"Your greatest contribution to the Kingdom of God may not be something you do, but someone you raise." ~Andy Stanley

June 2, 2011

The state wide home schoolers graduation ceremony

It was everything I could've hoped for in a graduation!

It was sentimental:


Hand written thank you notes to moms were posted on the screens from each student before it started


It was formal:

The ballroom was gorgeous!


It was inspiring:


This is Rick Scott, the governor of Florida! He spoke and handed the graduates their diplomas and had a photo taken with each one! (which I ended up purchasing for a gazillion dollars, because that is pretty awesome!)

It was fun:

Graduates could wear any color cap and gown they chose, which made the throwing of the caps really a fun, multicolored sight to see. They had every color in the rainbow!
It awesome:

My favorite part was that they announced the achievements and future aspirations of each graduate. They gave you a wonderful picture of the uniqueness of a roomful of home educated students and made you quite proud to be apart of that community.
Lots of kids were headed to universities. Some to community colleges. Some were headed to Christian colleges (not as many as I expected) Some had an unbelievable amount of community service hours. (1000!) One guy was going to go rock climbing in Greece. Another was going to be a singer and hoped "it would prove to be lucrative" which made Nathan and I laugh. And I got a big kick out of this one:
"_______(her name) aspires to fall helplessly and madly in love." LOL!

It was announced how long each one had been home schooled. Twelve years was the average and the shortest was 4 months! My favorite was "since birth." lol! -There is the true spirit of homeschooling for ya! ; )

We are blessed with some SWEET friends who made the trek all the way to Orlando and missed our morning worship service to show their love and support for the 3 kids from our church. They watched all the A's, B's and C's and then they had until "U." I heard later that if you watched Zac get his diploma, (our last name begins with a "C") you could go and get coffee, walk around the massive hotel and come back and unfortunately find out that we were still only on the "M's." LOL!

At one point as we were all politely clapping for someone who's name started with a "Z", the graduates went crazy and the applause went wild and then more excited applause spread throughout the entire ballroom. This girl happened to be the very LAST graduate!!! It was pretty cute and she got just as big a kick out of the extreme enthusiasm as everyone else did showing it. There were 269 graduates so the ceremony a lot of things, BUT it wasn't quick! ; )
And I'm glad! We worked a long time to get to that moment!

The day was absolutely perfect and I know that for sure, because the graduated thanked us and told me so several times! Thank the Lord! Love you, Zac!

~Becky

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