A Little of This & A Little of That . . . .

Lots going on lately! Let's see . . . to start off, Carly's class held an adorable little program in honor of Mother's Day - they called it "Muffins with Mom", so I'll let you guess what they served us for breakfast. Carly is quite sure that the muffin I just so happened to choose out of the many dozen that were offered was one SHE actually helped to mix up and pour into the little muffin tin. :o) Yes, I'm SURE it was. Here are a few pictures from the program:

Next on the list of happenings is Nick's participation in the Sectionals track meet! He ran the 400 this year. He had a good run, placed second (by a fraction of a second - it was neck-to-neck) in his heat, but didn't place in the top 5 overall. His 4x400 relay team ended up going to state - Nick was an alternate. (He and one other boy battled for a place on the team throughout the season.) He was thrilled with the opportunity to go to state, to say the least. Nick didn't get to run, but he was there for all the action during the two day meet. Unfortunately, one of our runners fell during his leg of the relay, which ended up costing us big time. Based on their times from past meets, the coaches expected our guys to come in 3rd but as it turned out, they came in 9th. Oh well - there's always next year! :o) Here are a couple pics from the Sectional meet:





Aunt Diane and cousin Jen were in town last weekend to visit Grandma for Mother's Day, so we took advantage of their time here to sneak in an evening at Lucca (pizza! beer!) and then we made our way to Von Maur to browse at the flower girl dresses. Jen's wedding is just a few months away - Carly needs to start practicing her princess walk down the aisle! LOL. Not sure yet which dress will be THE ONE, but Carly looked darling in all of them. Not that I'm biased or anything! See for yourself:

And that pretty much brings you up to speed on life in our household. We're going into the last few weeks of school THANK YOU GOD! Summer can't come soon enough for this Mom!

Here's to Spring time, flowers, sunshine and warm temps!! Bring it on!

It's All About Alex . . .

Seems like the last couple of weeks have been all about Alex! He turned 17 on May 3. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. Weren't we just leaving the hospital with our bouncing 11 pound baby boy? We blinked and then . . . BAM . . . here we are with a 17 year old. Amazing how time flies.

Last weekend, we officially began THE COLLEGE SEARCH. Yep, I successfully procrastinated as long as I could get away with it. Probably had something to do with not wanting to admit that my baby is going to be a senior next year. I think that's called "denial"?! But with the college flyers, pamphlets, letters, etc pouring into our mailbox these days, we finally decided to get started. He took the ACT in April and will take it again in June. He has a solid score, but wants better. We are behind him 100% because a higher score means more scholarship money and scholarship money is a necessity when you are looking at small, private schools! :o)

Our "college search tour" began with a visit to Augustana College in Rock Island, IL last Friday. They rolled out the red carpet for us, including an admissions interview for Alex, a tour of the campus with a very energetic and enthusiastic female coed, a 90 minute meeting with a professor in the Biology department (Alex is leaning toward Occupational Therapy), and lunch with a male student who we all greatly enjoyed. The campus is beautiful and, as I told Mike, I would be proud to send my money there. Of course, we'll be bankrupt and working 3 or 4 jobs each when that day comes, but where there's a will, there's a way! ha. To those of you with young kids, SAVE BIG NOW! Whatever you are saving isn't enough! Seriously! :o)

On Saturday, we traveled a few hours north to visit Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. Another gorgeous campus, located right on the shore of Lake Michigan. You should see the killer views from the dorm rooms! Another impressive school, to say the least. This visit was in a "group visit" format, so not nearly as personalized as our time at Augustana was. But informative, all the same. Fortunately, we hooked up with the son of a friend of mine, who is a current student at Carthage, so we got some behind the scenes info and a brief tour of the Kenosha area. All in all, you have to try REALLY hard to find anything not to like at either school. At the end of our weekend tour, Alex ranked Augustana #1 and Carthage #2. We'll be adding to our list of schools visited in the coming weeks, so check back periodically for updates! :o)

Oh, and yeah, I have to admit.....now that we've finally launched this quest to find the PERFECT school, it IS rather exciting and fun! :o)