The Happy People of Pennsylvania

Abby is working on a state project for her class. Gotta love the 4th grade. One of the pros, and cons, of her teacher this year is that they don't have a lot of homework. The pro is that she does most of the work for her big "projects" at school. They are given time, they work on it little by little and they learn to do these projects on their own, instead of having their parents do it for them.

I like that part.

The part I don't like is that when she is struggling in class, I have no idea about what to help her with because we don't have homework coming home.

I don't like that part.

For her state project Abby chose the state of Pennsylvania. Not Utah (where most of our extended family lives), not Washington (where she has lived most of her life and more extended family lives), not Oregon (where she was born), not California (where she loves to visit).

PENNSYLVANIA.

I have nothing against Pennsylvania. But could not for the life of me figure out why she chose Pennsylvania.

When I asked her, why? She said, "Because that is where Hershey's Chocolate is made." No lie.

I have no idea where she gets that from.

Anywho, last night was the first time I saw this project. Or the paper associated with the project. She was "working on it" which included nearly 40 minutes of changing font colors and sizes. (She does NOT get that from me) I finally told her that she needed to actually finish WRITING the project before tweaking the fonts.

Peter helped her print out the project last night, and it had a very colorful flag on the front. I figured it was probably the state symbol. It did occur to me that it was a rather bright flag and that it was a "little much" for a state flag, but didn't really give it a second thought.

This morning, as Abby was preparing for school and happily chatting about her fortune cookie from the day before and and asking me if I saw her report. "Mom, did you see my report?" "Yes, I did Abby, it looks great!" "Do you like the flag on the front? I have no idea why, but it is called the g*y flag of Pennsylvania!"
My eyes immediately darted to the image on the top page of her report, and I saw this.

The g*y flag of Pennsylvania

My instant reaction was to laugh out loud. But, decided against crushing my creative daughter's artistic eye. "Abby, " I said. "You can use that flag on the front of your report, but you CANNOT tell ANYONE it is called the g*y flag of Pennsylvania!" She looked at me with curiosity. "Why not?" I had a quick discussion with her regarding the term and the symbols at hand, and then, once she was busy with making her breakfast, ran into the bathroom to have a good laugh with Peter.

Gotta love the happy people of Pennsylvania!!!

Sidenote: In order to find this flag on-line, I had to scroll through at least 30 copies of the CORRECT flag of Pennsylvania in order to find the one that Abby thought was artistically sufficient for her paper.