I am unabashed fan of 70s music and Friday night we headed out to Winston-Salem to see one of my all-time favorites – John Ford Coley. Coley along with England Dan had a ton of hits including Love Is The Answer, I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, Never Have To Say Goodbye Again, Nights Are Forever Without You and Sad To Belong to name a few. Love Is The Answer is my favorite song of all time so I was just thrilled to get to hear him live, even Jeff and Hayley were excited because they’ve listened to his stuff so much they love it too.
It was fantastic. Small intimate venue with John Ford Coley and an amazing country songwriter named Byron Hill alternating songs and stories – they were a great combo. We were 10 feet from the stage, got to talk to them, get autographs and take photos. As fun as hearing songs I loved from Coley, we were totally charmed by Hill who evidently has written something like 600 songs recorded by others, including 30 top-ten country songs. I’m not a country fan so he was new to me but he sang a number of his songs that went to #1 and I was downloading them by the end of the night.
Hayley’s Christmas present to Uncle Jay was a paintball experience down at Black River Paintball. They both came back having taken a shot in the neck but really no worse for wear. They do look pretty badass!
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For her 14th birthday, Hayley decided to have our dear friend Graham Morrison shoot she and her friends hanging out. Our regular stylist Michelle did Hayley’s hair that morning then an amazing makeup artist, Kitschkween aka Marissa Rhoades came over and got the girls ready. The results were fantastic.
After they had cake, pizza and watched movies until the wee hours of the sleepover.
The cake turned out awesome – Once in a Blue Moon designed a Graffiti Cake:
We had a birthday lunch and then birthday pie later on as well – we do love to drag out her birthday and make a big deal of it!
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No awards today at the state science fair for Hayley but it was a really great experience! During one of her five judges’ interviews, a judge told her that she swam regularly at the lake beach that Hayley’s research showed was contaminated and that she didn’t think she’d go back there. I told Hayley that’s far better than any award – she did research that impacted someone’s choices in the real world.
Between making honor roll this quarter and all the hard work on this project through three rounds of competition (school, regional and state), we are just so proud of her. I mean its pretty darn impressive to make it all the way to the state level! A lot of the competitors were homeschooled or private school kids who do this as part of their curriculum, where Hayley (and the other two from her school) did it voluntarily, on their own time.
Friday check-in at Meredith College:
Her friends came along before we took them to dinner and the Hunger Games:
Chilling at Meredith’s student center before interviews:
The three kids from Salem Middle who made it to States:
In 2008 I posted about how funny I thought Leslie Hall was. She’d been an internet sensation with her hysterical Gem Sweaters Museum. CNN, Wired and others did stories on her fantastic band, Leslie & the Lys and their videos. (Now the humor of Leslie reaches even further that she’s regularly on the popular kids show Yo Gabba Gabba.)
A year later I happened to notice the band was playing in Chapel Hill and of course Hayley and I had to see that show. Not only did we catch the show, we got to meet Leslie afterwards. When they swung through in 2010, managed to visit with the band a bit before and after the show. I emailed with them every so often and Leslie even called Hayley on her 13th birthday.
This year, the band was back on tour again with opening acts Pennyhawk and Ramona & the Swimsuits. Since NC was about midway on their tour, they sent seven boxes of extra supplies to our house to resupply them. We loaded it all up in the jeep as lots of vegan goodies for the band and headed for their show. We hung out with them for about an hour before the show, helped unpack “merch”, Hayley got on stage to help with sound check and shared makeup with the band. They even hooked us up with tshirts. It was like we were roadies!
They knew we weren’t going to stay for the whole show since it was a school night so after the opening acts but before they went on, they got us from the audience and we took photos up in the dressing rooms. Then they brought Hayley up to dance on stage for a song. Both were unbelievably nice gestures.
Such a fun night!
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Today was the Regional Science Fair at Wakefield in Raleigh. Hayley’s school is in the Central 3A regional which is comprised of the 12 counties around here and the kids compete on the elementary, junior (middle school kids) and senior (high school kids).
We are so excited to share that Hayley won First Place in the Junior division for Biology and then another First Place in Junior division special awards for water safety issues, sponsored by the North Carolina American Water Works Association and the North Carolina Water Environment Association! She got a trophy, certificate and $75!! And even more importantly, her win means she gets the NCSEF Junior Biological Science A Nomination from this regional… and that qualifies her for the STATE SCIENCE FAIR!!!
We are so proud of Hayley for all her work on her Science Fair project for school. She decided on testing several beach areas at local lakes to see if they were safe to swim in. We were out at local lakes collecting samples in the cold and then running lots of test on then. She didn’t win but she was asked to be one of the five projects from her school to move on the Regional Science Fair!
Love this photo of Hayley getting water samples.
Hard at work testing
Setting up at school
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(Her first project had to be scrapped because the tests didn’t work so she’s going to send the dollar bills back to those who helped out.)
We co-hosted a Christmas Eve party with our next door neighbors Wes & Jenn that turned out to be a huge success. We usually hang with them on Christmas Eve and we decided to ask a few more friends to come on over. We figured most people wouldn’t be around but they were! And they wanted to come so it got big right quick. It was lots of fun and hopefully we’ll do it again next year. We hang out with them on New Year’s Eve too and thank goodness that was a lot lower key even if Hayley had friends over.
We did the tree downstairs in the library this year for the first time.
I’m so bad about taking photos on Christmas day… I’m just so busy doing other stuff and then sleeping that afternoon. My mother-in-law luckily took some cute ones and shared so we can thank her for most of these!
One of her favorite gifts – a little pink papasan chair for her room.
The best thing in the world – my grandmother’s recipe for monkeybread. I have to make two batches each holiday.
And this was our sixth Gingerbread Demo Derby! We made a bunch of houses and had neighbors join us to smash them up! Super fun Christmas afternoon.
This year, the band was back on tour again with opening acts 
