Honors Night, Senior Prank and Steve's 49th! - Suzanne Tomb ~ Feeding Love

Well it is that time of year…lots happening and even more so with senior year….Last Wednesday was Honors Night and Mr Devries, Seamus’ Blue and Gold officer presented Seamus with his appointment and spoke about the process of applying to the Naval Academy. We truly appreciated him driving up to spend this time for Seamus and agreed with his comments that it takes lots of support of teachers, family, and community, in addition to dedication to academics and athletics, to be successful in your application.

The boyz all received some awards but my camera angle was not great…so just posting this one because it cracks me up how Steve now has to look up to Brendan!

Brendan enjoys looking down on his Pop too 😉

Gran, Granddad and Gram always come up for Honors Night. Sadly Gran had to go to the hospital after they arrived at their friend’s house on their way up. She had pneumonia and was absolutely not in shape to be discharged, much less come to the event. We are glad she is back home safe and feeling a bit better.

Capturing a nice photo op -maybe we should have split up the colors a bit! 🙂

After honors night there was much commotion in our house. The boyz had planned a senior prank a few months ago…they asked a couple of friends who they could trust to keep it top secret, to join them. Then Steve came home from school 2 weeks ago with a note about a security meeting they are going to have at school, about how they will be tightening security in response to so much school violence in our nation. Very sad and a whole other post. So their innocent prank suddenly became something they may get in trouble for…so they went to the superintendent and asked for his support on this and he agreed – as did the principle! Yay!

This prank…or ‘Senior Remembrance’ as it has been called…has a story behind it. When we were in India, one of the other teachers, became close with Ajay, our exchange teacher who lived in our house while we were over in his city of Ahmedabad. We returned to our house to find photos of Ajay all over – under the toilet seat lid, in cabinets, covering our family photos….we kept discovering these for months. So this prompted the idea for the boyz senior prank.

They had a photo of their senior class printed -1400 of them! – in 3/5 size and then had large 10×14 or so photos of each individual student printed as well. Then they took their teacher, Mr Ordway (who had done the Ajay pics) and had life size photos of his face and made masks out of them. They made signs to put up all over the school, hid the small pics in every classroom and all over…and put ‘Remember ’18’ up in the front school windows with each students photo underneath.

working diligently on the signs

All dressed up as Mr Ordway 🙂

The Mr Ordway piece was even more clever because he is Dean of Discipline as well as Science teacher so he is the one reviewing the security cameras but will only see himself running thru the school posting things! 😉

The crew

I loved this prank because it was personal in the history of it…it included all of their classmates in the photos…it was well meaning with no destruction of property or negativity to it…and it was full of school spirit. The response from the faculty and students was enthusiastic and they are keeping the front signs up through graduation.

Remember ’18 project…

Saturday was Steve’s birthday…and true to being a parent…it was not about him. Brendan had a rugby practice several hours away (thankfully got a ride from another parent), Casey stayed home to work on finals (ha – not sure how much ‘work’ was happening!), and Steve Seamus and I went to an ‘All Academies Picnic’. This was for all of the students entering services academies this summer – several alumni were there and some of our local representatives. It was a nice chance for the kids to be together and for us to build some local support.

Mr Witte (local mentor for USNA plebes to be), Conners, Jake and Seamus

We were sitting at a table when an old friend from college came up to us…she graduated from LeMoyne with Steve and we have not seen her since then – 27 years!!! Her daughter is going to West Point – her husband is a graduate and her son is also there now. It was great to catch up and to have some Army/Navy busting going on!

DiNallos and Tombs

We were all beat by the time we got home (picked Brendan up on way back from picnic, errands and such)…had low key throw together dinner and reheated some Noonmark blackberry crumb pie for pop 🙂

Sunday Smitty came back up to help finish painting – THANK YOU AGAIN!!! We had a birthday celebration after they worked and Pete came over again – without Ellen as she was with family in Boston.