A night to celebrate

Tonight Mum and Dad and Alison joined us at the boys school's Celebration Evening.  We knew it was going to be a big night with Jalen being in grade 6 and therefore being one of the school leavers this year.  Because we were grade six parents and also were presenting a special award, we were lucky to have seats in the second row which Kobe was pretty excited about.

Jay was very busy all night being in lots of different items. The first one was playing in the band.

Harri loved singing with the early childhood choir. 

Jay was also in the grade six gymnastics demonstration.  He was the lucky light one who got to be on top of the pyramid.

The grade six leavers were all presented with a leavers certicate and a lovely pen and then other awards were given out to different students.  Jalen (and we!) were shocked that he won the 'Global Citizens Award for Thinking Globally, Acting Locally'.  The award was a special certificate and a $50 gift voucher which he is very excited about.

After Noah passed away Aaron and I both had thought that we wanted to present an award in Noah's name. I had thought about doing it at Punchbowl and Aaron had thought about doing it at his school as a Child Studies award since I took Noah every year to Child Studies to talk to them about disabilties and Noah's condition.   When he mentioned it to me, I told him I had been thinking the same thing, so we decided to donate a prize to each school. 

A lot of the time kids are recognised because of their academic or sporting achievements, so we really wanted to make Noah's award different. We wanted it to a child who was particularly kind and compassionate to others as there were many kids at the school who stood out to us as being extra kind to Noah.   Tonight I presented the first ever 'Noah King Friendship Award' to a girl in grade three called Meg. I don't know her at all, but all the teachers have been telling me how beautiful she is and how deserving she is of it which is so nice to hear.

Noah's beautiful class dedicated their class dance to Noah and danced their hearts out.  I kept imagining Noah up on stage doing his part (he was supposed to be a judge of the dance and hold a sign up that said 'boring' and then at the end someone was going to help him turn it around and it was going to then say 'awesome).  I felt a bit teary a lot of the night but held it together and was able to just enjoy it and be glad that we could celebrate Jalen finishing Primary School, watch Harri sing and remember Noah in a special way.   One more year and Kobe will be joining them at school.  It's crazy to think that next year Jay will be in High School and Kobe won't be far off going to school himself.