Jeff & June's (June 20th)

Betty
Jeff
Chris and Dillon
Dalton
Mary
Madison
Kelley
Madison and Betty

Colt -- 1 year old

Evening of Excellence

During the "Evening of Excellence" (in May) students receive recognition for the activities that they were involved in. Madison received recoginition for the following:

All A’s
Civic Oration Contest (third place)
Giraffe Community Service Program
Madison County Spelling Contest
Power of the Pen
Drama Club
President’s Award for Educational Excellence

JAJHS also gives special awards to certain eighth grade students (one boy and one girl in each category) such as:

Outstanding Citizenship
Outstanding Instrumental Music Award
Outstanding Vocal Music Award
American Citizenship Award
Archie Griffin Sportsmanship Award

Here is the video of the last award of the evening.

Doing Awesome!

As of May 9, 2010, Kelley has been CANCER FREE for 3 YEARS!!!! He is feeling great and doing awesome!

Birthdays

A little late on some posts...

Madison turned 14 at the end of January. Hard to believe my first born will be in High School in the fall. She is still my little girl who was so tiny when she was born...



Dalton turned 12 in April. Even harder to believe that he will be in seventh grade and starting Junior High. Don't tell anyone, but he is still my baby!!



I won't tell how old I turned on my birthday, but I did have fun. A friend and I went to Nashville for my birthday weekend in April. It was the weekend before the flood hit!!

Power of the Pen Regional & State Competition

The eighth grade POP team all qualified for Regional competition. They won the first place team event!!! So the eighth grade team brought first place home to JAJHS for Districts and Regionals. YAY!



Three of the students qualifed for State competition held at the College of Wooster in May. Only 10% of the original 7000 students make it to State competition. None of girls placed at State, but it was still a thrill for them to be there...and a thrill for their parents!

Power of the Pen District Competition

Madison along with five other students in her eight grade class traveled to Yellow Springs Ohio last weekend to participate in the Power of the Pen District tournament. POP, is a series of interscholastic writing tournaments, designed for students in grades 7 and 8. POP encourages schools to develop writing teams, allows young writers to meet, compete, and receive recognition and awards for excellence in three rounds of impromptu writing, and offers immediate feedback from teacher coaches who act as judges on the quality of their written expression.

The students are given prompts in each of the three rounds. Each round they write for 40 minutes.

Awards are given to the top twelve writers in each grade. Madison placed 12th. Other Jonathan Alder eighth graders placed 11th, 10th, 9th and 2nd. Also, there is "Best of Round" for each of the three rounds and Madison won that award for the third round.

The entire 8th grade team also brought home the 1st place trophy and all six will go to the Regional competition on March 27th.

Way to go Jonathan Alder!!

Madison - we are so proud of you!!!

Cavaliers - 2nd place!

Congratulations to the Cavaliers who ended the AYA Boys Major Basketball League with 2nd place! They aren't too happy in this picture because they lost by 2 points! They had an awesome season!

Colt @ 6 months

Madison - 8th Grade Picture

Sarah, Plain and Tall

The High School play was a couple of weekends ago. Madison played Rose Nordstrom. She did an awesome job and had so much fun, even though the practices were grueling, especially the week of the play. Here she is in her five costume changes:

Dalton - 6th Grade Picture

High School Play

The High School play this year is Sarah, Plain and Tall.

“Set in the early 1900s, this play brings to life the charming, heartwarming story of a Kansas farmer, Jacob Witting, a widower with two children, Anna and Caleb, who places an ad in the newspapers seeking a wife. He receives a letter from a Sarah Wheaton of Maine who says she will visit the family for a month to see how things work out: "I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall." Narrated by Anna reminiscing on the eve of her wedding, the story unfolds in a fascinating flashback on that often exciting, sometimes tumultuous month when Sarah and the Wittings came to know one another and learned a few things about themselves as well. The joys and challenges of everyday life are richly depicted in this classic which the New York Times called "an exquisite, sometimes painfully touching tale."

There are four children in the play, the two mentioned above and then two neighbor girls. The High School sought out Junior High School students to audition for the children’s roles. Madison went to the auditions. She was very excited because she was one of the ones they kept calling back up to the stage, or having them stay on the stage for more readings. Then the teachers were scrutinizing how well the children looked and acted with each other. This was on a Friday, and the teachers said they would post the cast list on the High School door on Monday morning. Yes, it was a very stressful weekend. She thought about how well she did, how not so well she did, and everything in between. Come Monday morning, the JHS made an announcement that three people from the JHS made the HS play, and Madison was one of them. She plays Rose, one of the neighbor’s daughters. The part is one of the seven main characters. Yay! – She is ecstatic and so are we.

For the past couple weeks and up to the date of the play, she practices every day after school M-F from 2:30-5:30 and will have to put in a couple of all days Saturdays prior to the show. The play will be presented three different days, November 13, 14 & 15. She has been in school plays before but never more than one performance, so she is thrilled about that.

Way to go, Madison!

Colt - 14 weeks

First Day of School

Wow! Summer's over and school has begun. I still can't believe it. I really didn't want Summer to end so soon...we had such a good one this year. Everyone was healthy and just enjoying each other, the great weather and going fun places.

But back to the subject.

Here are the kids traditional first day pictures. Madison is starting 8th grade and her last year at the Junior High School. Dalton is in 6th grade and his last year at the Middle School.

Meet Colt!

The newest addition to our family, our seven week old Golden Retriever, named Colt. Cute as a bug and oh so much fun so far. We just got him today so ask us in a week or so how we are really doing!!

Fort Walton Beach

Sugar white sand beaches, emerald green water and amazing sunsets. We had a wonderful time at Florida's Emerald Coast.