Such a proud Aunt

My nephew Reed has been bugging me to blog about him, so here it is Reed! I'm very proud to be an aunt to my awesome nephew Reed and nieces Blaire and Emma. They are all very smart and accomplished at such young ages. The last week has been very exciting in all of their lives. I will go from youngest to oldest.

My niece Emma who is in 8th grade won MVP of her volleyball team, and also received an award for being a "Role Model". Here she is posing with her award. I'm so very proud of her, and look forward to 4 more years of volleyball when she gets to high school. Maybe she'll get pulled up to Varsity as a Freshman.......time will tell. Her cousin Taylor who is in 9th grade now, just got pulled up to varsity for the playoffs. Good volleyball skills run in the family.

My nephew Reed who is 15 was just selected to be an exchange student through the Rotary Club Exchange Program. He will be going abroad next summer for an entire year! He doesn't know where yet; will find out in January. He is hoping for Spain, and if not, another Spanish speaking country, but he could end up in Iceland or Japan. I do have to take credit Reed for you going abroad; you see back in September we went to this International festival in Port Huron because my aunt who is from the Philippines was working at it, and we wanted to eat her delicious food (sorry run on sentence oh well). We walked around the various country booths, and we stopped at the Rotary Club Exchange Program booth. There was a cute, blond German girl who is an exchange student this year and we talked to her about the program. I said Reed you should do this! Well the applications needed to be in by October so he had only a couple of weeks to contact the Rotary to get the info, apply, etc. Reed took the information card and now 2 months later he has gone through a ton of interviews, gave a presentation to the Rotary Club to gain sponsorship, his parents have been interviewed, they traveled to Canada last weekend, so they could all be interviewed a final time, and Reed was selected! Woohoo. I know we will all cry when he leaves, but this will be the experience of a lifetime and I'm thrilled that he will be living in another country, learning about other cultures, and hopefully learning a new language! I do plan to visit him towards the end of his year abroad - no matter where he goes. Here he is with his mom (my sister) last weekend. He's so handsome in a suit!

My niece Blaire is a senior in high school and is a volleyball superstar. Last week she set 3 school records in the District Championship game; 1) Most serves in a game (like 50 or something) 2) Most points scored (32 or something). 3) Most serves without errors (not sure if I got the verbiage of the last record correct, but it's something like that). Yeah Blaire - you go girl! Even though she is only 5'4" she is a front row outside hitter and has a vertical jump like you would not believe. She is a great spiker! They won districts and their first Regional game, so tonight we will be watching her and rest of her Marsyville Vikings team take on Bloomfield Hills Lahser in the Regional Championship game. Go Vikings!!