New Family Member

A couple of weeks ago our  neighbor Tom called to say that he had a gift for Aleeya and asked if he could bring it over. I was exercising so I told him to come over in about an hour.  We all knew what the gift was a little kitten.
We had another kitten that was ran over and killed. Tom had felt really bad for Aleeya because he knew how much she loved it. So when he noticed there was another litter of kittens in the hay stack and that one hung out in his garbage he was able to catch one for her.
Aleeya named the kitten Mickey. She loves it and wants to hold it all the time. She wakes up and gets the kitten out. It is so much fun watching her interact with Mickey. In fact all the kids love the kitten, they are always fighting over who gets to hold it.

Aleeya and Mickey

And The Winner Is:

For the last event of the Madison centennial celebration, they held a history fair. The theme was "A tapestry of American History".  I really didn't want to participate but Jessica's teacher sent it home as an assignment. If you could relate your topic to Idaho or Madison county you would get extra points. Jessica really wanted to pick something that involved Madison county. It took us awhile but we finally came up with a topic that would include all three; Dam Failures in the 20th century.
We did a lot of research and found out there were 4 dams that had failed between 1960-1980. I thought it would be fun to make the information into a book with pictures of each of those dams and the damage caused. She worked on it for about a week or so, reading stories about the dams breaking, mostly the Teton Dam. She learned a lot. Then on Monday I found a web sight that had a series of pictures of the Teton Dam breaking. I knew we had to find a way to include them. So on Tuesday we added a tri-fold posted to her project.
The fair was on Thursday night, with the judging taking place right after school. In the rules for the project it said that they didn't want a prepared speech on your presentation, that the project should stand on its own. So we didn't prepare much for the judging other than taking about why she chose the topic. When the first judge came to talk to her I got really nervous because of all the questions he was asking. Then 3 more judges came by with similar questions. She did really well for not preparing for it.
They announced the winners after the fair opened to the public. They went through the Adults, senior, and then elementary winners. Delwyn turned to me and asked what happened to the middle school division. Then they announced the 3rd and 2nd place winners and they weren't Jessica. I started to feel really bad that she didn't win anything. Then they announced that the winner of 1st place in the middle school division and winner of the I-pad was Jessica Klingler. I was so surprised and happy for her.
The highlight of the night for me was Jessica telling Ky that she could have her other tablet when we got home.
I found out from her teacher that the reason she won was that the judges were impressed that she had tied in America, Idaho and Madison county history into her project.
Way to go Jessica, we our proud of you.