Home Life

Today was a busy day in our household!  Kirstyn started her 2nd year of Engineering Camp at Northern Illinois University and is looking forward to a great week.  She’s going to the camp with Ashley Smith, one of her best friends, so they should have a wonderful time.

Ben and Zach also started swimming lessons.  They were so excited yesterday when we were talking about it!  They absolutely LOVE water and are not quite to where they could live in it, but they sure want to!  🙂  They did a great job their first day and Zach is now talking about doing swimming on a team rather than football.  He seems pretty serious about it so he may not play this fall.  We’ll see.

Tonight, Angela and I went over to Chip Staley’s house (the fine arts chair at Neuqua Valley High School in our district) for an ARTSpeaks group BBQ and meeting.  We had a wrap-up discussion about the results of the Fine Arts Festival and what we heard and learned from attendees there.  It was great to hear what had happened at the other 2 schools as well.  We then had dinner and relaxed outside in their huge back yard.  They have cool planter boxes and Angela ribbed me for not building some for us.  🙂  It’s great to be involved in this group.  We are now building relationships with more and more people (including all three fine arts chairs at the high schools) and other community members.  Every time we meet, Angela and I come away feeling energized about our involvement in community and school efforts.

Today I had the boys all by myself during the Memorial Day Parade!!!  Sarah and Brittany were with the Metea Marching Band, Angela was helping Band, and Kirstyn was marching with the Still Middle School band.   The boys and I had a great time relaxing and waiting for the parade to start.

The kids (and Angela) did a GREAT job marching and playing.  It’s really weird to think that this is Sarah’s very last parade/performance that she will be marching in as a High School senior.  🙁  Still came first and Kirstyn (and all the rest of the band) looked GREAT!

I tried to get a good picture of Kirstyn but I screwed up and the pictures were blurry.   Sorry cute girl!

Metea came next and they looked so good (in my opinion the best of any high school that was there).  They marched so crisp and professional!  Brittany and Sarah looked great!  Brittany got the honor of carrying the American flag.

The only picture I got of Angela was actually really funny and so I promised I wouldn’t put it into the blog.  🙂  Great job everyone!!!  Even the boys were really good and loved it there!

Today we (and other families) threw a party for Sarah and all the graduating seniors from our ward.  We were really worried at first because we couldn’t find a place to hold it.  We looked all over and finally ended up asking the Anderson family (who’s house is still up for sale in Naperville) if we could have it there.  They said it would be a GREAT idea and the party turned out AWESOME!  We had about 150-200 people show up for the party/open house.  We had a nacho bar and desserts for all.

Everyone had a great time!  I compiled a DVD of pictures of the graduates and put together a little “shrine” with video going for the grads that everyone liked.  It was fun to watch the facial expressions of people as they watched the slideshow depicting the kids from babies all the way up to now.  🙂  We got a ton of pictures and had a bunch of great laughs with everyone who came.

After the party was over and we cleaned everything up, we went to another party for one of Sarah’s friends, Mary Kate Carroll.  She was the Drum Major at Metea in the marching band.  We’ll miss the Carrolls next year as they are all done and will now be empty nesters when Mary Kate goes off to college.  🙂

Today, Sarah had her scholarship award ceremony from the Naperville Junior Women’s Club.  We met over at Mimi’s Restaurant, and they welcomed the 5 recipients of the $1000 scholarships heartily and really made them feel special.  They had a nice little program and read letters of recommendation about kids from their applications.  The one they chose to read for Sarah was from Jenny Smith, our Young Women’s President.  It was very sweet and very complementary of Sarah.

The Club executives in charge of the scholarships told us that this was a record year for applications and they had to have many more people review them.  Of these hundreds that came in, only 5 were chosen!  This made Sarah fell really special and VERY happy!  4 of the 5 made it to the awards ceremony.  After the event, they took pictures with the board and the recipients.

It turns out that one of the recipients is also a friend of Sarah’s and a member of the 3rd Ward!  It was fun to see them there, so the church was well represented!  🙂  It was also neat that Sarah is the first from Metea Valley High School to earn this award and scholarship!  Pretty cool!

It’s great to be able to have a little more $$$ to be able to put towards college, and Sarah will be working hard this summer to make as much as she can to cover her college expenses!  🙂

Way to go Sarah!  You’re GREAT!

Today we held our 8th annual Teacher Appreciation Dinner in our back yard.  We really love this event and so do all the teachers we invite.  This year we had 20+ people attend, so we had to hold it outside.  Because this is Sarah’s last year doing this, we decided to let her not only invite a couple from this year, but also invite those throughout all the years that impacted her the most.  With Brittany’s, Kirstyn’s, and Zach’s teachers, we had quite the party!

We started off with burgers and dogs on the grill and with the chips, salads, fruit, veggies, and the cupcakes Brittany made, we were all pretty full.  Each of the kids wrote appreciation letters or poems to their teachers and we did a “program” where they read the letters, the girls sang, Sarah played her flute, and the teachers really appreciated that.  Teachers don’t get enough appreciation from parents for the huge amount of time they invest in our kids and we need to honor them more.  🙂

Ben found himself a new best friend as well.  Sarah’s English teacher this year came (Mr. Solgos) and Ben had him up in the top of the play yard…

For the entire evening, Ben was totally hooked to his hip.  It was really cute although it was probably a little much for Mr. Solgos, although he didn’t show it a bit.  🙂

At the end, we took pictures of the group and some of the kids with their individual teachers.  A real treat was that Sarah’s kindergarten teacher (Mrs. D.) was able to come.  We have admired her for years, and we weren’t doing these events when Sarah was in kindergarten.  She was very impressed and also overwhelmed with emotion that we would still think of her and involve her in our special night.

She said with tears in her eyes that she wishes that more families were like ours (not wanting to brag) and that if all families had the spiritual values we had, that the world would be a much better place.  That makes these kind of events totally worth it.  We owe a lot to those who take care of our kids during the day, and this is the least we could do.

Thank you teachers!!!

Tonight Sarah played in the pit for Metea’s production of Beauty and the Beast.  She was so excited to have the opportunity her senior year to participate in the musical, and also have the chance to play music for one of her favorite Disney movies.  I took Zach, Ben, and Kirstyn and we had a GREAT time!  Ben and Zach were totally enthralled by the music and the costumes, and were VERY well behaved.

While I was at the musical with the 3 little ones, Angela and Brittany were at a wedding reception for some friends of ours.  Brittany was asked to help out, and Angela pitched in as well.  They had a great time.  Angela and Brittany are going to go tomorrow night to the production since they missed tonight.

Sarah and the pit sounded GREAT and they did an awesome job!  Way to go Sarah!