Monday, February 2, 2009

All About Alyssa

My plan was to update my blog with photos of Alyssa's birthday slumber party while Forrest and Noah are at basketball practice, however, the camera is in the car so I'll have to load photos later.

On Friday, Alyssa's 17th birthday, six of her amazingly intelligent, beautiful, and talented friends descended on our house for movies, Wii, Chinese food, ice cream sundaes, and tons of laughs. My daughter sure knows how to pick quality people to include in her life. Her friends are all good students. Some are involved in sports, some in dance, church, or other worthwhile pursuits. They are all members of the National Honor Society. One wants to be a pharmacist and another plans to attend Stanford and become a lawyer.

My daughter wants to teach kindergarten. She has volunteered in the kindergarten class of a friend of mine since 8th grade. She works at a daycare center, and she still does some babysitting too. Alyssa is a natural with young children. Everyone who has seen her at work in my school tells me that. She is planning on getting a teaching certificate with an emphasis in early childhood education and possibly special education too. She took the SAT on Jan. 24th. Alyssa felt very confident about the reading and math but not the essay as she ran out of time, 45 minutes goes by quickly. So she'll probably retake it in the spring.

Every week we receive emails, letters, and postcards from colleges: Western Washington, WSU, Saint Martin's (her top choice), Pacific Lutheran, University of Portland, etc. We'll start planning visitations soon.

I'm very proud that Alyssa has chosen The American Cancer Society's Relay for Life as her National Honor Society project. She is a team captain for her NHS group. Alyssa has meetings to attend once a month to aid her team in fundraising and organizing. The kids and chaperones (including me) will walk all night in shifts to raise money for cancer research.

Attention family members who read this blog, Alyssa will be emailing you this spring to ask for your donations to support this worthy cause. It's tax deductible and can be done all online. She'll direct you to her team's webpage when the date gets closer. The relay will take place the weekend after Memorial Day.

I've painted the picture of an almost perfect teen. But she still rolls her eyes, talks back, and squabbles with her brother. Despite those minor faults she's a good kid and I love her to bits.

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