thing about it is that it's something they can enjoy year round!