<p>momofboston-are you annoyed or something? ;)</p>
<p>Prom was survived intact but many promas-10 more days to graduation! :)</p>
<p>All done. At some point I am going to need a good cry. A long good cry. I have so enjoyed the ride with my '11.</p>
<p>^I’ll be crying right there with you, missypie. I’m sure there will be lots of us with tissues galore, bawling our eyes out.</p>
<p>D’s last day of school was yesterday. Graduation in one week. College in 2 months + 20 days (but who’s counting?). Pass the tissues, please!</p>
<p>Can I win a prize or something? 5 elderly/disabled guests = 2 wheelchairs, 2 walkers, AND 3 canes! </p>
<p>Seriously, it was a nice day seeing everyone, AND as I predicted they’d all be tired and back at the hotel before 8:30.</p>
<p>Looking forward to tomorrow. I think D realizes it’s a pretty cool thing. She got seriously “grandparented” tonight - lots of oohs and aahs over awards, pictures, the school newspaper article, even the acceptance letters from college. She’s not a super-achiever, doesn’t even think of herself as the achiever she actually is, and it was nice to see her feeling special.</p>
<p>So many interesting kids on this page! snoozn - I would love to have been at your ceremony. kinderny - I love your D’s quotes. I hope somehow the graduation can have its place for her. It sounds pretty iffy, and I hope she doesn’t feel regrets whatever happens. I wish her all the best.</p>
<p>My mother visited in October and was able to tell Japanese D how amazingly she has improved her English and her confidence. My favorite thing she said today? “The SAT essay was really fun!” She said the test was awful and hard, but she enjoyed writing about her pride in mastering English on her year abroad. I’m curious how they will score it; her writing is weak compared to American kids, but maybe they’ll cut her a little slack. And when she came she literally couldn’t write a sentence without help, so she does have a lot to be proud of. It also was sweet seeing her basking a little in all of her “grandparents” - she’s met most of them several times now and loves having this American family, at least for a little while longer.</p>
<p>missypie: It can be a group cry. I made it through all the graduation festivities two weeks ago with no tears. I think I was just so proud and he had such a great time at his party and his friends’ parties that I didn’t cry because we were all so happy.</p>
<p>Then today, we attended a memorial service for the benefactor of the private (Lutheran) K-8 school that our sons attended. I have never met the deceased, only heard about his generosity to the school. He lived in another state but left a $2 million endowment. The school graduated its first 8th grade class of 1 student in 2002. Our sons were in classes #3 (five students) and #6 (seven students). The school now average 15 students per class.</p>
<p>The benefactor was sick for a long time and planned out his own funeral. The school principal and board president were pall bearers. He wanted the students and alumni from the school to sing at his funeral–including “Jesus Loves Me.” So, here was this mix of current preschoolers, K-8 students, a college graduate, three college students and four recent high school graduates, about 40 kids in all, singing in his honor and to his memory. I cried like a baby.</p>
<p>My goodness, D1 doesn’t graduate til Friday night but reading in here is makin me want to grab the Kleenex box already 
Congrats to all the latest grads and their families!</p>
<p>She’s at prom tonight, I am really hoping to hear good things about it later tonight…or tomorrow morn if I doze off. Was rather a hectic day for her…I had to work but what I heard is she had a hair appt in the morning then she went to work for as long as possible then zipped home, quick change and prom prep, I showed up in time to snap a couple pics and off she went! I’m going to beg for group photos from the parents who did those before the kids all went out to dinner.</p>
<p>kinderny - Great quote – It’s amazing how much one little punctuation mark (with optional evil laugh) can change the meaning entirely! Perhaps it’s for the best my daughter is not going to Hampshire – not sure the school would survive if our 2 d’s got together!</p>
<p>EmmyBet – yes, you do win a prize! We just had one parent with a walker and that alone was a bit of a challenge.</p>
<p>We went to daughter’s modern dance performance tonight and even my husband enjoyed it. He used to hate having to sit through recitals when she was younger, so this was a great experience. And just when it seems like time to relax, she has college orientation in about a week! :O</p>
<p>Hope everyone’s proms and promas and brownies turn out well. (I’m laying my bets on brownies as “most likely to achieve a happy ending.”)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess I could start another countdown! :eek: :D</p>
<p>Based on this group it is a very busy weekend around the country with many more graduations and other celebrations. Yesterday we had a great time at older S and DIL’s house for grandson’s 2nd birthday. Today we switch modes as S’s graduation is this afternoon. As usual, he finished fine tuning his commencement speech last night around 12:30 
Then he made a comment to me that he wasn’t looking forward to graduating as it means being an adult and being responsible! Welcome to the real world S. You knew this day was coming. </p>
<p>DW has a box of tissues on the table with the camera, tickets and other necessities for the ceremony. She and D are going early to reserve seats and I get to bring the inlaws later. The ceremony is in the un-air conditioned gym but it is only supposed to get to 78 today (93 yesterday!) Then we are having a big family dinner tonight at one of S’s favorite steakhouses to wrap up the day.</p>
<p>Best wishes to all of tody’s graduates and may the weather gods smile on everyone with any type of outside activities.</p>
<p>
Happy birthday to your grandson and a big congratulations to your son!!! Can’t wait to hear about his speech. hope the day stays nice and cool.</p>
<p>Congrats on successful proms and graduations. Yesterday was gorgeous here, so I hoped it was elsewhere for graduations.</p>
<p>Snoozn- I can’t imagine at Hampshire that our D’s would even come out in the top 10% for the most outrageous students, although they might have come up with some great ideas together.</p>
<p>Wow Emmybet, you DO win a prize. That was amazing. Glad your D’s (JD and your graduate) both felt special from the attention to their hard work and accomplishments. Actually elederly transport is one of the issues for my D’s graduation. H is disabled and my Mom has mobility issues. We were all going up to the ceremony together, but now the school wants grads at the location 3 hours before the ceremony. They are going to practice for an hour or so, but then grads, parents and guests are invited to bring their own brown bag lunch and sit around and wait for an hour until the venue is opened for seaating and then another hour for the ceremony to start. :eek:<br>
The venue is 45 minutes away so don’t think multiple trips up and back are in the cards. This does not bode well.</p>
<p>kinderny, do they WANT people to come to this graduation? Good grief, they are making it hard on everyone! I guess that’s the downside of being in their first group - lots of bugs in the system. Is there somewhere nearby you can go to relax during the break?</p>
<p>I can’t keep up with all the successes on this thread, lol… :eek:</p>
<p>arisamp ~ Congrats to D for scholar athlete of the year award! Don’t you love it when the audience gasp, lol?
blueiguana ~ Happy 18th birthday to Bluejr!
snoozn ~ Did I really read that your D did a belly dance? Wow!
AvonHSDad ~ Happy birthday to your GS and congrats on your S’s graduation!</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS to all the new graduates, all the new awards winners, all the Prom participants!</p>
<p>Kinderny, all that down-time, including the brown-bag lunch does NOT sound very fun or manageable…for you or anyone else with grandparents or family with special needs. I hope it works out ok for everybody. Gotta wonder what the school is thinking…is this really the only way it could have worked? Wishing you smooth sailing today, and congrats!</p>
<p>My theory is the school is sweating that the students arrive on time and in possession of all their faculties so to speak ( 
). They know that this is high profile with much media, politicians, and educational bigwigs in attendance and they want to make sure it is as controlled as possible. The night before is an event just for students and teachers/staff because the graduates objected to the media event the school was creating. D is not going to that as they want to get “all touchie feelie” according to her.</p>
<p>Thanks for the sympathy. I appreciate the “sanity check” as I shake my head at the decisions being made.</p>
<p>Kinderly - my parents had to miss our son’s graduation for the same reason. We had to be at the venue at 6:30AM. DS went in different entrance from family/guests. DH would have had to push three wheelchairs if we could have gotten my parents up and out of the house at 6AM. Reluctantly my parents did not attend.</p>
<p>Kinder: That school really does seem to like to complicate things. It seems unreasonable to expects the families to wait around for hours before the ceremony. We had to drop my D off 45 minutes ahead, and all the parents just entered and got seats.</p>
<p>Snoozn: Your daughter’s graduation sounds wonderful. I would have loved to see her belly dance. </p>
<p>Kath, Collegemaw and Pepper: I hope your kids had fun at their proms.</p>
<p>Emmybet: You deserve an award for dealing with 5 elderly grandparents at graduation. I admit that I was relieved that our elderly parents did not attend. The outdoor venue in 95 degree hear would have been too much for them.</p>
<p>Avon: I hope that your son has a wonderful graduation today. I thought of him last night when I was in Georgetown for an event. What a fun area for a college student.</p>
<p>I hope that all the other graduations go well this weekend.</p>
<p>I got an interesting call from my daugher the first night of beach week. I knew that it couldn’t be good news when the phone rang at 10 pm and she said “Mom, I did something stupid.” As visions of hospitals and police stations flashed before my eyes, she told me that she had locked her keys in the car. She had already arranged for a friend to pick up the spare at our house and bring it to her the next day. I started breathing again and figured that if this is the worst thing that happens, it will be a good week.</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone on another great graduation weekend!</p>
<p>We had 95 degree heat - fully 50 degrees higher than D1’s college graduation 2 weeks ago - but with a nice enough breeze, and a good supply of bottled water, we managed OK. A really nice ceremony. At the end they all lined up around the football field and then ran simultaneously to the center while tossing their hats in the air. I think H got some shots of that.</p>
<p>Four of us (me, H, D1 and her BF) did the wheeling and dealing: of the 5 guests we had 2 in wheelchairs, 1 with a cane, H’s disabled sister and one able-bodied step-grandmom who deserved not to work herself to death on our account. Except for a little sunburn everyone is just fine. We just finished a fun Hibachi dinner and dropped the older folks at the hotel for an early night.</p>
<p>One thing I haven’t mentioned is that I was elected to the School Board here in April, which meant I got to give my D her diploma (and Japanese D, too). D hugged me really hard! That was a lovely experience for both of us, saying I love you at that special moment. We both got bit teary, I’ll admit.</p>
<p>Everything has worked out so well so far - tomorrow I make a couple of airport runs, and we’re done. D is marveling at not having to get up for school in the morning! But even tonight she was telling me about things she’s excited about for college.</p>
<p>Yay EB!!! As you know I am also on the school board and can’t wait to give D and her friends their diplomas!!! About the only perk for all the hard work of being a board member ha ha!!
Glad everything went well!</p>
<p>First of all, I must say THANK YOU to those of you who spoke with the weather gods… DDs grad party was today and it was a beautiful day! The party was wonderful - we had it with one of DD’s closest friends and there was just a steady stream of friends & family coming in all afternoon & evening, making much of the girls and their accomplishments. </p>
<p>I’m sorry for those of you who have scheduling and/or access problems at your graduation ceremonies. It just plain stinks for grandparents or other relatives to have to miss such an important event. I sometimes wonder what the school administrators are thinking…</p>
<p>So exciting to read about the graduations and parties!</p>
<p>momjr–your D sounds like she handled the “no keys” calmly and efficiently, good for her (and good for your breathing!)</p>
<p>proudmom–yay for the good weather for the great party</p>
<p>Emmy–so impressed with how you handled everything, and in that heat–congrats! and so sweet you were the one to hand her the diploma</p>
<p>Can’t wait to hear about AvonHS’s S graduation…</p>
<p>kinderny–that is ridiculous how the school planned (or NOT planned) things out~!</p>
<p>D1 did not elaborate with any exciting details but said she had a super time last night with her group at the restaurant and at prom. She was surprised at the compliments on her dress, we loved it but she wasn’t quite as thrilled with it after the alterations were done so it was nice for her to hear that others thought it was lovely on her also :)</p>