On May 24th, Amy was inducted into the
National Junior Honor Society at Cascade Middle School. She has worked hard these past 3 years and this recognition is well deserved. Her work ethic is really amazing to me because it is certainly not something that I am familiar with (I believe she has inherited it from her Dad).
She is in the midst of finals this week - Algebra and French today - and "graduates" from 8th grade next Thursday, June 9th. She is both excited to start High School and a bit dreading Freshman year. She has a full summer of dance ahead of her to distract from the upcoming changes in the fall. This weekend she has 2 performances with
Dance Velocity, then on 6/17 a performance of "Peter & the Wolf" with
Academie de Ballet Classique. At the end of July the
Central Oregon School of Ballet performs "Giselle". In addition to those activities, when school ends next week she will begin private lessons with
Joy Victor. It's going to be a busy summer. Hopefully, we will get in some travel in August - still working on details.
Memorial Day weekend we traveled to Portland. The primary purpose was to get new pointe shoes for Amy but there were also some decidedly more fun items on our agenda. The most important one being - dessert with Nancy & Jason @ the
Vita Cafe. They are very busy with wedding plans so it was great to be able to squeeze into their weekend plans.
Of almost equal importance to one of us is a stop at a "real" mall. Then, something that we have missed out on during our last few trips to Portland - a stop at
VooDoo Donuts . I'm not sure what's the real attraction of the place - the yummy donuts or the weird vibe of the place. Which ever - the place was hoppin' on Sunday! A line out the door that was not moving very fast was quite discouraging. Luckily they had a food truck set up where we bought a dozen (more than we really wanted or needed) and left the crowd behind.
A stop at the
Portland Rose Gardens was welcome even though the roses are weeks away from blooming. The rhododendrons & azaleas were spectacular - very soothing to our spring deprived eyes. We left Bend, where the trees are just starting to bud - crossed the mountains - where the snow is still coming down and arrived in the green green Willamette Valley. Just lovely!
