J Awards

Natalie's eighth grade awards ceremony for her school was tonight. We had gotten a call from her principal a couple of weeks ago to tell us that she was going to get the award for getting straight A's for all three years of middle school. We weren't supposed to tell her she was getting this award, but it's not like she didn't know that she has gotten straight A's every year.

What was a surprise was that there were only three of them that had straight A's for the three years of middle school. This is a picture of the three of them on stage holding their plaques for this award. The girl on the far left is Natalie's friend Abby. They have been friends since elementary school, and Abby lives in our subdivision. We were sitting in front of her family. It was cool to see the both of them on stage together.

This second picture is of Natalie with two of her good friends. Directly to her left is her friend Arela, who will be joining color guard with her this upcoming year. She got a few awards too. To Natalie's far left is her friend Claudia, who got the big art award for excelling in art. Natalie has said that Claudia is really awesome at drawing, which is why she will be going the NESA next year (North East School of the Arts).

Each student walked across the stage when their name was called. They shook their principal's hand as a list of their awards were read out loud. The principal then handed them their certificate--or stack of certificates in Natalie's case. Natalie got the following awards:

President's Education Award
Honor Roll All A's
Outstanding Student in GT English
UIL 2nd Place in Math
UIL 4th Place in Number Sense
UIL 5th Place in Calculator Applications

She said that she was the most proud of the UIL awards because she "worked hard" for those to win them in the competition. We think she works pretty hard in school in general. She was a little sad that she did not receive or even get nominated for the Principal's Award. Her friend Abby got that award tonight. Natalie is so hard on herself, but we are so very proud of what she has accomplished so far. Now on to high school! Eek!