I have to add my notes still but our trip to Illinois was fantastic! Here are most of our Chicago pictures- from the W hotel on Lakeshore, Art Institute of Chicago, Gino’s East for deep dish pizza, fireworks cruise on Lake Michigan, Shedd Aquarium, mani/pedis with Grandma Sharen, Ryan & Jill’s wedding, family hanging out ones, the window getting busted and more. I still have to add the pictures from meeting and petting the penguins behind the scenes at Shedd Aquarium. Most of the aquarium and artwork photos are Hayley’s photos.
I love this photo of Hayley dancing with her cousin Ryan.
And this video of her nailing him leaving the church to head to the reception. Ryan was about Hayley’s age at our wedding and nailed us leaving too. Revenge is sweet!
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Hayley with her diploma and fantastic teacher Miss Fowler
Hayley graduated from Salem Elementary last Wednesday and it was such an adorable ceremony. My folks and Aunt Cathie came, as well as Hayley’s birthmom, her husband and one of Hayley’s half-sisters. The kids did most of the ceremony themselves and I think it was almost as much about saying ‘thank you’ to the parents as patting the kids on the back. I just couldn’t believe how grown up she looked and how time had just flown by. I did love her teacher from this year and enjoyed hearing her share some wisdom with the kids. Unexpectedly, the class gave a thank you present to the co-room moms so I had to go up front, which we all know I dislike but this time, I didn’t mind. Also each child got an special award – Hayley got the Artistic award!
My favorite part was while the parents were waiting for the kids to file in, they had a slideshow. The kids picked a generic scenic photo and wrote a sweet note to their parents. A lot of kids picked kittens and puppies for their picture. Some boys threw in a baseball or skateboard scene, a few kids picked photos of beaches. Hayley picked one of my favorite photos of all time:
Her note was pretty sweet too. I was grateful I remembered to wear waterproof mascara. I’m so thankful to Salem for so many things – even when things didn’t go how I wanted them, they never stopped trying to make things better. The list of people there who had a positive affect on my child is very long. I’m sad to leave Salem Elementary after her six years there though but at least she won’t be far, just next door at Salem Middle.
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Hayley had a soccer tournament down in Wilmington this weekend in May and we had such a great time!! I’ll post more photos later!
We stayed down on Wrightsville at the Blockade Runner and made sure to hit a lot of old spots I love from my years in Wilmington. We hit the Oceanic with Nicole, Trolley stop for hotdogs, the Fish House for a fantastically fun team dinner and then Elijah’s so I could get my crab dip fix. Funny to be outside Elijah’s with Jeff and Hayley – brought back a lot of memories of the gang down there. I ate lots of crab and buffalo shrimp, heck I think drank more this weekend than I have in past two years combined.
The games on Saturday were tough – long story but the kids still had fun that night at dinner (the parents had more fun). In the first game Saturday, Hayley’s team played a team with several kids she played three years of rec soccer with from ages 6 to 9. Then on the next field over was another child from that same team too. Getting to see those three kids and their parents was really neat for us. TThank goodness Sunday’s soccer was much better and a nice solid win to end the season for the kids.
We had to go back to the beach after that last game and I’m glad we did – three dolphins showed up on the beach and Hayley was just beside herself over it. She’s getting older and those moments of rare unbridled joy of childhood are getting less frequent.
We made Jeff a great rainbow cake for his birthday a few weeks ago. Super fun to make, it turned out cute and tasted awesome. We had some good Chinese at Red Bowl that night too so I randomly took some photos of that. What can I say, I like pretty food.
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Posted by Michelle on May 11, 2010 in Hayley, Humor
As usual Hayley had many birthday celebrations – what can I say, we like to have fun. We had pizza with our neighbors on her actual birthday and then ice cream sundaes. Then Jeff’s folks came down and we went out with family to our favorite place Ginza that Saturday night and a cute cake that look like a horse pasture.
Then the next weekend we went to Frankie’s for her party with friends – go kart racing, bumper boats, video games, laser tag and the drop zone ride so many times I thought I’d puke just watching them. I have no idea how how they got back on that ride after dinner – and I mean a full dinner in the restaurant there and birthday cake.
We got a very cool cake done by Blue Moon Bakery to look like the book Eclipse, the third Twilight book and the next movie coming out in the series. The sides even looked like icing and spine of the book. Chocolate with chocolate mousse filling, so good. They do great work! The wait staff at Frankie’s begged us for pieces it looked so amazing.
The big surprise was we gave her a cell phone which she was dying for but we told her she wouldn’t get until middle school. She thought she was getting a flat screen TV for her game room (and she did get it later that weekend) but we faked her into thinking the TV was shipped here and she needed to open it. Of course it was a fake huge box full of peanuts with the cellphone hidden in it. It was so funny watching her dig through it and try to figure out what the heck was going on.
I had to put the video on youtube b/c it was too long for flickr:
Bless Jeff’s heart, he cleaned up all the peanuts for her and they were EVERYWHERE. All in all, it was a really fun birthday. I really didn’t take a ton of photos this time and I kept forgetting to at family stuff but there are more videos than normal though.
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After four years of doing UNC women’s games, Hayley was selected to do some games at the ACC Women’s basketball tournament in Greensboro. Hayley was assigned to two games on Friday night and Jeff’s folks came down from Blacksburg and my Dad who lives in Gboro came as well.
She lucked out and was paired with a nice girl about the same age. It was mascot night so all the team’s mascots were there which was really funny. Buzz, the GT mascot, just randomly ran up to Hayley, picked her up and swing her around. They even had a little competition for the ballkid who did the most work which you know ended up being Hayley who views herself as a pro at this. It was a really neat experience – the ACC went all out to make the kids feel really part of the event from the clothes to going in the team entrances, etc. I can’t say enough about Raycom and the ACC folks involved in it.
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Hayley is learning to rollerblade. The process just cracked me up so of course I had to snap a few photos and videos with the iphone while we were outside. At this stage, she reminds me of the colts at the stable, just all long skinny legs. Almost 12 and she’s barely 64 pounds.
I love this video clip – she’s lucky to have a good dad and uncle to help:
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A few weeks ago Nicole came up into town and Jeff watched the kids so we could go out and visit with our sorority sisters Mary Evelyn and Tracy. Dear friends, funny memories and wine equal a good time in my book!
Sadly Hayley’s great-grandmother on her birthmother’s family side passed away earlier in the year. She was a lovely lady and I know her family misses her a great deal. While she was up in NC for the funeral, we caught up with Hayley’s grandmother Janie who brought her great-grandfather to visit.
