Days with the Dorans

  It kind of blows my mind that Zach is already off to High School! He seems to young to be heading off but that's what time does! They had their 8th Grade Graduation on WLN's field and I was glad that Nana and Papa were able to come too! To see a video from his graduation, click HERE . Proud Grandparents Proud Sibs Proud Dorans Best. Counselor. Ever.

Not gonna lie~ I was thinking- 8th grade graduation- no biggie but when I saw the 8th graders walking on the field (such a better location than the hot gym Joey was in), I could feel my throat close up a bit. I don't quite have the words to express how proud I am of this girl- how's she's grown! Nana and I got there early to grab a "perfect" place for Nana to get good pics with her amazing camera. The ceremony was nice- relatively quick and Ali was recognized for her many achievements! One of the awards was from the president and Betsy DeVos (who we are not a fan of) and we agreed that Ali could have all the awards in the world but what we are most proud of is her ability to overcome, her hard work ethic, and her amazingly huge heart. Overall we are most proud of her because she is quite simply- a good human and of all my life's achievements- raising good humans is my number one goal and I have to say- we must be doing a pretty good job. Al ...

I can't believe that Joey is done with middle school! It seemed yesterday I was up all night worrying about him starting 6th grade and here we are looking at high school! They had a ceremony at his high school and thankfully my folks got there a bit before us and got good seats. It was HOT and there were A LOT of kids but I was really impressed with how they kept it moving along. They began with having kids stand up who achieved different things- like Joe stood up for being in the musical, play, band, fall sports, and honor roll. Then each kid had their name read and got an envelope with the certificates they earned. Poor Joey- we knew they'd butcher his name and they did. It was Ali's orchestra teacher who read his name. She got the last name right but pronounced his first name Jen-e-sen which you can see HERE . He took it in stride though. I loved watching him shake hands with Mr. G~ his amazing counselor who will also be Zach's (and hopefully Sean'...