School

Tonight, we attended the first annual Metea Valley High School Black and Gold Senior Awards Ceremony.  All the seniors receiving awards were honored tonight, and Sarah was the recipient of the 2012-13 Illinois State Scholar award which honors students for their outstanding academic achievement during the year.  Way to go Sarah!

She has also received many other awards for her academic work such as recognition for achieving standards in Math and Science by the State Board of Education, and school achievement certificates for earning a 3.8 or higher in multiple semesters.

Way to go Sarah!  Only 6 more weeks to go!!!!!  🙂

Tonight was the second night of the Still Musical and Kirstyn did an awesome job as well (according to Brittany).  We didn’t have tickets for night 2 but went over at the end to help clean up and strike the set.  After getting everything cleaned up, I took Brittany (because she wanted to be social with a certain young man – an older brother of one of the cast members), and Kirstyn over to the cast party at Culver’s.  They had a great time and came home talking up a storm.

Kirstyn was so happy that the Chorus Director there at Still gave her the chance to be in the musical.  She was really bummed last year that she didn’t get to be in it, and was really worried about not making it this year because of basketball.  We really appreciate her teacher to for giving her the opportunity to show her talents.

Way to go Kirstyn!

Tonight Kirstyn had the Still Middle School Musical called “Once on This Island,” and Zach had Gombert Poetry Night.  Both were very excited to be participating.  I took Kirstyn over to the musical and Angela took Zach over to the poetry night.  I was kind-of bummed because Poetry Night finished up and Angela was able to come over to the musical as well, so I missed little Zach’s poetry performance.  Angela said he did a GREAT job and loved showing off his talents in writing.

The musical went wonderfully well also!  Kirstyn had a minor part but played it in a major way!  The whole cast did a great job and we were impressed.  For a middle school play, they did a GREAT job!

Kirstyn’s best friend Ashley came to see the performance and support her as well.  Kirstyn was really excited about that!

One other cool thing was that I was responsible for the fabulous tickets again this year!  🙂  They turned out pretty good and it ended up saving the production a lot of money in printing costs.  They were in full color and on a quality card stock.  The ticket was on the front and I also designed a coupon for Qdoba, one of the sponsors for the back.

What a fun night.  The musical was one that we had never really heard of before, but the music was great and what mattered the most is that Kirstyn had a BLAST!  She’s looking forward to the musical tomorrow night as well!

Tonight we had a fun time with Zach as we went to Gombert Elementary for Literacy Night.  The boys especially had the most fun listening to stories, and participating in activities.  The son of a friend of ours from another school came over with a storytelling group and performed for the kids.  It was pretty entertaining and funny!

Today was a monumental milestone for education and for our family!!!  Sarah accepted her letter of invitation to BYU Provo and also signed up for her housing!  We have an official BYU Baby Cougar in our family!

The only down-side (and probably won’t be when she gets there) is that when she went to sign up for housing, Heritage Halls was all filled up!  🙁  She was kind-of bummed because it’s close to campus and they cook their own meals.  So she looked at Wyview Park which is still on-campus housing but a little further out (far northwest side of campus, north of the stadium).  We made a couple of calls to folks we know and Sarah is ending up rooming with the girlfriend of a son in a family that used to be in our ward and we are great friends with.  Sarah has met her before and is excited to get to know her better.  The apartment she will be in is pretty nice.  It is a 2 bedroom and she’ll have 2 other roommates.  We spent a little more money and so Sarah will actually get her own room (which will be nice for her to study and sleep when she wants).

Since it’s a little further away, it will give Sarah a chance to get some good exercise.  She’ll either have a bike or walk, and we think that there’s a shuttle for when the weather turns cold.  Turns out that this option was even cheaper than Heritage and it’s even newer and nicer.

Yea Sarah!