Black Holes

What a week!  TCAP (our Tennessee standardized test) is over!  These poor kids tested every morning for 6 days, with their teachers telling them things like, "If you don't do well on TCAP, you might not get to move to the next grade," which is ludicrous because you'd basically have to bomb the entire TCAP and also not have a good grade to begin with.  But Evie took that to heart and had a bit of a freak out each morning before she went to school, despite my reassurance that the teachers are saying that just to be sure people take TCAP seriously and that she was in absolutely no danger of not being promoted to 5th grade.  It was a very stressful week.  We tried to incorporate fun during the week, including our weekly trip to Huey's.

Seth and Evie at Huey's, waiting for Evie's ice cream

Fortunately on Friday, the school already had something super fun planned: Spring Fling.  Now, Seth had never heard this term before so I'm wondering if it's a regional thing, because I grew up having Spring Flings in elementary school.  It's basically an evening where the parents and other volunteers set up carnival games and activities and the kids play together and eat pizza and generally have unstructured fun.  Evie has never been before because they haven't held a Spring Fling since she was in 1st grade due to COVID, so she had an absolute blast.  We gave her the freedom to roam with her friends and just meet us back at a certain place.  It was nice for her to get to have some independence.  We did go watch her climb the rock wall.

She got her face painted.

She really wanted to dunk Mr. Dillender (a teacher who substituted for her class for a few weeks while they were waiting for their new teacher to start) who was subjecting himself to a dunk tank.  She got very close to hitting the target, but didn't quite make it.  The girl behind her got him, though, so Evie was satisfied by watching him get dunked.  It was beautiful weather and we all really enjoyed ourselves.

Yesterday, Evie went for her second massage, which she enjoyed just as much as the first one.  Keri, her massage therapist, said, "Girl, your calves are compact, but tight."  To which, Evie responded, "Ah, like black holes."  I had to try really hard to keep from laughing outloud.