My Sister's House Child Development Center

So much going on right now! Had to take a moment to wish Steph and Zach a happy anniversary! Has it really been 12 Years?

As mentioned earlier, it's World Cup Time! The USA plays tonight, and to commemorate the event, I thought I"d post a relic from the past. One of the things we would do is have contests anytime there was a major sporting event, like the World Cup. Part random draw, part personal choice, the kids would pick teams, and if their team won, they would get a certain number of points, depending on what round of the tournament the game was in. The orange letters on the page were to make sure that nobody ended up with more than two teams in any one group. The winner would get tickets for our "store", and something even more spectacular: The winner would be the honorary holder of The Can of Spam. Mind you, they didn't actually get to keep the spam in their cubby-health regulations and such-, but it was a truly prestigious honor! For this post, I did some research, and it seemed to indicate that the date of "best by" is about 3 years after the date of production, so the can was probably produced in 2015! Happy World Cup!

You would think that digging post-holes in 90-degree weather wouldn't be a fun day, but you'd be wrong! On the left in this picture is one Jackson Bushore, who recently earned his Master's Degree in Sports Science and Coach Education (what a mouthful that is!)! Jackson was nice enough to come give us a hand putting up our new "for sale" sign today. If you're looking for evidence of how good a childcare we were, even some of the people who dig our holes and mow our grass are geniuses! (excluding me, of course). It was great to see him and catch up on things, like the start of the World Cup! Thanks, Jackson, and congrats on the major achievement!

Of course, May is just not about college graduations, but high school graduations as well! One prime example of this is Helen O'Reilley, who graduated just a couple of weeks ago. I was going to include her grad announcement, but senile old me can't find it, so I made up for it by including more old pictures! Helen, along with Garrett, Jackson, and Tyler, formed a core group that was together for quite some time! I also included a picture of her with her brother Eric, who will be featured prominently later this year. Congrats, Helen!

Back to birthdays! If it's May, and we're talking Birthdays, I am contractually obligated to mention our son Christopher had a birthday this month! Chris was so good as a young child, it was practically like having another staff member on site. Outstanding student, loving brother, devoted uncle, and not afraid to wear a giant sombrero when the situation calls for one! As I've said before, watching Chris grow up was kind of like watching continuous episodes of "Ripley's: Believe It or Not!" Happy Belated Birthday, Chris!

One thing leads to another....
I found this going thru a stack of dvds. Since Julia is in this, along with someone else we'll be turning our attention to shortly, I thought I'd share this. "The Harlem Shake" was all the rage several years ago, so we thought we'd have some fun with it. No need to thank me....

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One of the things that make May such a busy time is graduation. One of the wonderful things about operating a childcare center is getting to watch all the wonderful children you meet grow up and achieve things you knew they could. Below you'll see pictures of Julia Beers, who just graduated from UT. Julia is an example of kids that were on what we called "the decade plan", meaning she (and her brother Tyler), were with us for a long time. As I was locating the picture of Laura a couple of days ago, I realized that we have A LOT of pictures of our kids over the years, so I thought I'd throw in a few of Julia! Again, we'd love to see any updates you might wish to send us. Congrats, Julia! More to come....

A quick shout out to The Knox County School System for apparently reversing the decision to ban "Roots" from the school libraries! Way to go! Great job of thinking things through and reaching a perfectly rational decision. Back to the catch-up!....

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Ok, so let's play catch up! May is a busy month for many reasons! One of them are birthdays. If memory serves me correctly, May 5th was the esteemed Laura Gardner's birthday! Below is a picture of her and her mom, Diane, from 2014, I think. Laura, as a 10 yr old, laid a lot of the foundation of what our school age program would become. I think I used to lovingly refer to the 5th of May as "Stinko De Mayo" in her honor! Anyway, happy belated birthday, Laura!
More to come.....