Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Judds a Graduate, Aaron hopes to be Madrid bound....
There is a lot to report on in this blog entry. I guess the biggest news is that Judd is officially a college graduate. He graduated from the University of Dayton on May 8 (Mother’s Day) along with 1,300 other students looking to enter the work force. He was home for one day and then headed to Florida for ‘Dayton to Daytona’ week – I think he’s due back home on May 14 or 15. I can’t believe how quickly his 4 years of college of flown by. It seems like only yesterday that we were dropping him off at Marianist Hall for his freshman year. Fittingly, our last stop on Sunday before we headed back to Mason was the bookstore at Marianist Hall to purchase Abbey a UD t-shirt as she’ll be heading to Dayton this fall. I am a little sad for Judd; college is such a great time of your life and now it’s over – he really needs to get himself focused on finding himself a job in the design industry. I know he’ll get in to a new routine once he’s back and settled but you spend four years in a comfortable and secure environment like college and then it’s all over. I’m sure he’ll rekindle some of the old high school friendships but I also hope he’s able to maintain friendships with the people he got to know at UD. So I congratulate Judd on his graduation and look forward to seeing him around a lot more than we have over the past 4 years.
Aaron was recently selected to study abroad in Madrid, Spain next fall. He as a few things he needs to get in line before its 100% official but if he’s able to get everything together he should be in line to have a wonderful experience in the fall. He knows he needs to work his butt so he has enough money for the trip and he assures us he’s willing to do that. So we may go from August to December without seeing Aaron. So while we’ll be getting reacquainted with Judd, we’ll be missing Aaron.
Abbey is counting the days until the end of her high school years. I think following today she will be down to just 8 days left. Her graduation party is set for May 28 and she’ll officially graduate on May 31. Obviously, the last 4 years have flown by for her as well.
On Monday we attended a golf tournament for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund in Louisville. Our good friends, Diane and Val Henson are co-chairs and sponsors for this event as their 3 daughters have been fighting diabetes for around 15 years. It was a wonderful event and the Hensons are hopeful they will surpass the $1,000,000 mark in funds raised over the history of the tournament. It truly was a testament to what one family can do when they commit themselves to an important cause like finding treatments and cures for diabetes. It was inspiring to see their determination in action and I know their efforts will be rewarded some day when a cure is eventually found, hopefully in the very near future.
My fundraising efforts for my bike ride of somewhat slowed in recent weeks. I’m currently at about $8000 raised and the ride is June 5. I really hope to hit the $10,000 mark but it’s going to require a little more support. If you haven’t been able to make a contribution to my website there still is time. Just follow the link below and you can add to my $8000 total. Thanks to everyone who has made a gift so far and I hope we can reach the $10,000 mark over the next 26 days. Here is the link…
http://pages.teamintraining.org/soh/ambbr11/vhopkins
BTW, I’m not the only person in the family participating in endurance events. On May 1 both Julie and Abbey participated in the Flying Pig Marathon here in Cincinnati. Abbey and her cousin Lauren ran the 13.1 mile half marathon for the Team in Training program (raising over $2000!) while Julie and her sister Jeanne walked the entire 26.2 mile course! They created a little controversy by actually running some of the marathon (they were registered as ‘walkers’ and I guess ‘walkers’ running is severely frowned upon!) but they can take pride in the fact they can now say they have completed a marathon! I was very proud of all the ‘girls’ for their accomplishments!
I guess this is a good place to end. Thanks for checking in and I’ll be sure to post again in the near future.
Aaron was recently selected to study abroad in Madrid, Spain next fall. He as a few things he needs to get in line before its 100% official but if he’s able to get everything together he should be in line to have a wonderful experience in the fall. He knows he needs to work his butt so he has enough money for the trip and he assures us he’s willing to do that. So we may go from August to December without seeing Aaron. So while we’ll be getting reacquainted with Judd, we’ll be missing Aaron.
Abbey is counting the days until the end of her high school years. I think following today she will be down to just 8 days left. Her graduation party is set for May 28 and she’ll officially graduate on May 31. Obviously, the last 4 years have flown by for her as well.
On Monday we attended a golf tournament for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund in Louisville. Our good friends, Diane and Val Henson are co-chairs and sponsors for this event as their 3 daughters have been fighting diabetes for around 15 years. It was a wonderful event and the Hensons are hopeful they will surpass the $1,000,000 mark in funds raised over the history of the tournament. It truly was a testament to what one family can do when they commit themselves to an important cause like finding treatments and cures for diabetes. It was inspiring to see their determination in action and I know their efforts will be rewarded some day when a cure is eventually found, hopefully in the very near future.
My fundraising efforts for my bike ride of somewhat slowed in recent weeks. I’m currently at about $8000 raised and the ride is June 5. I really hope to hit the $10,000 mark but it’s going to require a little more support. If you haven’t been able to make a contribution to my website there still is time. Just follow the link below and you can add to my $8000 total. Thanks to everyone who has made a gift so far and I hope we can reach the $10,000 mark over the next 26 days. Here is the link…
http://pages.teamintraining.org/soh/ambbr11/vhopkins
BTW, I’m not the only person in the family participating in endurance events. On May 1 both Julie and Abbey participated in the Flying Pig Marathon here in Cincinnati. Abbey and her cousin Lauren ran the 13.1 mile half marathon for the Team in Training program (raising over $2000!) while Julie and her sister Jeanne walked the entire 26.2 mile course! They created a little controversy by actually running some of the marathon (they were registered as ‘walkers’ and I guess ‘walkers’ running is severely frowned upon!) but they can take pride in the fact they can now say they have completed a marathon! I was very proud of all the ‘girls’ for their accomplishments!
I guess this is a good place to end. Thanks for checking in and I’ll be sure to post again in the near future.
