Senior Honors Night and DInner Dance

Each year there is an evening to recognize all of the awards and special honors that are awarded to Seniors.  Here is the group of kids who received an academic letter for music.  Katie is in the navy dress in the middle.

Katie at the microphone announcing the 4 year scholarship she received at SUU.  She will be attending BYU and turning down SUU's offer but they want all scholarship money offered to be recognized.

Here are the seniors from chamber choir who provided a musical number.

Rachel, Katie, and Nicole.  Such cute girls!

Here's Katie dressed to go to the Senior Dinner Dance.  This is a stag event for Seniors only.  She LOVES zebras and looks great in her cute dress!

Family Graduation Party

This year we had 4 graduating seniors in the family and had a party celebrating all of them.

I made the desserts spelling out 2012 and Lisa did all of the other great decorations.  I love the table with all of their pictures - Jacob, Katie, John and Stephanie.

John, Katie and Jacob, our three High School graduates.

Stephanie joins the group, our one college graduate!

Josh and David 

Lindsey, Brittney, Katie and Jacob

Jordan, Tara, Kevan and Stephanie

Caroline and Grandpa

Cindi, Ali, Dave and Katie with a picture of her awesome gift from the aunts and uncles - a backpack for college, perfect!  It was a fun evening of food, swimming and celebrating these four and their accomplishment.

solar eclipse and seminary graduation

This year we got to witness a rare annular eclipse, or "ring of fire".  The moon passes directly in front of the sun and covers it leaving only a ring of fire showing.  We also had seminary graduation this night so we arrived at the church early to view the beginning of the eclipse.  The full eclipse was, unfortunately, right in the middle of the graduation so we missed seeing the ring of fire in person.  However, the clouds came over and we would not have been able to see it even if we had been outside to watch.  There were some pretty spectacular photos shown on the news from other parts of the world.  I took these pictures with a pair of special glasses covering the lens borrowed from another spectator that night.  We built a pinhole viewing box that worked great but these special glasses were so cool because you could see color as well.

Katie, me and Mariah Kerbs at the end of the evening.  Katie sang a beautiful song during the program also.

Here are the youth from our ward that received certificates.

Joe Rasmussen and Katie

Nelson, David, Chuck, Katie, Oranee, Caroline and me.

Way to go Katie, you're awesome!

Senior Showcase

Katie performing "The Fire Within Me" from Little Women for Senior Showcase.  Auditions are open to all Seniors for this event.  A lot of the numbers are from the kids who were part of drama through the year.  

She did such an amazing job, it was awesome!  Such a fitting song for a departing senior...

"They will always be the fire in my heart
Here I go, and there's no turning back
My great adventure has begun
I may be small
But I've got giant plans
To shine as brightly as the sun"

Sing it sister!

Katie's Senior photo shoot

Wow, can I believe that I have another child graduating from High School?  Katie has done so much in her school years that it's not hard to believe when I look at it that way.  We had a friend who is a photographer take Katie's senior pictures and they turned out so great.  It was so much fun to be at the photo shoot and watch it all unfold.  Enjoy!!

Mother's Day Skype

Here is the latest Abbott Family picture!!!  What a great Mother's day, to be with all of my family at once.  Michael is hitting his 1 year mark this week.  It is hard to believe it's been a year already!

Here we are, chatting away.  The laptop he was using didn't have a microphone so we called him on a member's cell phone so we could hear and see him at the same time.  Thanks so much to Ani for helping out our missionary today!

Here are a few screen shots from skype...

 Happy missionary!

A little video Hello from Michael to everyone!

Spring Soccer

These are pictures of David's last soccer game of the season.  He has played goalie a couple of times this season and this game he played goalie again.  The regular goalie broke 2 toes.  David does a great job as goalie!  I love it that during the whole game he is shouting encouragement and talking it up with the other players from the goalie box.  Here are a few not so stressful goalie moments...

...and then some pretty stressful ones.  This next one is him almost at the ball and the other team is ready to kick hard, right towards his face.  Gosh, can a mom handle this?

And another one, getting a ball right after a kick, so scary.

This was a close one, but the goal was saved.  I love to watch David play.  He is so aware of everything happening on the field and the movement of play.  He is an awesome soccer player and the team is lucky to have such a great backup goalie.  They won this game 4-1.  His team was ranked 2nd in their league at the end of the season so they are moving up to the next league now.  Way to go guys!

Just a little distraction during the game.  3 paragliders came and landed on the field during the game.  The landed just off the sidelines.

A huge thank you to Grandpa Chuck for taking such great pictures this day!