Continuation

We survived the week, Jake is now officially a middle schooler! It was definitively an emotional couple of days early in the week, but mostly tears of joy.

The boy's school honors about 20-25 kids each quarter at an assembly with awards for each letter of PACK - Personal Integrity, Achievement, Citizenship and Kindness. At the assembly on Monday, Jake was awarded with an Achievement award. It was a very fitting award to give him considering everything he's accomplished this year. He had no idea his name was going to be called and seeing the look on his face and watching him walk up the aisle to get high fives from all the kids was incredible. He was just beaming.

On Tuesday morning, we had "Continuation," which is a program to honor the 5th graders who have completed elementary school and will be continuing onto middle school next fall. Jake was so excited he was up and dressed at 6:30 in the morning, he doesn't leave for school until 8:30. :-) I left early to get seats for continuation so Todd got to see him off on the bus their last day. I'm actually glad I wasn't there, I know I would have started crying. As I was sitting in the gym waiting for the program to start, I was thinking about how a year ago on the last day of school, Jake was in critical condition in the ICU and hooked up to more machines and medicine than I care to remember. Pretty surreal. The kids processed in and most, including Jake, were grinning ear to ear. They sang a couple of songs and then showed a slide show of the year which is about when the tears started. It was finally time to call each student's name and give them their certificate signifying completion of 5th grade. 

As each student's name was called, there was applause by their fellow classmates and the parents/family. When Jake was called, the applause from the room was completely overwhelming and heartwarming. I was filming and missed the last part because I couldn't stop the tears and had to put down the camera. You could literally feel the love and respect for Jake in that applause. Made me one very proud Mom. Here is the little bit of video I captured. http://youtu.be/3Rmtj6lXGfc

Continuation ended with Jake and two of his best friends performing "Let it Be." Jake was on drums, Jack on the guitar and Connor was singing (he also rewrote the lyrics as "Time To Go"). Jake's music teacher came up with a modified drum set up that allowed Jake to play with his right hand but still have access to several different drums and cymbals. It was so cool to watch him play something close to a traditional drum set. Up until now at home, it's been just one drum and maybe a cymbal. I edited the video down quite a bit since it was almost 4 minutes long, just to share a little bit of the performance http://youtu.be/oLV87vMT_K4. The boys did a really good job, especially considering how little time they had to practice. It was the perfect way to end his time in elementary school.

Since it's Father's Day, I would be remiss if I didn't recognize how lucky Jake and Luke are to have such an amazing, loving dad. He is a great role model for them and definitely puts his family first. I feel very lucky to have him as my husband and would have had a much harder time getting through this past year without his support and partnership.