end of an era

WAAAAAAY back in May, AJ, our "baby", graduated from preschool for the last time!  But first they went on a fun field trip to Old MacDonald's Farm, a local petting zoo.

 Our very most favorite animals every year are the baby pygmy goats!  They are just so irresistibly friendly and cute!

And then AJ's class showed off their singing, dancing, counting and letter identifcation skills in a special program they put on for the parents.  

(That's AJ holding the last 2)

and

Somehow I lucked out and got to plan the last day of preschool party, so we had games or activities that went with silly ways to say good bye.  

For example, for "see you later alligator" we played a game of tag where the persons who were "it" chased everyone with stuffed alligators. 

Then we said "bye bye, butterfly" with a relay game to see which team could wrap one of their team members who was pretending to be a caterpillar in a toilet paper chrysalis the fastest. 

We said "take care, polar bear" with a final story time with Miss Cindi reading Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Say? 

We said "give me a hug, lady bug" by decorating ladybug watermelon pieces with chocolate chip spots & chocolate licorice antennea.

We said "tootle-loo, kangaroo" by jumping up and down with bags of ice and sweetened cream until they made ice cream. 

And then finally we said "out the door, dinosaur" with a balloon long neck dinosaur dance!

Miss Cindi already had a stack o' books pendant from when she taught J a couple of years ago, so we added a miniature chalkboard pendant to it.  We made the same thing for our elementary school teachers too.  They turned out sweet.