Graduation...the recap

What a fabulous day. Everything turned out perfect.

I feel like Henry and I are so fortunate to have such a wonderful group of friends and family. Let me start by saying that EVERYONE I invited to the graduation and after party came. And everyone was so generous with their love and kindness towards to my son. I'm overwhelmed!

The program was wonderful. Henry's class sang "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" and "YMCA". Henry had been practicing his songs for weeks, complete with hand motions. I have tons of pictures, but feel uncomfortable posting when there are other children. So I've cropped some down to exclude the faces of other children. But you can see that he was really into it.

After all of the classes performed, then the graduation ceremony commenced. There were a total of 14 from the school that graduated. Again, I'm going to crop to only show Henry out of consideration to the rest of the kids. The group also sang another song after the graduation.

As he waits in line for his turn (conveniently standing right next to my seat):

As he receives his diploma (that's his teacher off to the right):

Humming during the special graduation song:

And a few shots after the ceremony:

After it was over, we booked it home for the after party. All three of Henry's teachers stopped by for a few minutes. We felt very honored that they could join our little celebration.

Since it was late evening by the time we got started, I kept the foodstuffs pretty simple. We had cake, of course. And I also served queso and a yummy artichoke cheese dip. I also put out both fruit and vegetable trays. Below are some pictures of the food setup (although missing most of the food) and the decorations, including the cake and another small surprise.

The balloons, a part of any celebration:

The place where the food was ultimately laid out and devoured from:

The cake with the little graduate on it:

And a surprise gift we had for all of our guests...yes they are real and you can eat them:

Everyone seemed to have a great time and the only thing that was missing was our loved ones who don't live local enough to have participated.

Thanks to everyone who did come and for the exceptional generosity of each and every one of you.

And for all of those who worried about me, I made it through okay. I did shed a few tears, but more so, enjoyed the evening and the company of my dear friends.

Kindergarten Graduation...prelude to the day

To quote from a dear friend of mine:

We don't celebrate birthdays ... or any other holidays for that matter. And we don't miss it. But we do tend to make "celebrations" out of what some may consider more mundane things.

Okay, not that graduating kindergarten is a mundane thing, but we do tend to make every little event as special as it possibly can be...first day of school, last day of school, a month of good behavior at school, etc., etc.

Tonight will be no exception. I cannot believe that my little baby will be graduating from kindergarten tonight. I remember when I dropped him off for his first day at this school. It seems like it was last week, or at the most, last month. Not over 4 years ago.

He started in the toddler room, a few days shy of turning 18 months old. He had a huge scrape on his nose from a face plant that happened after going down the slide on the swing set that Papa and Granddaddy had built for him.

As I dropped him off today, I distributed little goody bags that we had made for the rest of the graduates. They all seemed excited to be getting goody bags, and I did feel a bit guilty about having nothing for the rest of the kids. Oh well, what can I do?

Both his teachers and the school "principal" commented on how emotional tonight was going to be. Oh, they were talking about themselves. They have no idea the river of tears I think will be pouring out of me. I hope they have plenty of tissue boxes on hand.

I took the day off work to prepare the house for the small gathering of those near and dear to us. I am glad for the distraction of taking care of the small task of preparing the house and food for tonight...otherwise, the river might start running now.

Henry awoke this morning and climbed into bed with me. He had a huge grin on his face and announced: "I'm going to get presents today!" Yep, he sure is. We've gone over all of the gift opening etiquette I can think of, so it will be interesting to see how he does.

Well, that's all I can think to ramble on and on about on this momentous day. More to follow in the coming days with the wrap up of the day.

In closing, I'll leave you with the staged graduation photo that will grace his cake tonight: