Evening of Excellence

Jonathan Alder Junior High held their event where students received awards for their achievements throughout the year.

Madison received awards for:

Power of the Pen (district and regionals) and Drama Club
County Spelling Bee and County Math Bee
Straight A's

It was hot sitting in the gymnasium, but worth it! Great job, Madison.

Cousins

Memorial Day weekend we got together with Mom's side of the family for a picnic at Wilson Park in Miamisburg. Great weather, good food and wonderful conversations with cousins we haven't seen in a few years. Wish the length of time between visits was shorter. Here are a few pictures from the day...

Dorothy and Family

Ed, Cristy, Barbara, Bob and Uncle Doran

Anita and Mom

Dalton swinging

Madison

Morgan

Look at that tongue!!

The Girl Scout motto: Be Prepared
Anita and Mom

Linda and her daughter Morgan

Finalist

Madison is one of six finalists in 7th grade for her speech.
Madison - you have a passion for writing and speaking. It's a remarkable talent that you should be proud of. We sure are proud of you!!

OWjL Camp

Madison was selected to go to OWjL (Ohio Wesleyan University Junior League) camp this summer. Way to go! You will have the time of your life!!

School Projects

Well it is that time of year when it seems the kids are overloaded with school projects. It's also the time when our school district has some sort of declamation project. In Elementary School it was memorizing poems. In Middle School and Junior High it's writing and giving speeches.

Fifth grade speech (2-4 minutes long) is about an American Invention. Dalton chose Paintball. In addition to his speech he had to create a poster about his invention.

In seventh grade, speeches are about, "A person who has touched many lives". Madison chose Dr. Seuss. The speeches (3-5 minutes long) also need to be memorized.

Both speeches will be given during the coming week.

Madison also had to do a project for Pre-Algebra (nothing to do with Declamation) this weekend. She at least had a partner to share in this project. They had to make some type of game and figure out all the probability and statistics for it. Madison and friend chose "Ring Toss".

I think both kids did a great job on all their projects. Yes, I can honestly say I'm glad the weekend is over...except for the beautiful weather we had!!

Fishing

Dalton fishing at Aunt Mary's pond.

Student of the Month

Go-Kart Fun!

Dalton and friend having fun riding the go-kart out back.

re-cit-al

–noun
1. a musical entertainment given usually by a single performer or by a performer and one or more accompanists.
2. a program or concert by dance or music students to demonstrate their achievements or progress.




Dalton and Madison had their music recital today at the Plain City Presbyterian Church. Dalton switched over to trumpet in September after four years of playing piano. He totally blew us away. He hardly practices at home so we never hear him. He did practice yesterday and today, but his performance was SO much better. As was Madison's performance. She played "Mary, Did You Know?" Wow! They both stepped up to the plate and did their best when it counted most! Great job kids!!

Happy Birthday Dalton!

I was going to wait to blog about Dalton’s birth when he turned 13 since that is when I wrote about Madison’s. However, she wanted me to write about it on his birthday today, so I did.

First off, Dalton’s due date was April 25, 1998. That is my birthday. When I found out his due date, I was a bit taken back. I figured I would never celebrate another birthday of mine as long as I lived. Now that I have kids, I do not seem to care much about the excitement of my birthday. Therefore, I guess it would have been ok if he was born on my birthday…but that did not happen. Here is the story.

My pregnancy was going just fine. I never had any morning sickness with either of my children so I really could not complain about anything. He was due in April, so I never had hot summer months to deal with, just smooth sailing. At 29 weeks along, I started having some pains. I called the doctor telling him about the severe pains in my back. He told me to go to the hospital. We took our two year old to Kelley’s Moms in Grandview and headed to Grant Hospital. They hooked me up to all sorts of monitors. After awhile of testing the results were that I was in preterm labor. I wasn’t ready for this baby to be born. They thought it was because of dehydration. Was I not drinking enough water? I wasn’t a big water drinker, but I did drink it. Well it wasn’t dehydration but they still didn’t know why I was having contractions. So they pumped me full of fluids and steroids (just in case this baby was going to be born they wanted to do everything they could to help the baby’s lungs) hoping the contractions would stop or at least prolong it long enough to let the baby grow. Each day in the womb would be better than having a baby right now. I spent the night in the hospital and the contractions eased off. The next day the contractions had stopped completely, but I was still getting steroids…just in case. Some co-workers thought I went into preterm labor because of the problems we had at work. We just found out a few weeks earlier that Fifth Third Bank acquired the privately owned The Ohio Company. Would we all still have our jobs? Was the labor caused by stress? I never found out. Later that evening I was released from the hospital but told I couldn’t work for the rest of my term. I can’t not work for 11 weeks! So, the doctor really did work with me and said I had to stay at home, not working, for the next two weeks then he will see how I was doing. If ANYTHING happens then I would have to be on bed rest after that. So, ok, I got the picture. I would be a good girl. In addition, I need to drink lots of water and take these pills every 4 hours. I don’t remember what the pills were for. I’m assuming either for my condition or the baby, but I had to set the alarm every four hours (night and day). That was a killer, to be awakened from a sound sleep to take a pill…every single night.

Staying home with Madison for two weeks was heaven, except I couldn’t pick her up, but she could climb up on my lap. I took naps with her, played with her…just plain fun. After two weeks I went back to see the doctor and I was doing very well. I wasn’t having any contractions. I could go back to work, but still had to take those pills every four hours and he still threatened me with bed rest if I didn’t take it easy. When I went back to work, I had to carry a travel alarm with me so I could remember to take those darn pills.

Work was ok, my department was saved with Fifth Third so we weren’t going to lose our jobs. That was weight off my shoulder.

Kelley was playing in a band a lot back then so a couple weeks before my due date Kelley’s mom would stay overnight with us when he played in the evening, just in case. He had a gig on Friday, April 17^th so she was at the house. The next morning was Saturday and I got up at 6:30am to use the restroom and my water broke. Wow, hadn’t experience that before. Kelley had a late night, but I woke him up anyway. He shot out of bed like a rocket. I called the doctor, but he said to wait until my contractions are 5-6 minutes apart (sort of heavy labor) before going to the hospital. If the contractions didn’t start by 2:00 in the afternoon, head to the hospital anyway. So, Kelley went back to bed. I had the luxury of having a great nights sleep and now I could take a shower and shave my legs before going to the hospital. It felt good. Well I had some contractions, but they weren’t regular. Some were 9 minutes apart, some 11 minutes apart, so I wasn’t worried because everything I read said that contractions would become regular, otherwise they were false. Yeah, right (I can say that now!).

At 8:40 am, the contractions were much more painful and A LOT closer together. I got Kelley up and we were out of the house by 9:10 am. Thank goodness, Kelley’s mom was there or we would have never made it. Kelley was going about 85 mph on the freeway (we are about 30 minutes away from Grant Hospital) and trying not to hit any bumps. At this time, my contractions were about 2 minutes apart and VERY painful. Kelley called the doctor on the cell phone to ask him what to do if we don’t make it? Dr. Koerner said, “Wrap the baby up in a blanket and get to the hospital as soon as we can”. We got to the hospital about 9:30 am. We parked in emergency and walk the short distance into the hospital. I was screaming very vocal at this time when I had a contraction. Kelley grabbed a wheelchair and we headed to the elevators. The door opened (no one was inside) and he pushed me in and banged the wheelchair right into the back of the elevator. OUCH! He thought the elevator was deeper that it really was! The nurses were waiting for us and rushed me into a room. I was fully dilated and the baby was crowning, so therefore I received NO painkillers. The nurses tell me to push but apparently I didn't push the way they wanted me to. How many ways is there to push? It was very painful and I was still screaming very vocal. They told me instead of screaming being VERY vocal to focus and push. The baby starts to tear me ( I didn’t feel this) so they gave me an episiotomy. One more push and our beautiful little prince was born. Robert Dalton Wells was born at 10:05 am. How’s that for having him fast and one week exactly before my birthday. He was 7 lbs 4 oz and 19 inches. Dalton was healthy and oh so much bigger than Madison had been (5 ½ lbs). We named him Robert after both my and Kelley’s dad. We had our little girl and now our little boy. We couldn’t have been blessed more!

Little boy, young man, with the baby blue eyes and chocolate brown hair, prince of my heart, a happy eleventh birthday to you. May we enjoy many more.

Newport Aquarium

This past Monday was the last day of Spring Break. We decided to visit the Newport Aquarium. It was a very dismal day, rainy and just plain yucky outside. Would have loved to walk around the Riverwalk area, but guess will have to save that for some other time. The aquarium was nice. Everyone's favorite part was the shark area. Touching the sharks was cool too. Dalton was game to do it, but the rest of us just watched.

Easter

After we got home from Church we went over to Mom's house and had a wonderful Easter meal. We had turkey and ham and all the trimmings! Cristy and Uncle Doran were there as well.



Late afternoon, Dalton, Madison and I went on a four mile bike ride at Rails to Trails. Harder on the way back to the car as we had a head wind. It was a bit brisk, but felt really good.

Spring Break

We didn't do anything special this spring break as we are going to a couple of places this summer. Kelley did take the kids to Buck Creek in Springfield for the day. Couldn't boat or swim since it was too cold, but it was a nice day and pretty scenery.



I'm sure we'll venture back there this summer to go boating!

Sign of Spring

Yes, I know we have had ice storms in April, but I can still be hopeful, right?

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
~Mark Twain

What's the temperature?

When warmer weather is upon us, Dalton will start asking daily what the temperature is going to be that day to decide if he can wear shorts. I told him it was going to be around 65 degrees today for a high, so shorts it was. It didn't matter that it was only 37 degrees when he left for school this morning. Nope, not at all. Shorts it was going to be.

The picture is Dalton getting ready to ride to a friends house -- two houses down.

Spelling Bee

The Madison County Spelling Bee was held February 9th. The participating schools were Madison Plains, West Jefferson and Jonathan Alder. Madison and Dalton both competed at the school level and won a place on their classes team. The day of the Spelling Bee at Tolles, the kids first take a written test, and then the top five of each grade level (5th through 8th) go on to compete in the oral competition. Dalton didn't make it past the written round, but Madison did make it on stage for the oral round. She made it four rounds in the oral competition before missing her fifth word. But she was the last JA Junior High student on stage, and there were only seven competitors left out of 27 when she missed her word. We are so proud of both of you for making it as far as you did and sticking with it!!

Picture Pages

A blog buddy tagged me for a photo meme. Like her, and many moms, I too have a mazillion photos. But here's the one and the rules.

1. Go to the the 4th folder where you keep your pictures on your computer.

2. Post the 4th picture in the folder.

3. Explain the photo.

4. Tag 4 fellow bloggers to join in the fun!

This is from Easter - April 2006, taken at my Mom's house. Our school district has spring break the week before Easter. Dalton wanted a Mohawk haircut, so his Dad gave him one (to the best of his ability) at the start of break. He did go to church with it, but the night before he went back to school I made his Dad cut it off and just have a buzz cut. He did look much better. :)

Fellow Bloggers being tagged are: Cristy & Madison

Madison's 13th birthday