Graduation Parties

Only Ryan's hair seemed worse-for-wear after a long weekend of high school graduation parties. He did surprisingly well considering all of the in-and-out of the carseat and lots of people expecting a smile out of him (which he obliged, most of the time).  We had several Open Houses to attend on Saturday on Sunday and sure got our fill of punch, sandwiches, mints, and cake. I had punch at almost every one and give the punch award to Tessa's slushy orange punch. I honestly only ate cake at one and had one cream cheese mint, but loved the bright and colorful colors many of the girls used for their mints! My favorite treats were peanut butter M&M's, puppy chow, and EIFFEL bonbons that were prominently featured at two parties! Adam's favorite foods were of course Heath's famous pork loin sandwiches, frozen fruit cups, and root beer floats.  You may notice that one of us had "meals" in mind while the other of us views graduation parties as an excuse to eat junk food as meals for 2 days. I did have some awesome real food as well, but priorities are priorities and mine usually involve candy.

One thing we noticed about S-O graduations is that everyone holds them in their garage/tents on the driveway, or some use facilities like churches or the fairgrounds instead of in their houses. They also split up the parties pretty evenly between Saturday and Sunday and have LOTS of food.  One we went to had 3 sandwich options, chips, salads, fruit kabobs, frozen fruit cups, 3 kinds of cake, mints, candy, popcorn, nuts, punch and several other things to drink. Others had full taco bars, premium coffees, and enough candy to make a first grade teacher swoon thank her lucky stars that the kids will be crashing by Monday.  I feel almost guilty that all I offered at my high school graduation was soft-serve ice cream sundaes and cake. Oh well, when about 40 people had their parties on the same day, we viewed it more as a progressive meal that lasted all day/night instead of sitting down and having a whole meal at one Open House. The bummer about having parties outdoors is the weather factor, but at least the moms here don't feel the pressure to remodel/repaint their entire house "for graduation". I also like that many of the students displayed not only the customary photos and certificates, but also their art projects from school which were pretty impressive.

Our church does a special presentation to the seniors at the morning services and it was nice to see all 12 of them from our church talk about where they are going to college (all 12 of them!) and how they grew spiritually in their high school years. This group is special since they were the first class Adam taught in school and I also had them in Sunday School for a year. These kids were great at sharing their talents with the church and community:  we are proud of all the graduates and wish them the best in the future!