Happy Birthday Kelly!

While we only had one week with no teenager in the house (the 18-year-old leaving last week) we sure like having our newest teenager around!

Hope you enjoyed eating that worm.

Love,

Mom & Dad

Earlier this year, Claire posted a story about the two of us working on MLK day. This was part of Harland’s community involvement. Several photos from the day have been enlarged and now hang in our cafeteria. It is funny to walk down the hall of the cafeteria and be greeted by a GIANT Miss Claire.

Nicole and Danny went “out on top.” Nicole graduated from UGA from the business school with a marketing degree, repeating her Dean’s List achievement. WAY TO GO NICK!!! Dan and Julie joined the immediate family in Athens to watch the huge graduation ceremony. Governor Sonny Purdue spoke. Thanks to cell phones, we were able to spot Nicole and she spot us. Nicole’s band, The Psychic Hearts, also had a career-topping achievement by playing on the 99X stage at Music Midtown.

Danny concluded his senior year with a triple: his best GPA performance, an exciting pitching performance in the baseball playoffs, and a really fun prom night. Photos on mac.fiveforks.com. Danny will be attending Spring Hill College in Mobile.

Kathy, Kelly, and Claire have one of the busiest summers going on record. Art, drama, and tennis so far. Both girls were strong leaders on their soccer teams in the Spring. Jeb launched Mr. Potato Head checks (and many others) nationwide. It was a year-long project. See his team’s work at www.harland.com/HPP. WRITE MORE CHECKS!!!

Danny lost his favorite baseball cap at a concert last year. He found a stained Bass Pro Shop cap at the same concert and has worn that one almost as much as his Brookwood cap. I put it in the dishwasher to at least sterilize the stains.

He found his lost, favorite fitted ND cap on www.lids.com that he would like to get for his birthday. He said he wears a medium.

He and Morgan are over visiting Gramalie, Grandad, and the Ettensohn crew tonight, so I called and had Mom measure his head. He’s grown a tad. At 23 1/8″ he lands in the large territory according to this chart. Depending on how strict they are on the baseball team, he’ll probably let more of his hair grow. Just hope he doesn’t grow a mullet.

After a slight false start (Kathy and I went to the wrong house for the photo shoot) we caught up with Danny and Morgan. The party bus turned out to be a huge modified Greyhound with a large screen TV in the back and a small one up front. It took the gang across town to Ray’s On The River.

Prom 2005 Photos.

Morgan’s dress was made of tiny beads. She had to have it altered, and the hem was not real strong. Danny said that wherever she stood still for a few minutes, she would step away leaving a small pile of beads. A variation of Hansel and Gretel.

In the high school yearbook, senior parents buy quarter pages that include a photo or two and some congratulatory words. You are limited to about 50 words. In four years, Nicole and now Danny are the only pages that featured a URL where a fellow classmate could go read/see more.

The most common set of photos is to include a baby or youth photo and then a recent photo. Danny’s page featured the photo of him pretending to be a little old man and his senior baseball photo. After some congratulatory words appeared the url:

www.fiveforks.com/danny

Morgan’s mom would later tell us the story of her walking into the room last Friday night (the day the yearbooks came out) to find Morgan and her little sister cracking up. On the screen was the zoomed-in photo of Danny in Laurie’s wedding dress. Danny reports the word spread quickly this week.

Is on the way. Here’s a tracking link Nicole! Congratulations!

She has offered to hand-me-down her on-the-blink Flower Power Mac to her little sisters. Maybe they can fix it.

The entire Stonegate family including Gramalie and Grandad showed up for DC’s “Senior Night”. Nicole drove in from Athens. We all stood on the field before the beginning of the game as the announcer read Danny’s bio. It was a very nice event, and Brookwood then went on to clobber the opponents invoking the 10 run mercy rule.

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When Mary Claire was little, she would talk about a movie or TV show being wet or dry. Kathy and I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about, so we had to get translator Kelly to figure it out. (Older siblings are useful for this.) Kelly went through a list of shows and had Mary Claire tell her which were wet and which were dry. Mary Claire had an immediate answer for each one.

Kelly finally deduced that cartoons are “wet” and shows with real people are “dry”. It was obvious once she figured it out, although I’m not sure why.

Tonight at dinner (some 5 years later) Claire wondered why herself. She decided that she must have thought pouring water in the TV would make some shows colorful cartoons and when the TV dried out, real people would show up. Kelly immediately dismissed this as the reason. I said, “Claire would have a better glimpse into what she thought as a kid than you would.”

“I suppose,” said Kelly, who probably really thought I was all wet.

The big event for the quarter was Kathy and Danny’s trip to Jamaica to work with the Missionaries of the Poor. Like Jeb and Nicole who went a year ago, both reported having an amazing experience working with the brothers and the poor in the slums of Kingston. Kathy, who was very nervous before the trip, cannot wait to go back. Both wrote very inspiring articles that can be found here: www.sjnlilburn.org/documents/NNEaster2005.pdf.

Nicole is wrapping up her UGA undergraduate degree. Her band “The Psychic Hearts” will be playing at Music Midtown in Atlanta. They were one of 14 local bands chosen from 400 who applied to play at this huge festival. Danny earned the starting pitcher position for Brookwood this season, and helped kick off the season with a win. However, he injured his back shortly after that and is going through rehabilitation which includes electric shock therapy (to the back… not head.) He has been accepted to 3 of his 4 colleges (Spring Hill, UGA, and Augusta) and is still waiting to hear from Notre Dame.

Kelly and Claire are very busy with soccer, piano, and art. Kelly scored in her first game. Like their brother, they both injured themselves early in the season and missed a couple of games, but both are back 100%. Kelly received a perfect score for her violin evaluation, and a superior rating in her piano federation. Claire received a perfect score (straight A’s) on her last report card. She also discovered she is a terrific basketball player having just completed her first season.

Jeb joined the Knights of Columbus and went through the secret indoctrination to become a First Degree Knight. It was a very unusual experience, but he can only talk about it with other Knights in good standing.