My First Award

My first award was a little trophy I earned in kindergarten, known as the "Christian Character" award. My mother said I only got it because I was "teacher's pet". But hey, I was teacher's pet for a reason, don't you think? :)

My second award -- I think -- was a traumatic experience. We started the AWANA program at my church in my second grade year. The Sparks class was for grades K-2, and there were three handbooks, intended to be one per grade level. The Sparky Award was presented to children who completed all three handbooks.

Technically, the Sparky Award shouldn't have been given out in our church until the third year of its AWANA program when the kindergarteners starting out that first year completed the second grade. But I was an overachiever, to begin with, and I had a competitive father pushing me along, to boot. Not only did I complete all three handbooks that year, but I completed them twice.

Awards Day finally arrived. I was so excited to finally receive my Sparky Award. My pastor stood in front of the church and handed out all the awards earned that year, and then it came time to announce mine.

I will never know nor begin to understand who did this or why, but he announced that my award had been stolen. The awards had all safely arrived and were in a box waiting for Awards Day. My Sparky Award was indeed present and accounted for. And then when they went to get the awards to hand out to us, it was gone. Nothing else in the box was missing -- only my Sparky Award. They ordered me another one, but they didn't have one to give me at the ceremony.

Now the fact that I had to wait to get the award wasn't what bothered me. If it had been a simple, "it didn't arrive yet", or even "we forgot to order it", I'd not have thought a thing about it. But stolen! That my award had been stolen was a traumatizing thought to me. I felt violated! I still cannot imagine why anyone would do such a thing to a little girl. Perhaps it was a teenage prank. I have no idea. But let me encourage you to never steal anything from a child. Never steal at all, of course, but especially not from a child.

Anyhow. The purpose of this post's title was not really to discuss either my Christian Character award or my Sparky Award. No, I have just been nominated by Carolyn for my first blog award. Thanks, Carolyn! :)

The Rules:
1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link to the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you have nominated.

I nominate:

1. Maria
2. Ora Lea
3. Lizzie
4. Kitty
5. Amanda
6. Melanie
7. Sophie