First Day of High School

Today Kayli started her freshman year and Talia started her senior year of high school. It is hard to imagine that this time next year Talia will be going off to college. I hope she has a great last year of high school and that Kayli has a great first year.



Band Parent Preview Night

Kayli joined the high school band and will be playing flute. They had a preview night tonight for all the parents to come see what the kids have been working on during the past two weeks of band camp. They all sounded great! I think Kayli will enjoy being in band.

Kayli’s 8th Grade Graduation

Kayli’s 8th grade graduation was held this evening. She got to sing at the ceremony several times and also played her flute. We are all so proud of all her accomplishments, she is such a smart, beautiful and talented individual. We know she will do great things. For her graduation, we gave her a motorcycle helmet and jacket so she can go on motorcycle rides with her father.












Kayli’s 8th Grade Awards Night and Dance

The 8th grade awards night was held this evening for Kayli’s class. Kayli received 12 award pins, one for every academic subject, plus one for perfect attendance and another for her excellent score on a national math test. Kayli also received a gold cord, for her outstanding academic achievements. Since Talia had also received one when she was graduating 8th grade, we had her give the cord to Kayli.

During the ceremony Kayli played her flute, while her friend sang. They both did an awesome job. Here’s the video of their performance.



After the awards, the 8th graders had a dance. The first dance was the girls with their fathers and the boys with their mothers.

Here’s some more pics from this evening.







Kayli’s Last Day of 8th Grade

Today was Kayli’s last day at St. Bonaventure School. She has gone their since kindergarten and next year will move on to high school. She is excited not to have to wear uniforms next year and that she will be able to wear whatever shoes she wants. She will miss all of her friends as they will be scattered at several different high schools.

Kayli’s Silver Award Project

Kayli and her friends, Catherine and Madeline, completed their Girl Scout Silver Award today with the painting of the US State Map at their school. Over the summer the school parking lot was repaved, resulting in the removal of the state map that was there. The girls remembered how much fun they had playing on the map when they were younger and wanted to give that experience to the kids at their school. The girls did a great job getting this coordinated and accomplished.

We have a few lessons learned for anyone planning to do this type of project for their school. We purchased the template from Peaceful Playgrounds. You will want to bring masking tape to hold down the template. Without the tape, it would have been very hard to keep the template in place while spraying the dots. Decide ahead of time which numbers go with which paint colors on the numbered paint guide provided with the template. Write those on the guide then make a bunch of copies. Give a copy to four different people and assign them each one color so they can dot that paint color onto each state. This makes it easy for everyone to know what color to paint each state. Print out a close-up of the small east coast states. It was very hard to figure out where to draw the lines for all those little states once we pulled up the template. For the lakes, instead of buying light blue paint, we mixed the blue with the white to create the color we needed. Use a downward sprayable paint can to fill in the circles in the template. We used up one whole can and part of another one. (We did the smaller Alaska.) We used less than a gallon of each of the four paint colors, we went with red, blue, yellow and green. We really love the way the bright colors look and have gotten complements from the school about how it turned out.

First step – tape down the template


Next fill in circles in template


That will leave you with a dot outline of all the states.

Now connect all the dots to form the state outlines with the white paint.



Finally fill in all the states with the appropriate paint color.



Now you get to enjoy your new map!

Kayli’s 8th Grade DC Trip

Kayli got back from her 8th grade class trip today. The visited DC, Pennsylvania and New York City. She had a great time, but is very tired.


They got to see the president leave on a helicopter during their White House Tour.

Some of the other places visited.









Academic Decathlon

Kayli got second place in her category, which was religion at today’s Academic Decathlon. This was the first year her school has every participated in this event and they didn’t start studying the material till January. All the other schools have been preparing since for this since last summer. Two other members of her team also won medals.