Rachel's freshman year - Hooray!

Before I begin my week long (yes, 5 whole days) of my Hooray for High School ordeal I just have a few disclaimers. First one is that I don't have a scanner, so all of these pictures are just pictures taken with my digital camera of real pictures or yearbook pages. Second disclaimer is that I have NEVER EVER gotten along with my hair. Just remember that.

This is a picture of all the 5th graders in the county. Just kidding, there were 3 fifth graders from Hanksville that are not included here. I counted the faces, and of these 35 fifth graders, I went to high school with all but 9 of them. Those 9 moved away.
This is not while I was in high school, I think I was in 7th grade, but I had to show you all the mullet style hair do I had. I am the one in the middle. I took clogging for 4 years until I got into high school and then ball practice got in the way of clogging class. I loved it.

This is 8th grade, not high school, but once again, I looked nice in a leotard for once so I had to include it. This is from gymnastics. My mom and a few other girls' moms drove us to gymnastics once a week in Salina, an hour away. If Matt only knew that is lover-to-be was in town and wearing a bodysuit!

This is 9th grade. All I wanted for my birthday that year was to go get pictures taken of me and my friends. So that is what my mom did. She took us all to Richfield for pictures. All but one of us lived in Lyman so these were the girls I went to church will for so many years.

This one was at the same time, but this is me and my cousin Amber. The umbrella says Vaurnet, did anyone else go through the VERY hip Vaurnet France epidemic?

Yearbook photo, this is the Halloween Carnival my freshman year. I dressed up like a Ute Fan. I am not too sure what the dead deer is doing, hey, it's Wayne County. Okay, it took me a few hours but I remember. The deer mount was at one of the Freshman Class booths. We did a ring toss. We had canning jar rings and you had to see how many you could get around this bucks' antlers. Dang, that is so funny and so redneckish!

This is the freshmen Volleyball squad. Yes, I am wearing a banana clip. I LOVED banana clips. I LOVED volleyball too.

My girlfriends again. For some strange reason, we all must have gone to some casual dance all wearing sweatshirts so we could get our pictures taken at the dance. We couldn't technically date, so why not be dorks while we were at it?

This is our response to "Yell it Freshmen Yell your cry!" With my mouth wide open, "V-I-C-T-O-R-Y." Check out the braces.

Freshmen Basketball Team. The Freshman practiced every morning BEFORE school at the middle school gym. We had a really good time. Silly, but good times. I don't think I ever ran so many ladders in my life.

Okay, my first ever date. I was 14!! What were my parents thinking? This cool, big Junior boy asked me to the Senior Ball and I begged and begged my parents to let me go. I had a lot of good reasons for them too. The best one being "But it is my only brother's Senior Ball." I can't believe they relented. It was a tad bit scary for me, but it went okay. I had just gotten my braces off just a few days before the dance. That was such a big deal to me.

Yes, now the Junior Prom. A few months later, the same cool (I really did think he was, but alas, I was mistaken.) Junior asked me to the Prom. It didn't matter that we had not talked 3 whole sentences in the past 4 months since the Senior Ball. I still gladly went. I got my first real kiss and was thoroughly disgusted. Hey, I was 15 this time around! Does that make it any better? No. Look at those earrings! They look like 1986 instead of 1990! Oh yeah, just a side note: The bow in my hair, well, it is the beginning of a very long relationship with HUGE bows! You will see what I mean tomorrow and the next day, oh yeah, and the next day.

I found this picture in my Freshman yearbook and I had to include it. This is Patrick Pentico and his then girlfriend Kathryn Ekker. I had a small crush on Patrick. He was killed in Afghanistan 2 1/2 years ago during some crazy helicopter or airplane crash. He loved the Armed Forces and found his wife in the military. His parents still live down home. We should all be thankful for the sacrifice our servicemen and women give.