Reading Rocks-Finale!

We had the Reading Rocks Celebration tonight and it was great!!! We invited 51 kids who earned at least 75 points, and almost every one of them came to the party tonight! This seemed to be our most enthusiastic year also as I heard tons of happy responses and saw many huge smiles as they looked through their stuff. Every year has been great, but I personally think this one was the best!!!

The kids arrived at 6:30 and came in for a meal and a slideshow dvd playing of photos from Reading Rocks.We went into the room next door to have our certificate/awards ceremony.This year I printed up the certificates with each child's photo on it, like this...We also gave out finale awards for our fruit of the spirit daily awards. We chose a few kids in each category that we felt earned it and handed those out tonight too. That was a fun surprise for them as we have never done that before.

Then the kids went out to the playground and were called downstairs a few at a time (in order of the points they earned at RR) to choose their new backpack, school supplies, socks, undies and uniform shirts.Shannon took care of ALL of the supplies and backpacks again this year and she is AMAZING!!! Be sure to read this blog post of hers showing what each kid got. Not only did she handle all of this for us, but she also packed up the bags and her husband Andy got them all up to the church by himself. I can't thank them enough for all of their help. I am sane this year mostly because of them!!!Even Ky got a little backpack and he was SOOO excited. It was adorable seeing him walk around with it, so proudly. He picked out his red one by himself and is very pleased with himself and his new backpack!After the selections, we got all of the kids together for the group shot...Then it was time to go home. I followed the kids out to see them meet their parents and walk off. It was really neat seeing the parents' reactions to all of the things the kids got. Many of them thanked us over and over. It's neat to know that it's not only the kids who get rewarded but it also helps entire families as the financial burden of back to school is lightened a bit for them.Reading Rocks is done for another year!!!