Parade, Shovels, and Unexpected Babysitting Jobs

Today has been such a whirlwind, but what an awesome day!  This morning my Builders Club students and I marched in our city's local parade.  It was SO much fun.  Here are about 35 of my kids (the club is up to 52 paid members). 

These kids are my pride and joy.  They're hard-workers, enthusiastic, and not afraid to roll up their (proverbial) sleeves and get a little dirty.  I just love them!  We also had a shovel decorating contest.  I'll post a few of my favorite shovels at the end of this post.

The parade ends each year at K-Mart, and at that point I had to wait about an hour and a half for all of the kids to get picked up.  It wasn't as bad as it sounds though, mainly because I had a partner in crime (a former RMS student who now attends college--I just adore her), and we kept each other and the group entertained.  Plus the kids find ways to keep themselves occupied.  Although we did accidentally bring down an entire sales rack of clothing.  That was awkward.  I like how the kids' shirts say "Builders Club...we don't monkey around," yet here they are...

(Photo published with parent's permission)

Once the last student was picked up, I met up with Clint and the kids at our city's local festival, and I had an enormous plate of carne asada nachos that I still can't stop thinking about because they were so friggen' good.  The kids and Clint were also in the parade with the martial arts group, and Clint had to stay at the festival to work one of the booths.  Somehow I ended up babysitting a cute little two- (or maybe three?) year-old for a couple of hours.  Still not quite sure how that happened.  The owner of the dojo was running the booth with his wife and his little itty-bitty son, and me and his wife were talking near the pond when she suddenly realized she had to leave for her friend's baby shower.  She told her son, "Here Ezra, go with Jodi!"  and took off.  It was pretty funny considering that this woman is barely an acquaintance of mine.  At any rate, my kids had taken off, and I had nothing better to do, so I took little Ezra to the playground, through all of the bounce houses, down a giant slide, and waded with him through the water.  People kept telling me, "Your son is so cute!" and if I had time, I'd explain that he wasn't mine, but it got to the point where it was easier just to say "Thanks!"  It was all fun and games until the worker running the giant inflatable slide said, "Awww, how old is your little boy?"  and I replied, "I have no idea."

So here is the club t-shirt that I created, with the help of my amazing t-shirt guy:

The students have the same exact images and lettering on their shirts, but their's are printed on light blue fabric, and are the standard crew neck style.

Now I'm finally home and I have to say, it feels GOOD to be indoors with air-conditioning!  I think I'll whip myself up another snack and wash it down with a nice big glass of iced-tea.  Here are some unorganized shovel pics (I can only seem to get them in one straight line).

I have a ton more, but Blogger is being a nightmare with my photos right now.  It won't let me move them anywhere I want, so if I keep posting more, I'll just end up with one very long, skinny line, and a lot of white space.  I haven't judged the shovels yet, but at the minimum, I think I"m going to give the monster one a "Creativity Award."  I'm leaning toward that farm house one as the grand prize winner...it's pretty detailed, considering that student's canvas was a shovel. It's a hard contest to judge, because they were all so cute!