Miss Lily goes to High School

As Lily gets ready to start High School and explore options for her future, we are so impressed and proud of this young lady who has exceeded our expectations.  Not to say there haven't been struggles but then what fun would parenting be without a few speed bumps.
Lil had a rough start academically given her parents zeal for a french immersion education before she had a decent grasp of English or Mandarin!  However, once at Dr. David Suzuki school she flourished, especially in athletics.
At her first track and field day she explained to her Dad that they ran races at school and she showed him her hand full of first place ribbons. " That's great kiddo but lets get back to your math homework
so we can make swim practice tonight" was the response she got until grade 6. Given how well she was doing with swimming, and what a struggle she had with academics, we weren't easily distracted but a few track and field ribbons.
We joke that Lily and Mom graduated from grade 8 this year, because I had the privilege of learning every grade school subject over again so I could help her with her learning (and I didn't like grade school that much the first time around).
One day there was a message from Lily's school running coach...that it would be nice if her parents came to one of her track meets.  Feeling guilty, we shifted clinics around and managed to get to most of her competitions after that...and discovered that this kid runs crazy fast!
Given that I'm already living life in the mom van driving to swim and dive practices, adding 2 running club practices each week made my head spin.  But we allowed her to join the Legion Track club and this year she took a number of first places, a gold medal and broke 2 city records.
At the end of her school year she had a tough decision to make.  Either go on her grad trip to Niagara Falls with her classmates or run in the final district track meet.  She had a lot of pressure to go on the trip but she stayed home to run and won the gold medal.  And at her grad, in addition to an athletic award, she took the French award and was on the Honour Roll!
While she was a little sad to say farewell to her beloved elementary school, she is totally pumped to start High School...because there is a brand new track at our neighbourhood High School and she cannot wait to burn it up!