Friday, June 19, 2009

Catching up on Life!

Well let's see here where shall I begin? It has been so long since my last post and so many things have occured in our family. I will start with the second to last day of school and work backwards from there. At Highland they always end with a field day... full of fun activities for all of the kids and of course tug of war between the classes. Maddy's class unfortunately did not win any against the other 3 5th grade classes. Here class happens to be the smallest with only 21 students and 5 were gone that day. 16 kids against 25 in each of the other classes... do the physics. They had fun none the less. Sydnee's class won one of their wars... and Presley's class won all of theirs. On this same day the kids get to meet their teacher for the up coming school year. They really enjoy this. Sydnee will have Ms. Johnson for 5th grade(who Maddy has) Presley will have team teachers Ms. Heath and Ms. Conan for 2nd grade... Sierra had Ms. Heath in the 2nd grade. And Maddy will be moving on to Middle School! This Is Syd's class in the middle of a war!
Here is Presley with her 1st grade teacher Mrs. McAllister and a few classmates. Eating their popsicles after Tug of War

Mrs. Grieves has been the best teacher for Sydnee this year. Sydnee improved more than 8 points on all of her state tests from the beginning of the school year. Which is huge and I thank her teacher for encouraging her and helping her stay on task!This is Maddy with her 5th grade teacher Mrs. Johnson! Thanks for a great year!

This is Maddy up recieving one of her awards, next to her is Mr. Ron Neighorn the music teacher. He has been amazing for the kids. He is moving on to another school next year and will be greatly missed. Maddy had her spring Music Program the same evening they had their awards assembly.
In the 8th grade they have an awards assembly that the students get to vote who wins the awards. Cole won The Most Respected award and Most Likely to Be A Pro Athlete Award

Maddy won the Female 5th Grade Athlete of the Year Award! She was so cute.. she had no idea she was getting this award and when Steven and I showed up at her school for the Assembly she questioned why we were there..( The PE teacher had called us the week prior and invited us to attend)
Here are a few more awards Maddy recieved:Exceeded on state Reading,Math,and Science tests and she was the only 5th grader to recieve Extraordinary growth on her state reading test, she not only exceeded but also improved her score by 11 points from the beginning of the school year. That is equivelent to 2 years of growth. Way to go Madelynn!

Sydnee recieved 3 awards(only 2 shown) Exceeding on her state Math and Reading tests. And she was one of two 4th graders that improved more than 8 points on her reading test! I am sooooo proud of you Sydnee! Way to GO!!! (for those that do not know.. Reading has been a struggle for Sydnee. She is very phonetic and as we know the english language is not always phonetic! So I greatly attribute her growth to her Teacher that has spent extra time with Sydnee)
Okay moving on to another fun night that Highland puts on for the 5th grade students.

"Night of The Notables" 6/2/09
The 5th graders each get to pick a person that is "Notable" in history or life... there is a long list from which they get to choose from. Maddy took a liking to Lucille Ball. The students study their person and do a poster board of them. They have to do this all in class so they get NO help from parents. They draw a portrait of them and do a timeline. In class they each have to do a presentation that is at least 4 minutes long.. this is a huge part of their grade. Then they have an evening at the school where all of the students dress up as their Notable person. It starts out they are all sitting around the cafeteria with #'s on them and we have to try to figure out whe they are. Then after 30 min. we all go into the gym where they have their displays set up and we can see who they are and the students hand out souveniers. It is a very fun event!
The same time as Maddy's Night of the Notables Presley had a softball game. thank goodness it was right there at Highland so we could enjoy both.


Here she is wearing the apron... she handed out little chocolates with a picture of Lucy and Ethel working at the chocolate factory. Maddy was so cute she watched several clips of Lucy on you tube and picked that one and the Vitameatavegamin as her favs! She also had little cups with juice in it that were labeled "vitameatavegamin" Very clever. She was the hit of the evening!

It was easy to dress her up.. since I love vintage/classic clothes! I already had the perfect outfit for her to wear. Even polkadot heels with a bow on them!

A couple other girls from other classes also chose to be Lucy!


I have a red wig that I did the hair up and put it on Maddy.. she said it was itchy and asked me to do it to her own hair! I think it turned out pretty dang good! I put fake eyelashes on her and the bright red lipstick! She had a blast!
12U fastpitch Champions!6/6/09

Maddy's team "The Fury" went undefeated all season and played 5 games in a row to win the end of season Tournament! These girls played amazing!

Here they are after winning the championship game!

This is team picture day!(a few weeks back)


Presley's 8U tournament 6/6/09
She was so thrilled to get her trophy! Presley loves playing softball!
Presley is on the youngest team in the league and they took 3rd place in the silver bracket at their Tournament.

Way to Go Black Diamonds!!!!


14 yr. old Birthday Party Weekend! 5/30/09
I think this photo sums it up! Exhausting! Cole and 3 of his buddies spend the weekend with us. Starting with Friday night, pizza,pop, cake, ice-cream... "suppose to go to sleep" to get up early to head to the Sand Dunes. ummm, yeah... they didn't sleep! Instead they stayed up all night eating anything and everything!Steven took them down to Florence to ride for the day!

Brody, Xavier(better known as "T"),Steven, Randy(AKA Oscar) and Cole

These boys had a blast! Steven let each one of them drive the buggy... (brave)
While the sun was shinning back at home and a toasty 90 degrees... it was windy and overcast most of the day in Florence. Steven wore shorts.. thank goodness he took a sweatshirt. He said he was shivering most of the time! He set up the sports cam and you can see them all wiping their runny noses. A few of them put hankerchiefs to block some of the wind. Unfortunately it was going right up Steves shorts. Oh did I mention he forgot his gloves too! LOL


The boys spent the night again and attended church with us on Sunday! I would have to say that Cole had one of the best parties ever! Thanks Steven for taking them! What an awesome dad!


3 comments:

URFAVE 5+A Few said...

WOW!!! I was wondering how you were doing. In fact I was a little bit worrying and hoping that all was o.k. But my goodness now that I see all that's been happening, no wonder you haven't had time to blog!

I don't even know where to begin on making comments but first of all I want to say congrats to all the kids and ALL of their accomplishments! They look like they are amazing good kids! They also look like they are a lot of fun to be around and to have around.

I especially want to say that the award that Cole got the "Most Respect" Award-I hope he knows what an honor that award is. That really says a lot about is character as a person and his example and what he stands for. To me that is the greatest award of all (but the other awards are great also!)

DeLona I also wanted to tell you what a wonderful job you did on your daughter's hair. Of course that's no surprise you have always done fabulous hair. I sure miss you doing my hair!

Oh and thank you for all your sweet comments on our blog! When are coming down here again?

Take Care,
JoLynn

Gary & Sharlene Merrill said...

Wow! Yes, I would say you have been busy.....You forgot to mention that you have a new church calling. Love those kids of yours. What great accomplishments they all achieved. Can't wait for them to come and visit this summer.
Love, Grandma and Grandpa

Rachelle Palmer said...

Wow... what a week... Maddy you looks so classy... then so aweosme with your trophy congrats... P-diddy your amazing with your trophy congrats too! Syd good job on improving in points this year in school that's so great! Smarty pants! and cole.... your hot! wait was there stuff about sierra in that post... if so she's amazing too!!