Mom, could you copy and post the links in the comments section? I don't have them anymore!

I lost the links to Toy and Leah.

Thanks to all of you who have commented here. To the missionaries in Jamaica: Wow, wish my kids were being taught by YOU.

Well Nathanael has done well in FHS because he has learned to work the system- something he has done with maturity- before he matured, he let other kids/noise/distractions melt him down, too. Everyone seems to have forgotten that. Well now we have about 5 to 7 colleges mailing him PER DAY. Good, prestigious ones, too. Expen$ive...for which he should receive a lot of aid for his PSAT and grades. Of course the more prestigious the college, the less they are likely to offer because so many of the kids are merit scholars. But I enourage him to look where he wants because some way we will find a way to get him there if he finds one he wants to go to that only pays partial. So many are available that might give him the whole shebang. Most colleges give financial aid to over half and some 99%of the kids. Of course the poore the family the more the kid gets. If I quit my job and Steve goes to work flipping burgers, we might have it made. But right now it looks like in a year my paycheck is going to go to wherever my son goes to school...part of it may go there, or that and more may go there. It all depends on where he goes and how much they offer.
Now we've had letters from everyone from the Marines to Tulane, from right near home to states far away, from the warm south to many colleges in snowy, picturesque New England...those prestigious preppy pretty ones up there in the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont and upstate New York...and from many in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. I guess they have heard that Nathanael wants to go to a snowy place, despite the fact that I told him not to let the weather decide where he goes. He is saving all the literature and I have a feeling we have only begun the stack that will soon pile sky high.

About last weekend:
Saturrday I went to the play Nathanael was in. Well he wasn't technically "in" it but played in the pit. The play-Annie Get Your Gun. Like the real Annie Oakley, actress Anna Gorman far outshone the poor kid who played Frank Butler. A fun surprise was the Thai kid who played Sitting Bull. OK that can pass for a Lakota accent, right? That kid was too cute and he has the most amazing smile. I could just look at it all day. But Anna, she (as she always does) stole the show. She had the persona down pat. She takes on any accent (played the grandma in Lost in Yonkers, too). The body language. The projection. Not to mention she's pretty and versatile. And I don't care what they say- to be a GOOD actor, you have to be smart. You have to understand wit and emotion and becoming another character. If any actor is any good in Hollywood, they are at least moderately smart. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep...those kind of people...are pretty intelligent. George Wendt is probably the smartest person in Hollywood. But I digress. When Anna gets there, she will be the smartest. She is much more talented than most of those actors these days. And she can SING! It's a musical and she can sing. The kid that played the "half breed"guy, he wasn't a bad singer. Poor Frank struggled to carry that tune...but he tried his best.

As if one day among good-looking young people wasn't enough, I went skiing with the church Sunday. Micah was crazy and amazing, of course. And careful enough, though with a mom you can never be careful enough. He's lucky I didn't see everything he really did. But he has a good talent with skiing. He's got the balance- In summer, he spends half his time on his bike, the other half on roller blades. Except for school, which he spends much of in the office. (sigh)
The two youngest Bolig girls were there. I remember when they were practically babies, all three. This is the family of Deb Bolig, my friend who had Joan Lunden's 4 babies as a surrogate and was a surrogate to another pair of twins for a couple in Europe. Yes, she's had 6 babies as a surrogate! Anyway her daughters are all drop dead knockouts. Cheerleaders, popular, the whole nine yards. Anyway it had been so long since I had actually noticed Katie that at first I wondered who was this 18-year-old or so looking girl in the group, and then I noticed it was Katie. Wow, had she really grown up that fast? NO- I asked how old she was- just 13. She is stunning- perfect face, figure, bone structure, hair. So I asked, do you model? Yes, she is modeling now. Well she has the look- and the perfect age- heck any older they don't take them anymore!
Brett and Taylor, two kids (brothers) at our church, had fun. Brett is about, oh, nine feet tall, long blond hair, weighs maybe 110. LOL A serious beanpole that one. And really good-looking. If I were a 15-year-old I'd have a crush on him despite his skinniness. What a smile. And his brother Taylor, cute as ever, too. Anyway Taylor wrecked and busted up his lip. Guess what? Life squad came and the ambulance took him to the hospital! Well that was the end of the evening and we decided to call it a night. A good youth pastor- glad we have him. Very committed and godly man. We have good kids, too, and he is just what our church needed to pull it together. It's a neat and interesting story, too, how he got to our church. He actually moved out to California to get a job there, could NOT sell his house here during the time, and felt God call him back to Cincy, so he moved back and got on at Faith Lutheran. So glad he did. Micah thinks he's pretty cool, too.
Good things.