Grad weekend

The big day came and went and here are the details:
We stayed at the overflow hotel for our state's home school convention/graduation ceremony and it was a very good choice. Not crazy-crowded like the other one.
We went to downtown Disney and saw this

while Nate attended the mandatory 5 hour graduation practice. (pretty sure we had more fun) ; )
Then these two headed to the dinner and the dance

while we swam at the hotel and ate Captain Crunch for dessert.

In the morning, we got up and headed to the complimentary breakfast and then things started to unravel...
Suddenly, the grad only had a blue sock and a brown sock (no matches), a belt was missing for the guy who really has to have one, one of us thought they'd left their phone behind in the hotel and there was a little detail about all the parents of grads having an official wristband...that we knew nothing about. -I'm pretty sure that when the man guarding the parents section, looked into my stressed face, he concluded that I REALLY was the mother of a graduate and not just someone posing as one to get a good seat. Bahaha! For good measure, he  threatened to take our seats if they ran out of room. Although, I'm not sure how he planned to find us in the crowd of parents for 270 grads...

The ceremony was absolutely beautiful and so moving.
I loved the baby photos and the handwritten 'thank you' letters to parents from the grads they show before it starts. I loved the address which doubled as a Sunday morning sermon. One of my favorite things is that we get to hear about the accomplishments of each student and what they plan to do after graduation. Many students were graduating with their AA degrees already. A few were going into the Marines and the Air Force. Almost all of them were heading off to college somewhere. Then there were a few, whose plans included, 'Just going to trust Jesus for my future." Amen to that too!
One girl is studying to be a mortician, which took the crowd by surprise and many people (I'm sure by accident) said 'Ewww!!!!' while clapping.
It is a LONG ceremony, and we were so surprised that our youth pastor drove all that way, stayed for the whole thing even though it was on a Sunday morning! He's a sweetheart.

I'm rather partial to this picture!

And this one!

Two down and two to go!

 I got a big kick out of what Turner's parents wrote on their car:

 "The tassel was worth the hassle." LOL -Agreed!

We drove back to our city for a sit-down Chinese dinner, I mean lunch. And after driving for over an hour and half, we arrived and found a hand written sign on the door saying they were closed for the holiday weekend. Ugh! So it was off to the nearest Chili's instead with our friends, which did turn out to be dinner by that time.

We had a great time and we're so proud of our graduate!
This weekend we have two more graduations to attend for friends and a party to help throw.
Monday, our support group has their annual Achievement Night for all the grades and then we'll be done. Whew!
Hello summer vacation!!!!

~Becky