sawyer's character!

sawyer came out of school BEAMING one day after school. and his siblings that go to the elementary school were also beaming. why?? because it was just announced in the afternoon announcements that he won the "character recognition award" for that month!!

we want our kids to work hard and get good grades, but getting recognized for good CHARACTER is HUGE for us. pat and I took him to get ice cream together that night (just the 3 of us.) and we just enjoyed making a HUGE deal of how proud we were of him.

the next morning he received his award at school...

(and, as is typical for our life, as the kids were coming out of the school that afternoon to congratulate sawyer, and as sawyer was BEAMING and BURSTING to tell me that him getting the award was announced, I was standing there with Lincoln's teacher who had come out of the school to tell me about a stealing incident with him that day. so I wasn't able to really HEAR and respond to sawyer in the moment because I was still in a pretty intense conversation with Lincoln's teacher. it made me pretty angry and sad later. and we tried to make sawyer know how proud we were of him, but I HATE that I missed THAT moment...ugh...)