GRADUATION!

After all of these years of studying hard and taking part in a lot of extra-curricular activities, high school finally came to an end for Rebecca on Friday evening, June 11. Rebecca finished 4th in her class of around 190 students and her membership in the National Honor Society is signified by the white hood that she's wearing.

The festivities took place on North Reading High School's new field turf athletic field and the students were well behaved and paid attention most of the time.

There's Rebecca in the middle of the group.

The scoreboard was even set to recognize the graduating Class of 2010!

Towards the end of the ceremony, they read off a list of scholarships that were being given out to students from local organizations. The students were not aware ahead of time whether or not they were going to be receiving anything. They were asked if their name was called to stand. Here is Rebecca standing for the second of the two scholarships that she received.

Then it was time to receive the diplomas!

Were were very proud of Rebecca and happy to be able to share this beautiful evening with her, our family and all of the grandparents.

Rebecca and one of her very good friends, Nicole Diamantides, decorated their mortar boards together ahead of time. Can you tell?

Here's Rebecca and her proud grandparents!

Here's Rebecca and her group of friends that are affectionately known as HARK. (Haley, Amelia, Rebecca and Kiara)

Haley, Amelia and Kiara have always been very fond of Erik, so he had to join in.

YES...it appears that the ever skyrocketing Erik has passed his sister in height.

Here's the proud family!

Here's Rebecca back at home after graduation, with her ice cream cake. (Yes, it is a Carvel cake, but it's not another variation on the Fudgie the Whale theme.)

One of Rebecca's graduation presents, from Erik, was an Eeyore with a cap and gown. It was even wearing the appropriate colors!

With graduation only a day behind us now, Rebecca is already looking ahead. She takes part in her Northeastern University orientation in late June. College will be here before we know it! For now though, we're celebrating everything that Rebecca has accomplished over the past 4 years!

PEONIES & PROMS

It's Spring, the Peonies are in full bloom and that means one thing...

...it's Prom season! Here's Rebecca and her prom date, Liam, getting ready to go at their first pre-prom stop.

Here's Rebecca with her friend Haley. They've known each other since that were only months old!

Here's Rebecca and her friend Nicole.

Rebecca and Liam again. (They're friends from the school's drama group.)

Here's a closeup of the three of us. (Erik wasn't around yet.)

Now we've moved on to the second stop on the pre-prom tour...another house and many more prom attendees! This is Rebecca's group of friends that affectionately refer to themselves as HARK. (In order, Haley, Amelia, Rebecca & Kiara. Amelia and Kiara are twins.)

Here's Rebecca and more friends.

Here are all of the couples that are sharing a large party bus to go to the prom.

Here are only the ladies.

Here are the people from the group above that take part in the school's drama group displaying their "jazz hands".

Here they go on their way out to the bus.

Here are Rebecca and her date boarding the party bus.

There's one final stop before the prom itself, the "Grand March" which is held at a nearby park. Here, every prom attendee from the Senior class parades with their dates so that everyone can see them and their outfits pre-prom. Erik joined us for this part and even dressed the part. (To an extent!)

Here's Rebecca and Liam taking part in the Grand March.

Finally, here's Erik joining them for one last picture before they take off for the prom. The prom was Monday night, June 7 and Rebecca and her friends had a great time. It's a nice way to end their high school experience.

There are more activities this week, culminating in the graduation ceremonies themselves on Friday, June 11.

Lots Happening...It Must Be May!

May is always a busy time, but with Rebecca graduating high school, it's even busier this year. Here are a few things that have taken place in the last couple of weeks.

First of all, on May 13th, Rebecca was part of the induction of this year's Juniors at North Reading High School into the National Honor Society since she's the Treasurer of this year's Seniors in the National Honor Society. Rebecca got things going as she led everyone through the Pledge of Allegiance.

After the Pledge of Allegiance, it was time for the officers to tell the incoming group a little more about the National Honor Society. Rebecca read her part...

...then lit a candle symbolizing one of the core values of a National Honor Society member.

She represented her class very well!

Then, a few days later, was another big event. It was time to release our turtle friends back into the wild. The painted turtle, "Duke of Turtle", we've had for two years. The other two are musk turtles, "Snappy" and "Snappy Junior", who we've both had about a year.

After taking a moment to figure out where they were, they began to come out of their shells and head out into the wild.

Duke took off so quickly that his head is out of the picture!

We enjoyed our time with the turtles and learned a lot about them!

On May 19, it was time for Rebecca's last high school track meet. Though she typically runs the mile, on this day, she ran the 800 meters race and finished just under three minutes.


We're very proud of Rebecca and the fact that she was very active during her high school years, not only in scholastic endeavors, but also in extra-curriculars like track, cross country, basketball and drama.

Then on May 20, we attended the Academic Awards at North Reading High School. These awards are by invitation only and only the students who are recognized for academic excellence are invited.

Rebecca was first recognized for academic excellence in Architecture, where her teacher called her a driven student in all classes and an overachiever...

...and then she was recognized as part of the top 5% of her class, the same group who was recognized recently at the North Shore Honors Scholars banquet.

Final exams are coming up this week and Rebecca has 8 of them in 4 days. After that, she's done with school and has Senior Week, including the Senior Prom and Graduation to look forward to. In other words, a busy May is leading right into a busy beginning of June!

Congratulations Rebecca...we're VERY proud of you!

Honors Scholar

Last night, Tuesday May 11, was the annual North Shore's Honors Scholars banquet, where the top 5% of 29 public and private schools in the North Shore area of eastern Massachusetts are recognized for their scholastic achievements. This top 5% amounted to 10 kids from Rebecca's school and she was one of them. This meant that Steve, Anne and Rebecca had to get a little dressed up for the evening...

...then it was out to the "rubber chicken circuit" to have dinner, hear a few speeches and then see the scholars, close to 300 of them, receive their certificates and engraved pen/pencil sets. (The students were uniformly impressed to see their names and their high school's name on their sets.)

The students were advised ahead of time to "leave their fish in their aquariums", meaning limp, fish-like handshakes. They were told to give firm handshakes and look the presenters in the eye, which they all managed to do very well. Note the smile and the eye contact as Rebecca shakes hands below.

As always, we were very proud of Rebecca. It's a busy season, so there are more of these kinds of things coming. Why is it that everything seems to happen in May?

WHO WILL BUY?

Saturday, May 1 was the North Reading town yard/garage sale. You give a small donation to the town and you get your address listed on a yard/garage sale map. Everyone in the family used the opportunity to clean some things out and as it turns out, one person's junk is indeed another person's treasure.

We didn't even work that hard at digging things out...mostly getting rid of the most obvious stuff that we don't use anymore. Though it looks quiet here, the yard was jumping from about 8:00 AM until after the stated closing time of 1:00 PM.

All in all, the kids cleaned up, splitting over $200 for their efforts. Most importantly, we cleaned out a lot of stuff. The rest, at least all of it that's worth something, is going to charity. The weather was perfect, 70's most of the day and sunny, so we couldn't have asked for anything more!