Jr. high band takes a trip to Six Flags

Every year the jr. high band takes a trip to Six Flags for a band competition (the competition is actually held at a school in that area, not at Six Flags), and a day of fun in the park. This year, the band won four of the highest honors at the competition. The concert band (which is the one Austin is in) received a Superior Rating, and was selected as the Outstanding Band of the Jr. High/Middle School division. The combined cadet and concert bands also received the Excellence Rating, and both were also given the Espirit De Corps award for their excellence in performance, discipline, behavior, and sportsmanship. It is the first time Clinton Jr. High has ever received that honor!!

Track season begins!

Track season has gotten off to a pretty good start. This year Austin is doing the 800, the 1600, and the long jump (a surprising event for someone who is only 5'4", but what do I know?). So far, he has beaten his best time in both the 800 and 1600--this is his first year for long jump, so every jump is a personal best :) . At the second meet of the season, in Rochester (Monday, April 20), he scored 1 point in the 1600 (which means he placed 5th), and 3 points in the 800 (3rd place) which was his personal best in this event. His next meet was at home, and the one where he got his personal best time in the 1600 and earned 3 more points for his team. So only three meets in, he's already scored more team points than he did the whole season last year. Not a bad way to kick off the season! Warming up

Long jump

Easter at the Martin's

Once again...I am going to attempt to get my blog caught up. (Hopefully, successfully this time!) Easter's been over for a couple weeks now, so I'll be back-tracking again.

We spent Easter at Bryan's mom's. She always makes a fabulous dinner and then Bryan and his sister's husband, Josh, goes outside to hide Easter eggs for the kids to find. As you can imagine out here in the country there are absolutely TONS of places to hide eggs, so this can take quite awhile sometimes...especially when the kids who are looking for them are only 4, 6, and 7. But, of course, Austin is there, too, to kind of guide them as he looks for his own. He may be 14 now, but he knows there is good stuff hidden inside of those eggs so he isn't about to miss out. I think he ended up with about $30 and more chocolate than the child will ever eat (since he doesn't like chocolate! Clearly it was just the money he was after!).

Austin, Kloe, Kolby, Kole, and (my sister-in-law) Brooke sitting in the kitchen floor opening their eggs to see what they got.

Austin looking at what he got from Brenda.

Kloe and Kolby showing off their new sandals I got them for Easter.

Last jr. high honors assembly...

Again, I've let myself get a little behind on updating my blog so I'm going to be back-tracking a couple of weeks.

The last day of school before Easter break (Wednesday, April 8) was the last jr. high honors assembly Austin will ever have. An honors assembly is held after each 9 weeks (except for the last 9 weeks, of course) to recognize students making the honor roll. In his three years of jr. high Austin has made the honor roll every single time, and as a jr. high staff member, I have had the opportunity most parents don't have of watching him receive his award each time. I was going to take a picture of him accepting his last award for jr. high, but decided to save him the embarrassment. Grades have always been important to Austin and he works very hard to keep them above average. Over the last 3 years his GPA has not fallen below a 3.5, and that was during an exceptionally tough 9-week period for him, but was still high enough for him to receive an award. For this last awards ceremony he had received one 'B' and the rest 'A's--which is typical for him. Needless to say, I am very proud of him and his hard work!

Reception the Country Club and some quality family time

My aunt recently got remarried (a destination wedding in Florida) and celebrated with an open house reception at the Country Club two weeks after her nuptials. An event like this is a perfect photo opportunity so, of course, we took a bunch! I'm only going to post a very few.

Me and Debbie (acting like we like each other! haha!!)

This is also the type of event that gives out of state relatives the perfect excuse to visit! I ALWAYS love, love, love it when my cousins from Omaha come back to visit!! I just don't see them nearly enough more. They came back this time with all kinds of news, so we had plenty of catching up to do. I had them over for lunch Sunday afternoon for a little 'quality' time.

Erica with Cameron and Matthew

Pacers v. Mavericks

We went to Indy for the weekend (last weekend 3-20) and took Austin to his first NBA game to see the Pacers and Mavericks. Him and Bryan are both Bulls fans first, of course, but they do like several Mavericks players as well, so that's who we were cheering for. (Yes, we were a little in the minority being at a Pacers game, but oh well...) The whole game was really close which made it even more exciting, and the fourth quarter was back and forth with the teams tying it up with 1.1 second to go! One of Austin's favorite players, Dirk (don't ask me to spell his last name!) ended up hitting a last second shot to win the game for the Mavs. Pretty exciting night!

Austin in his Bulls hat showing where his true loyalty lies.

Pacers warm-up

Happy Birthday Austin

Austin turned 14 on March 7th which means the REAL count down to driver's ed and the day he gets his license is on. At least for him... That is all he talks about! He can not wait till next school year when he gets to take the classroom portion of driver's ed the 4th quarter of his freshman year. (They certainly do things differently than when I was in school!). He's actually been counting down for several years already, but he has amped it up quite a bit lately--picking out what he wants his first car to be, what he wants on his license plates, and on and on and on and on! UGH!!

Austin, Tanner, and Jerrod

The older Austin gets, the harder he is to buy gifts for (I'm not sure if this means he's incredibly spoiled and doesn't need anything or what), but the last couple of years all he's wanted for his birthday is to be able to pick out whatever he wants. So we declared the 7th "All-About-Austin" Day and took him shopping for whatever he wanted. He never goes too crazy, and he got just what he wanted. We kind of kept things low-key after that because we've had enough of the all-out, crazy birthday celebrations. He had a couple friends stay over and they joined us at our family lunch (for 20!) the next day in celebration of his birthday. (Yes, lunch for 20 may not be considered 'low-key' to some people, but technically for our families it is because we had several people missing.)

Austin has become a huge fan of Tapout and UFC fighting (not something I will ever understand!). This was one of his favorite shirts he got for his birthday.