High School Here I Come

Savannah had her 8th grade graduation this morning.  Again, it took longer to graduate her from middle school than to graduate Hannah from high school.  They should really work on this.  One advantage of having Zachary's graduation the day before is that we decided to climb to the top row of bleachers so we could lean back against the wall when our backs got tired from sitting there so long.  Again, I had a few camera issues/ Jennifer issues.  Oh, well.

I tried to get some earlier pictures of Savannah, but they all turned out blurry.  This is her waiting in line for her name to be called to get her certificate.  She has just said thank you to the academy. 

 Confused?  

Savannah told me last night that she really just wanted to walk by and grab the mic and say, "I would like to thank the academy".  Since she would get in trouble for this, I told her I would be watching and she could look and me and I would know what she was thinking.  In the picture below, she had just mouthed to me, "I would like to thank the academy".  I am so proud!

I at least did get her picture shaking the principal's hand and receiving her certificate.

I have my certificate.  8th grade is over.  High School here I come!

We got back home after a 2 hour ceremony.  Before she could change, I wanted to get a picture of her all dressed up with her flowers and certificate.  Congratulations Savannah!

And so summer begins!

Zachary's Birthday Part 2

This is the present Zachary held all afternoon, trying to guess what it was.  When Kyle got off work, this is the first present he grabbed.  The waiting is finally over!

Can you see the joy on his face?

Here is the nerf gun he has been talking about for weeks.  Isabel had Zachary's name at Christmas and decided that Zachary needed a nerf gun.  Now Zachary is all about the nerf guns.  LOVES them!

What is a birthday with out Pokemon?

Can't go wrong with this either.  Thanks to all the grandparents, Zachary gets to go shopping for more nerf bullets and Halo toys.

Finally it is time for cake.  Or lemon pie, in this case.  As you can see, my picture problems continued throughout the day.  This is all I have of his cake/pie.  He blew the candles out as soon as I got to him with it.  No picture, but if his wish comes true, I guess it doesn't matter, huh?

I think Zachary had a great birthday, he got out of school early, had steak, opened presents and got to stay up late because he is now out for the summer. 

Birthday Boy and Elementary School Graduate

Today is Zachary's birthday.  Zachary is holding one of his presents at the moment, waiting for his dad to quit working so that he can open them.   He had to change one present for another as he is wearing the wrapping paper down and it is starting to tear. 


Zachary also graduated from elementary school today.  We went to his 5th grade graduation.  Sadly, it took longer for him to graduate from elementary school than it did for Hannah to graduate from high school.  Might I add that the bleachers we were sitting on didn't help the matter. I will just say up front that I was having camera difficulties today. Or maybe they were Jennifer difficulties.  Either way I didn't get the pictures that I wanted and some were just a blur.  Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow, when we get to repeat the experience again for Savannah to graduate form middle school and move on to high school.  That makes her dad really nervous!

Zachary going to line up for his diploma.

waiting for his name to be called

Mrs. Schuh  getting ready to call for Zachary

I am ready to get out of here!

5th grade is over!  Middle school here I come!

As you can tell, the shots I missed were of him getting his certificate and shaking the principal's hand.  Oh well.

Hours later...

I had to put this post on hold while we went out to dinner.  Zachary wanted steak and since we can't seem to get enough rain around here, grilling was out.  We let him open his presents and headed out to dinner for some steak.  It has been a long day, so I'll have to post more birthday pictures later.  And yes, I am still having picture issues :(

Academic Fair

On May 7th Savannah's school had the 8th graders participate in an academic fair.  The kids had to choose any topic, research the topic, write a paper, have a display board about what they learned, and an extra visual. Since Savannah learned in December that she has asthma, she chose to learn more about it and use that for her project.  

Here is Savannah with her completed project.

Her brochures for anyone to take for more information on asthma.

A giant replica of her rescue inhaler.

Every 8th grade classroom was packed with projects like this.  It was a lot of work and Savannah is glad to be done with it. Now if Friday can just get here already and bring with it the end of this school year.

The Volunteer State

To quote Gerald O'hara in Gone With the Wind “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”  


I love this great state of Tennessee and the city of Nashville and the surrounding areas.  The people here amaze me.  I have always known why we are the volunteer state, and the acts of the people here are a reminder that we still deserve that name. In the midst of all of the flooding and disaster, there are the stories of strangers, not waiting for the federal government to come in and take over.  People are out searching for people to help.  Taking food and water to strangers and helping them empty their destroyed homes and clean up the devastation left behind.  As the word spreads of a need, people gather in large numbers to help those in need.  


I found this article titled " We Are Nashville"  I think it sums us up pretty well.  The article can be found at http://www.section303.com/we-are-nashville-4366 or you can read it below.

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

Wishing We Would Have Had Noah's Warning and Built an Ark

We have had a bit of flooding here in the Nashville area.  Here are some pictures from my neck of the woods as Mill Creek was starting to cause flood problems and the roads were starting to close.

This is the road that leads to my subdivision.

There has been a lot of damage. We have seen footage of homes floating away in the floods. It is just unreal.  All of the flooding happened so fast. We are told we got the same amount of rain in two days that we normally get for the months of May- July.(about 13.5 inches with some areas getting 15 inches)  Church was cancelled yesterday and schools are closed today. Thankfully we are okay, but there are a lot of people with out homes and people that were visiting Nashville that are stranded here right now staying at shelters set up all over the city. 

 I have been trying to upload some of the pics that we have been seeing of the flood, but can't get them.  Here is a link to our local news stations if you are interested in seeing all of the water. 

 http://www.wsmv.com/index.html 

 http://www.newschannel5.com/