Eliza's First Show & Tell (and a back story)

Eliza finally had her first Show & Tell today.  She was so excited!  I won't be able to attend in the future because it conflicts with the time I need to get Cat and Jack from school, so I was thrilled to be able to see her today, simply because Cat and Jack were released early for parent teacher conferences.  She loved being up front and demonstrating how her whistle sounds, and performing "Jingle Bells" for her class (just the rhythm).  The teacher was so impressed with Eliza's rhythm that she asked her to play it again and let the class sing along, which they did.  It was very cool.

Are you curious where the whistle came from?  Well, I'll tell you.

On Monday, one of our neighbors, who knows of Jack's affinity for tomatoes, brought us a bowl of his homegrown cherry tomatoes.  We are expecting a hard freeze this week so the plants might not survive and he's ready to be done with them.  He invited Jack to come the next day and pick all the green tomatoes he wanted, then we could put them on the windowsill and watch them ripen.

So after dinner yesterday I was washing dishes and told The Bigs that they may take a bowl and go pick tomatoes from our back-door-neighbors' plants.  They had been gone for several minutes, longer than I expected, when I decided to check on them.

Luke and I went to the neighbors' yard and didn't see (or hear) the kids, so we walked around to the front door and found that all of the kids were inside.  Apparently, our neighbor had already pulled up the plants and tossed them away, and felt bad when the kids came inquiring after tomatoes, so he retrieved the tomatoes he could, enough to fill up the little bowl I sent with the kids.

Jack wasn't ready to go right back home, though.  He's learned that the grandmas and grandpas who inhabit our little neighborhood keep stashes of toys for when their grandkids come to play, so he asked about toys.  Instead of getting out the Permanent Toys, though, our neighbors were smart enough to get out little toys that the kids could take home with them.  No mess, no risk of kids having a meltdown when it was time to leave the toys, right?  But my kids all chose the loudest toys they could find: the girls got whistles and Jack got a small plastic flute.  And by the time I'd discovered them and spent a couple of minutes in the beautiful, peaceful, quiet, tiled house, the atmosphere in the home had become one of cacophony.

As you might imagine, I thanked them for the toys and shooed the kids home as quickly as I could.  There, I collected the noisemakers (the toys) and am keeping them high on a shelf in a closet, hoping that the kids forget that I have them at all.

Except that Eliza wanted to bring hers to Show & Tell today.