RYLA 2016

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Hayley and two of her classmates were selected for the 2016 Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. They went to a Rotary meeting and then to a weekend leadership retreat with other students from across the state. We snagged a photo just before they left for the retreat.

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RTHS Sports Banquet

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Note: I have a huge photo backlog to post but I wanted to TRY to start catching up. I’ve posted a couple of of galleries backdated after this.

Thursday night was the RTHS Athletic Banquet. Hayley got the Coach’s Award in both Basketball and Soccer and Honorable Mention All-Conference in soccer.

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July 4th

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We went up to Blacksburg again for the July 4th holiday. Jeff’s grandmother Faye is now living in Blacksburg full-time so it was nice to see her. Hayley took a selfie with Jay and her great-grandmother Faye that still cracks me up. Jeff, Hayley and his folks ran the Shawsville 5k again. They came in 4th in the fastest family category and got their photo in the paper. Hayley and her Grandma Sharen both picked up hardware in their age groups. We also got to see Jeff’s folks new house that is under-construction – it’s going to be really nice.

More pix from this album, Regular view or Slideshow

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Page week

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We are so proud of Hayley being selected as a NC State House Page. She managed the entire application process herself. Turned out Wake County’s selections were already made since there is no set deadline to apply but occasionally there are extra spots that they saved to give to students who have a good application. They told me they especially liked her application because it was clear she did it, not a parent, so they’d try to get her a spot. Well turned out the Speaker of the NC House Thom Tillis had a spot and so he was her sponsor.

She had a fantastic week. It was long and tiring but she got to witness a great week – the centerpiece being house budget with the Governor including education proposal but a lot of other interesting debates on drone usage and charter school discrimination, which got weird. Even a huge Moral Monday protest was going on. Since they were there until 9pm that Monday night, the pages got an interesting view of that too. They went to the Governor’s press conference as well. They ran all sort of errands, met lots of legislators and interacted with other kids from across the state – this week had about 20 House Pages.

cary page note
http://www.carynews.com/2014/06/30/3975461_notables-july-2.html?rh=1

She only took a couple of photos but not many as she was focusing on working. But boy did they get a pile of nice certificates, press releases and all sort of stuff from the State House. They do a great job with things and we are thrilled she got to experience government in action up close.

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More photos in this set: Regular View or Slideshow View

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Science Fair

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Hayley won her school science fair and advanced to the state regionals again this year.

She tested how effectively antibacterial/antibiotic bandaids were vs regular bandaids. Short version – antibacterial/antibiotic are MUCH better.

Her teacher said One of the EPA judges got his PhD in microbiology and was extremely impressed with Hayley’s project. He was a big advocate, not that she needed it. Overall, she was a shoe-in for 1st place. Beautiful display, excellent work all around.

You can see the judge comments on the form which include keep up the good work, you were born to be a scientist.

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She Answers The Call Beyond Duty

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This is a wonderful old article about my grandmother Jeannette from the 1962 Chapel Hill Weekly. She and my granddad Jim were really remarkable people. I love the last quote in the story, “If there are two patients at the hospital needing extra care at night, Jim may be with one and Jeannette with the other. There just isn’t anyone else like this couple.”

View: PDF | JPG

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UNC-MD Women’s basketball

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Hayley was ballkid for this huge victory for UNC over Maryland. The game was on TV and I took some screenshots from the video feed on ESPN.

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The Biebs

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Hayley and her friend Kiah went to the Justin Bieber concert in Greensboro. My dad got her tickets for Christmas. It was funny, my first concerts without parents were at that same Greensboro Coliseum (Prince on the Purple Rain tour, Police on the Synchronicity tour). My dad sat out there waiting and this time, I did the same – he even waited with me. I just had no urge to see that show – Bieber is fun but the hours of screaming for him, Cody Simpson and Carly Rae Jepsen (aka Call Me Maybe) were too much for me to contemplate.

They had great seats – lower level 10th row from the floor

Girls there.

View from their seats (they didn’t take this)

I love these videos because you can hear screaming like a crazy person, lol.

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Jeff’s parents on the local NBC news

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Jeff’s folks run the AARP Health Fair up in Blacksburg and it’s really huge so their local NBC had them on today to talk about the event. They are awfully cute.

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John Ford Coley & Byron Hill

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I am unabashed fan of 70s music and Friday night we headed out to Winston-Salem to see one of my all-time favorites – John Ford Coley. Coley along with England Dan had a ton of hits including Love Is The Answer, I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, Never Have To Say Goodbye Again, Nights Are Forever Without You and Sad To Belong to name a few. Love Is The Answer is my favorite song of all time so I was just thrilled to get to hear him live, even Jeff and Hayley were excited because they’ve listened to his stuff so much they love it too.

It was fantastic. Small intimate venue with John Ford Coley and an amazing country songwriter named Byron Hill alternating songs and stories – they were a great combo. We were 10 feet from the stage, got to talk to them, get autographs and take photos. As fun as hearing songs I loved from Coley, we were totally charmed by Hill who evidently has written something like 600 songs recorded by others, including 30 top-ten country songs. I’m not a country fan so he was new to me but he sang a number of his songs that went to #1 and I was downloading them by the end of the night.

John Ford Coley in concert from michelle hillison on Vimeo.

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