Spotlight on Travis!

We have spent another week close to home, however, it was an eventful week.  
There is a group of ladies in our ward who have reached the age where they have children who have grown up and moved on to college, missions, marriage etc..   Some still have children at home and some don't.  Anyway it is a really fun bunch of ladies who enjoy sharing advice, laughs and lunch with each other every few weeks.  I have dubbed us the "lunch bunch"!!  There are about 7 of us, but we are rarely all make it each time. 

We like to have a purpose, so the call goes out for a lunch meeting when there's a birthday, when someone returns from a trip, when someone has great news to share, when someone gets the bad news their spouse is deploying,  when it's been too long since we've seen each other and whenever we are hungry...so as you can see, the need for a "lunch bunch" meeting happens every few weeks (not often enough for me, because I am always hungry).


This week, we met to celebrate my friend, Lorana's birthday.  We went to a very nice little Gasthaus by a little lake about 15 minutes from here.    It was fun to sit out on the patio or "biergarten" and enjoy the sunshine, beautiful setting, and good friends.


Now on to why the spotlight was on Travis this week....


On Monday, we got an email from the school inviting us to an Awards Ceremony to see Travis get an award.  They didn't say WHAT the award was,  so we had fun speculating what it could be....grades (possibly, but he didn't get straight A's last quarter)....attendance (well he did have perfect attendance at this school, but he missed a week during the move).....is there a "new kid" award? ( NO, almost everyday there is a new kid)...hmmmm???

Well I went to the school for the ceremony and after seeing lots of kids get awards for high honor roll, art projects, engineering scholarships to a summer program, athlete of the year, they finally got to the Principal's Awards.  Ten kids in each grade are awarded an award based on all the qualities that make a exemplary student.  Grades, attendance, attitude, helpfulness toward other students, friendliness, an all around representative of a Ramstein Royal.   You need to be nominated for this by more than one teacher.


Yep...you guessed it....Travis was given a Principal's Award.  He was so surprised and we were too.  I am just so proud of him for being able to move half way around the world, adjust to a new school, make new friends and set such a good example while doing it.  


Then on Saturday, we drove to a little village south of Heidelberg to meet with the stake Patriarch and have Travis receive his Patriarchal blessing.  Again, I felt like such a proud mama hen when the Patriarch said what a great young man he was.   I always feel so happy and blessed when I think of my five wonderful kids and all of their many accomplishments. 
Thanks you guys (and girl) for making our lives so full of purpose and so wonderful...we love you!!

Just had to add that the World Cup is big stuff here (as it is every where in the world except the USA) and Germany is all decked out with flags, soccer balls, and every other decoration you can think of.  I will take some pictures this week of the houses and cars around our village.  We are watching the game tonight and Germany just scored against Australia.  You can hear all the neighbors cheering and blowing their air horns!!    Go Deutschland!!


Next week, the blog will be late.  It will be worth it though because we are heading to London for a couple of days and I will take LOTS of pictures :)


We love and miss you all,
-corri