Wahoo!

The end of another school year is here and I'm so excited to start summer vacation! Three great months to spend time with the kids, relax at the beach and do a bit of traveling. I'm really looking forward to it all. Here's a recap of the year Hannah and Nathan had with school.



Hannah had a fabulous freshman year of high school! She started the year off in August when practices started for swim team. The girls swim team had won their conference championship eight years in a row, and going into the season, they knew this would be the hardest year to claim the title. It was a goal for all the girls to make it "9 in '09" and they worked their tails off. Their biggest rival is Kalamazoo Central and last year that school ended the season with some not-so-nice remarks in the paper. That's also how they began the year this year and it really fired PC up! Although they lost to K Central in the regular season at the dual meet, they came back for the biggest win at conference! It was inspiring to watch these girls swim like they did. It is such a sport of heart and dedication and they had a ton of both those two days. Preliminaries were on friday and performances were not what everyone was hoping for. Going into saturday, the tension and stress was really high. Everything came down to the last relay, literally. It was that close. Coach told the girls that if they won the race, they won conference. If not, it was second place. They went nine seconds faster in the 400 free relay that day than they did the day before and WON!!! PC~ 330.5 K Central~ 328.5! I love this picture of the relay team, every girl's face is priceless!





Hannah filled the year going to sporting events, building the homecoming float and walking in the parade, dances and swim practice. She opted to not do high school water polo (we were kinda sad about that) to focus on training for swimming. She also set a goal to get a 4.0 for all four marking periods. All the stress of honors classes, semester exams, and the homework (I think she had only about six nights the entrie school year without any) certainly took its toll. Well, her hard work paid off and she did it! She ended the year with a 4.36 :) We'd call this year a huge success! On to sophomore year...




Nathy started third grade this fall in Mrs. Byington's classroom. She is a great teacher that decided to retire this year. We are so glad we got to have Nathan in her room before she left! Nathan did really, really well in third grade. He made huge improvements in his math and is a very strong reader. One day while we were trying to convince him to work a bit harder on math and not give us so much grief when we had him do some extra work, he said, "I already read at a sixth grade level, why do I have to be good at reading AND math?" It was pretty funny. Whether he likes it or not, he did improve and now does well at both :) Nathan did alot of projects this year. The biggest was a report they had to do on a vertibrate of their choice. He chose the blue whale. They had to prepare not only a written report but a powerpoint presentation to go along with it. They then had to give this presentation to the class. He worked so hard on this and earned a well deserved 100%! He felt so proud. Throughout the year, they learned about the different regions of the country and had the final big test the last week of school. Knowing all 50 states and their location was required but the capitals were extra credit. He was the only one to get a 100% + 50 extra credit points. That was so cool! They took only one field trip this year. It was to the Delano Homestead and Kalamazoo Nature Center. He was in a group with all his best buddies and Mike went as a chaperone. He had alot of fun. Nath spent the year doing swimming (then decided it was time for a break), playing with friends, and boy scouts. He is so excited to be a fourth grader next year and has decided he's not above paying the principal off to get the teacher he wants. Keep your fingers crossed for Mr. Storteboom!

Spring Break Vacation

We spent a few days of our spring break in Wrightsville Beach, NC. What a wonderful time we had! We fell in love with the town instantly and enjoyed being able to have some much needed relaxation. The ocean was so cold, but the kids braved it anyway. We can't wait to go back again!

The death of a blog

I feel like facebook has killed my blog! With being able to post pictures and thoughts so easily on facebook, there's hardly a reason to write posts any more. I enjoy keeping up the blog, so I think I'll try a bit harder to save some events and pictures for here too.

Senior Pictures

I had the opportunity of doing a few senior photo sessions this summer. I had a great time doing it and came home exhausted after each one! While the girls were so fun to work with, I was stressing about getting shots they would love. It's so easy for me to put Hannah in front of the camera and play that I was terrified that someone was putting their trust in me to get good pictures of their kids. I was relieved each time I got home and took a look at them on the computer. Here's a couple of my favorites :)

Nine

Nathan celebrated his 9th birthday this year with a party at the beach. Getting him to make a decision on what he wanted to do and who he wanted to invite was like pulling teeth. The always-ready-to-party kid was so indecisive. It wasn't until we told him that if he couldn't make up his mind, we just wouldn't do a party, that he snapped out of it. He decided on grilling hot dogs for lunch, playing in the water and on the playground, and having a pinata. It really turned out fun and the kids had a great time.

The one thing Nathan knew from the very beginning was how he wanted his cake. He gave very specific instructions on what he wanted and any time I tried suggesting an addition of some sort, he would say, "No, I like it just like that".

Instead of bags filled with cheap toys that break instantly, we decided to give a beach towel and a beach ball as the party favors. It was a hit with the kids and the parents!

Jack, Nathan, and Sam in their cute towels

It was a bit chilly that day, but that didn't stop them from getting in the water. Crazy kids!

Enjoying some cake and ice cream

Being goofy boys

All day, Nathan kept saying he couldn't wait until he turned ten. I'll keep nine. It suits him, and me, just fine!

What's new and a few firsts

First...

High school swim meet:

Day of THIRD GRADE:

Day of high school:

Day of high school, take two:

Both kids had a good first week of school this year. Nathan has the same third grade teacher Hannah had so it feels nice and familiar. He was a little disappointed during the summer that he was in this particular class, he had his hopes up for another teacher, but has since decided it's okay to be where he is. He already has an assignment to give an oral presentation so we're busy at work on that. We went through a huge redistricting this year, and our school is now 70% new kids. It's weird to only recognize one out of every 5 kids but Nathan now has some kids in his class he knew from young fives at Waylee.

Hannah has also enjoyed school this week. She has a good schedule and a few fun teachers. She has enjoyed meeting kids from the other middle school and has thrown herself into everything social. She is on the swim team and practice for that began early August. That gave her only an 11 day break between swim sessions, so it was a super short summer for all of us. I especially liked the fact though that she knew several girls prior to starting school. Her first day of school photo was taken at 5:30 a.m. on the way to morning practice. We had to do a re-do the next morning when they got to start school at the regular time. Her first meet was August 27th and they did great. She had an imressive start to the season, and 3 meets in now, has continued to do better each race. It will be an exciting season!

Mike is busy at work and I have started back to work at the cafeteria. I really like that I am able to be home when the kids are done with school so I can't see giving this up for a while yet. Mike is still travelling very minimally, it's great to have him here. He decided to step down as parent board president of the swim club. That was such a time consuming position and after having done it for several years, he felt it was time to move on. I am happy he decided to be done with it! I stepped down in February and it felt good to be able to not be responsible for it all. He and I literally ran the club for 2 years and it's exhausting. It will be nice to just help out. We are now completely "board" free in our volunteering capacity!

Our Summer.....

Has consisted of pretty much one thing so far, swimming. Hannah ended the school year not wanting to dedicate her entire summer to it. She knew that high school swimming began in August and she really wanted to take a little break. So I waited to sign her up for the session until she made up her mind on how many days a week she wanted to practice. Before the end of the first week, she had decided to attend 7 of the 8 practices offered. It was a huge commitment, 15 1/2 hours of practice a week with meets on top of that. Nathan decided that he would swim the summer session as well and decided on two days a week and made a goal to move up to the blue group at the end of the season. Both of them did so well! It has been fun to watch the improvements made by their hard work. Hannah feels a bit more prepared for the high school season and Nathan met his goal of promoting to blue group! The smile on his face when he was given the blue bracelet by coach was priceless.

While there hasn't been much of a chance to do alot, we have taken the opportunity to turn work/swimming trips into mini get-aways. Mike had some work to do in Chicago a couple weeks ago, so we joined him for the weekend. While he worked, I took the kids shopping and then we met up for dinner at Dave and Busters. Whenever we get to Chicago, the kids LOVE to go there. The next morning, Mike had to finish up at the lab so we went swimming. Then it was off to the new LegoLand Discovery center then a late lunch at Giordano's, and finally into downtown before heading home. It was alot of fun, and Nathan cried when we left. We really love Chicago :)

Last weekend, Hannah had a USA meet in Holland. We got a hotel room and headed up for a fun weekend. A bunch of us planned to go to the beach after Saturday morning's session and it was great! The weather has been so nice this summer. Very few humid days and not many in high temps. After spending the day at the beach, we freshened up and headed to Crazyhorse Saloon for dinner. They have the best steaks anywhere and it's a fun little joint. They have a tradition of putting a dollar bill on the wall when you go. Some are decorated really cool and others are folded into awesome designs. We've seen pinwheels, dress shirts and other funky things. The kids put their names on the dollar in crayon this time. It was cute. The tradition started after a couple of regulars started putting a dollar on the wall by their table every time they ate there, hoping it would catch on. It did, and before long they had thousands of dollars collected. When 9/11 happened, they took down all the money and sent it to the widow/widowers fund. Since then, they have donated money to cancer research and given it to families in need. Pretty cool. We ended the evening at the hotel arcade playing a little ping pong. Sunday morning's session went well and all the kids finished with great results. It's been cool to see our little club grow and start to make a good showing at these big events. We met friends for lunch then headed home. It was a nice break in the middle of a chaotic week.