South Carolina Junior Scholar- Chardonnay Ismail

Yesterday evening was an exceptional one. Our family went to see our daughter accept an award for being a South Carolina Junior Scholar. She scored very high on the PSAT and is in the top 2% of our state for academics. Is was just awesome seeing all of those intelligent young people there being honored for their achievement. They are our future physicians, scientists, engineers, chefs, and the sky's the limit! Each student received an official award along with a pin.

Look at my grown up looking girl!

I actually got in a photo this time! I am always the one taking them.

This is Chardie with one of our local news anchors Stewart Moore of WIS news. He was the keynote speaker at the ceremony. Chardie threatened to take his job! Her dream is to be a news anchor locally and then for CNN. The photo came out bad because someone I know had the camera. I guess you can't take extra time to adjust the camera settings while you have a local celeb waiting so I will give him a break this time.

We are so proud of Chardonnay and we know she will go far in life :)

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I unfortunately had to learn this the hard way. If you have opted to receive follow-up comments to a post from Momfiles you might get one in a foreign language. Please delete it immediately. My blog was spammed last night so I had to add word verification today. I apologize for any inconvenience. To protect our readers from receiving any more unsolicited email I will also enable the comment moderation function. Comments will no longer immediately show up until I approve them. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. Since we are on the subject, has this ever happened to you?

Saturday's v-ball tourney

We spent Saturday in North Augusta for Chardie's volleyball tournament. It was a long but really good day. Chardie's team won first place in the Bronze division, not exactly Gold status but it is always great to place first in any division! The team was so excited and here are some photos of the day.

William was SO well behaved and all the parents were bragging about the fact that he was so quiet. Yeah, that was just because he was surrounded by women and girls all day!

Here is Willie with Brie before the first match.

Papo, Chardie and William getting some floor time before the next game started.

William and Chardie

This is what it looks like when we have to pack up to go to an out-of-town event. ALL of that stuff belongs to our family. It was like home away from home! Beverage anyone??
Chardie and a few teammates just goofing around.

The victory "T"!!

The team with their winner's t-shirts.

Willie's birthday photos

I promised some birthday boy photos so here they are. William was a bit under the weather so he really was not smiling. As a matter of fact, I don't think I got even one shot with him smiling! Here's how his evening started. A nice nap...

His grandma (Shelly's mom) bought him this outfit.

Still no smiles. Not even a tongue shot as he is known for :P

Okay, there's a semi-smile :)

Here's Papo, the #1 cake inspector! William does not look very interested at all!

The smash cake. Would you believe not one speck of it got on his head?! He didn't even want to eat it.

Gotta have the paparazzi! Everyone was armed with a camera phone!

William is 1!

The day is finally here. William is officially one year old today! We are all so excited to celebrate this evening and there is so much left to do. I still have to go to the store to pick up some extra food items, the cake, balloons... It's always a mad dash at the last minute! I am happy that we are not having anything big, just us and the grandparents. We don't believe in spending loads of money on a child that would not even have a clue of what is going on. We also don't want to obligate anyone during these trying financial times. I'll be sure to post the birthday photos tomorrow so check back! Have a great day :)