Rosemary’s Retirement Party

Today was my mom’s retirement party at Zebulon Elementary!  We couldn’t miss this occasion, so we left work early, picked up the kids, and headed out to Z-town.  For once, we weren’t late!!  We met up with Rosemary at the office and got signed in, checked out the display in the lobby, and then visited the art room until it was time for the party.  Then, we made our way to the cafeteria, met a lot of Rosemary’s colleagues, and I got to see some of my former teachers who were still there.  It was interesting to see how much had changed, and how much was still the same, over the past 20 years at my elementary school.  Sytse gave Mom a lovely bouquet of flowers, we gave her a coffee mug with some of Brian’s art on it, and she received her plaque and a gift during the party.  We ate our party food (including a cake with some pretty scary frosting!) and visited for awhile, and then went back to the art room.  I think it might be a little bittersweet for Mom to say goodbye to the room that’s been hers for so many years, but she seems confident she’s making the right decision.  She’s retiring a little sooner than she’d planned in order to take care of my grandmother, whose health has taken a turn for the worst these past few months.  Being in the art room brought back a lot of memories for me, too, since I’d stayed in there so many days after school while Mom was in meetings, etc.  I took a quick visit to the media center, another favorite place of mine, and just took photos here and there of things I wanted to remember, like the 5th grade hallway, some of Mom’s decorations, the paper closet, and the yarn shelf (all those bright colors were just magical to me as a little kid!)  Rosemary and Sytse were very ready to get out of there, so we wrapped it up and went to Chili’s for dinner (Brian’s suggestion, of course!  He still loves that kids’ menu, and circling what he wants in crayon.)  We had a nice dinner together, enjoying the tableside guacamole, and of course we finished things up with a chocolate lava cake!  Afterward, we paid a visit to the Target to pick up “just a few things”–how, Target, do you aways ensure that we buy more than we need?!  It was fun to pick up some July 4th supplies, those will be fun for our upcoming beach trip, and Kendall got a Hello Kitty travel pillow and blanket.  Those will be useful for summer travels, I’m sure!  We offered to get an equivalent for Brian, but he passed on it.  He just really wanted a couple bags of Doritos, hugging them and making a huge deal of it. 😉  I also ran into Dick’s and got us grownups a pair of folding chairs like the kids’ ones that Brandon had picked up yesterday, so now we all have folding chairs for any adventures we might have coming up.  It was a great day, and we are all very proud of Rosemary for her three decades of service!  The school’s loss is our gain, as we hope to spend more time with her now that her schedule will open up significantly. 🙂