What Happens when Something doesn't get on the Calendar

Aliens come to visit!

At 12:30 today I get a call. I look at the caller ID and it is the school. My first thought is "oh no, Rehm is sick!" I pick up the phone and am surprised with it is my son saying, "Hi, Mom!" He goes on to ask me if I'm coming to his presentation! Um, your what? Oh your alien presentation that your teacher emailed me about two weeks ago that I didn't put on the calender? That one? Um, well, I guess so.

How bad is it when your kid has to call you to see if you are coming to his presentation? Of course every other parent was already there. Of course no one else had to bring siblings along. Of course it would be on a day when I'm dressed in sweats and hadn't showered. I felt like the absolute worst mother. How could I forget? Oh, that's right, I'm human.

So I called the girls. We rushed to the van, got buckled in and away we went. We were only 10 minutes late. Unfortunately we interrupted a presentation when we got there. I felt terrible but with three kids in tow there is no quiet way to slip into a room.

I am so glad we went! Rehm was hilarious! I was so sad I had left the camera in the car and could not video him. He is so comfortable talking in front of people. He went on for over a minute, before starting his presentation, telling the audience to let him know if a can on his alien fell off. He explained that it was only partially on and if it fell of that would be bad and he would need to know immediately.

He read his story about his alien. At the end he said, "and I won't tell you his pet-pet's name." When everyone laughed he goes on, "well, maybe I should." And proceeded to tell us a few facts about the pet-pet but conveniently forgot to mention his name.

For this project the kids had to use exactly 15 pieces of trash to make an alien that could be no more than 24 inches tall. If they cut a piece of trash and used it multiple places it still only counted as one piece. The alien had to have at least one movable part. They had to name and write a story about the alien as well.

Here is Rehm's story (spelling and punctuation are his):

Collin

One summer in Inyopia the space fairy and Collin were near Verpet Space Station home of the evil Dr. Smoth. At this space station you can adopt a Grindoak. Well...Grindoaks are not our main focus. Collin accidentally got lost. He found this planet called Earth. Now he headed down to USA. Apparently he found The Olymips Stadium. "Maybe I would be quite good at this he thought to himself. They have tug of war, and golf and I do too at my home planet. Well we have Tyrana Mini Golf, close enough. So he began to explore some more. With in a couple hours he found the Pacific Ocean. "I can swim," he shouted. While swimming he found these creatures that reminded him of the creatures in Meraqua. He thought that maybe he could communicate with them. Well, he tired...he was almost successful with the dolphins. Collin decided to get out of the water and landed in California. He used his digger and bagan digging all the way to Texas. When he came out he ase at ____ (Rehm's School). HUMMMMM he thought it might be good to go into the office to get a nametag and let them know he would be visiting. Collin walked into Mrs. _____'s(Rehm's teacher) classroomand found me. "This boy looks nice", so he asked his teacher if I could go visit wit him outside. We started a meeting and I asked him if he could come back to Earth when was 32 years old. Suddenly the space fairy landed and found Collin. "Time to go back to Inyopia" Collin said. We said our good-byes and collin headed back to Inyopia to make sure his Pet Pet was okay, and I headed back to class.

Oh my, this reminds me so much of something I would have written in elementary school. I remember in either 4th or 5th grade we did creative writing every Friday and I LOVED it. It was my favorite part of the week. I even remember some of what I wrote about on those Fridays. The amazing thing about this was I hated writing and was not good at it due to my dyslexia. But the creative writing sparked my interest enough for me to enjoy what was a truly painful process for me. Wonder if mom still has any of those stories...

Jenn