All-American Cheerleader

At the cheerleading camp Morgan attended the kids had an opportunity to try out for the UCA All-American team. This is an honor that is only awarded to the top 12% of cheerleaders in America. Morgan did the try-out. At the presentation the kids did, one of the coaches was telling the parents that kids had a chance to try-out and called all the girls who tried out to come to the center of the gym to do the routine they did for the competition. Then he announced who had one. There were 3 girls from JV who tried out, and Morgan was the only one who made the All-American team for JV. The varsity girls had 5 who made the team. The JV trip is a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando for the ABC Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Varsity trip is to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Morgan and the other girls have some serious fundraising to do to make these trips possible, so if you are family expect to be hit up to buy something.

The cheerleaders giving the performance.

I know this is a blurry picture but it is of the coach giving Morgan the medal and it is the only one I have. There was a lot of movement in the picture.

All the All-American girls.

Morgan's All-American medal, she wanted us to take a picture of it and post it on facebook right after she won. She was so proud. We are so proud of her as well.

Cheerleading camp

Morgan spent part of the week at Cheerleading Camp which was held at the High School. I was hoping that during this camp since the coach would not be coaching (cheerleaders from Univeral Cheerleading Association were the coaches) the girls and boys would be able to have some better bonding time and not be quite as "clickish" as they have been. The last day of the camp the kids had a presentation that they did for the parents. It was really neat to see what they had learned in just a few days. Morgan came home everyday telling me what a good time she had and that she felt like she was learning. She has come a long way in this adventure.

The kids all performed a cheer together with both JV and Varsity.

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Then JV got to perform by themselves and show a cheer and a dance.

One of the JV groups performing a stunt. Morgan is on the right side and Belkis is the one going up.

STR 8 UP open house

The grand opening of STR8 UP youth house was a huge success. There were literally tons of people there. The weather was not so nice and we had the program portion of the evening in the youth house. Dinner was cooked by Don and he got soaked doing it. We had some tents set up for people to go under to eat, but the inside of the building was always full of people.

The board of directors at the grand opening.

Kids hanging out inside the building out of the rain.

Local Law Enforcement showing support for the new youth house. We hope that the local officers will come and spend some time with the kids, my personal hope it that kids will see officers in a positive light and not only associate them with doing bad.

The kids were playing in the rain. The boys were playing football in the mud and the girls were sitting here watching them.

Farm life

We went to a party for Memorial Day at the home of Don's cousin Dusty. She lives next door to Aunt Rosa Lee. Morgan loves to go to Rosa Lee's house becuase she has cows and other farm animals. When we go there Levi told us that there was a baby cow. We wanted to make sure that Morgan saw the cow, it was a couple of weeks old. We fed the mamma corn husks and go to look at the calf. Then Rosa Lee told Morgan that she had a 3 day old calf that had been abandoned by its mom and it is bottle fed. Morgan really wanted to see it. Rosa Lee let Morgan have a chance to feed the calf. It was harder than she thought it was going to be, but I think she thought it was neat. When they were done with the bottle the calf was still hungry and it started chewing on the back of Morgan's leg. I thought it was pretty funny (it didn't hurt her, just suprised her).

When we were walking back to the house Rosa Lee discovered that the rain storm from earlier had upended her pin with baby ducks. So Morgan, Amber, Don and Justin went to find the baby ducks. Morgan got one and then wanted to keep it. We are going back next weekend for Levi's birthday so she will get to see the duck agian, cause it is not coming home.

While we were on the duck hunt we were right next to the chickens and other small animals. Rosa Lee has a male and female turkey, 2 female peacocks, some doves that got in the pen, lots of chickens and some adult ducks. The turkey is pretty friendly and can come out of the cage and walk around the people and not walk off. He will even let you pet him. Morgan and Amber were petting the turkey and he was puffing up and showing his tail feathers, it was funny.

Football

The Spring football game was lots of fun, but oh my it was HOT. The game was in Avon Park, and it really stunk at the field (I think they had fertilized recently in the area). The football players played one quarter against Avon Park and then another quarter against Sebring. Although they lost the game, I thought that they boys played a good game.

Morgan and the other cheerleaders did a great job. For this game the JV and the Varsity cheered together. Normally the JV will cheer for the JV games so there will be only a few girls.

Please enjoy the pictures of both the game and the cheerleaders (most of the cheerleader photos have Morgan only as she is the one I birthed and care the most about, know what I mean). The football photos are of various boys as we have no vested interest and I couldn't really tell you who most of the kids are.

8th grade dance

My baby is growing up :(

She went to the 8th grade dance this month and boy was she BEAUTIFUL.

Don and I were chaperone's at the dance and to tell the truth we were dreading it. We agreed to do it to help out some friends. But really when it was over we had a really good time. Lou and Jennifer even agreed that it was fun. The kids were very well behaved and the dancing was not as bad as I had expected. Please enjoy the few pictures that I took. I didn't get many because I was trying to stay out of Morgan's way and let her have fun without me constantly being in her face.

Aquarium

When we were planning the trip to North Carolina for Christina's wedding I was looking on the Internet for things to do in the area, cause I don't like to spend lots of time in the sun. I found a state owned aquarium that was about 30 min away and thought it would be fun. I know that Don and Morgan love fish and would really enjoy the aquarium. Mom and Bob decided that they would go with us. We had a wonderful time.

At the entrance to the Aquarium they had a big stuffed gator. Don thought this was a good idea.

This may be the bigges tbull frog I have ever seen. I thought it was kinda neat though. They had an area at the aquarium that was all freshwater things. They had alligators, snakes, frogs and freshwater fish and then you went inside and they had all the saltwater things. In the freshwater stuff they had an albino alligator. I went to take pictures of it and there was a worker standing nearby and he wanted to talk about the gator. I told him we were from Florida and he was amazed, that was where they got the gator from. I told him we have a local guy who just hatched a baby albino and he was amazed. Then he said that he knew the family.

I thought that these horseshoe crabs were fighting, but that is not really what they were doing.Maybe the aquarium will have baby horseshoe crabs in the future.

My favorite thing at any aquarium is jellyfish. They elude me. I want to take gorgeous pictures of them, and for some reason that rarely works. I have a fancy new camera and have been wanting to play with some of the features it has, so I used the jellyfish to do some practice. Some of the pictures were good, some were not so good.

I personally think this picture turned out really good.

This is the mouth of a prehistoric shark called a meglodon. You can tell that it would have been a BIG eater.We were trying to look like we were scared.

A cool looking clam.

At the end of the outside area there was this big plastic frog. Morgan kept telling us she wanted to ride the turtle. We think she may have her animals confused. She got on the frog and then started sliding off so Mom had to help hold her on. I thought this showed just how goofy they are.