Gathering Trophies:

One more week of school left! In the meantime, Darcy has reaped the reward of the great incentive programs at her school... Thursday, she was taken on a limosine lunch date during school hours to honor her and the other top readers from her school. Of the more than 600 students at Darcy's school, she came in second for having read the most books this year. (The students take a post quiz on each book they read.)

At the end of third quarter, Darcy had once again received the award on her seventh grade team for highest score in Communication Arts and also in Science...but the award she was most proud of was the one she calls the "nice person award". It seems this is an award that is bestowed based on the vote of fellow students choosing the classmate they feel has most modeled positive traits and has most exhibited leadership qualities. She valued that award over all the others. Her classmates jokingly told her that, having already voted two students in for that award the previous two quarters, that there weren't any nice people left to vote for, so they just decided to vote for her! Yup...sounds like they dish it out to her about as much as she dishes it out to everyone, herself! That award, though, is the one she has been the proudest of and happiest about receiving. The fourth quarter awards have not yet been announced...they will be given out this next week.

Oh, and after going for a limo lunch on Thursday, she boarded a bus bright and early Friday morning to head for Silver Dollar City. Any Bolivar Middle School student who makes all A's and B's, doesn't get sent to see the principal any through the year, and has perfect attendance is rewarded with a special field trip to Branson's Silver Dollar City at the end of the year. Friday morning, the 39 students (of over 600) who had qualified, along with the members of student council and the year book committee all left at 8:00 am for Silver Dollar City. They returned at 9:00 pm. Darcy had a BLAST!

We can tell she is getting to the age where she NOTICES young men, and they notice her. Unfortunately. The majority of the kids who qualified to go to SDC were girls...yet, when the kids were allowed to choose up the small groups they would hang with through the day, Darcy wound up the only girl in a group of five. She says everyone joked about her and her four "body guards". She seemed pleased enough with the group she was in, I noticed. She had a blast riding one roller coaster after another with them, but did voice one complaint to me..."I didn't get to do any shopping." Well...what does she expect when she pairs off with four guys? Shopping wasn't exactly a high priority for four of the five in her group!



Doug, meanwhile, wrapped up a perfect soccer season with their final double header yesterday. His team only had eight players, so they had to play every game "short" and each player had to play the entire game. One of the team-mates is deaf and Doug has physical challenges and some cognitive challenges...yet, their team (playing against the other teams that had MORE team members and no team members with special needs) still won EVERY SINGLE GAME this season! Saturday, they played the blue team and shut them out 8-0 and had less than five minutes to grab a drink of water before their second game began, against the green team (coming in fresh and with three more members, so they could pull their guys in and out for rest periods)...and, making things worse, their coach was REALLY competitive. Still, our poor exhausted little guys won 5-1! They just RAN their hearts out for two hours straight...up and down the length of that field. By the second half of the second game, they were just wiped out. You could see their running beginning to slow and, in the last few minutes of the second half, the green team scored their first and only goal of the game. I am so proud of the Fireballs. I am most proud of how they accepted ALL their team-mates equally...and how they demonstrated sportsmanship over competitiveness every single game of the season. They were truly a winning team...would have been a winning team even if they had never scored a goal all season.

Doug LOVED playing soccer this year. Being on a team was HUGE for this little guy who struggled so hard at the beginning of the school year to find acceptance in a new school and new town.