Graduation announcement…

May 23, 2024

Tomorrow is the big day. She’s turned in her last assignment and taken her last test. It’s been a week long party and tomorrow she tosses her cap up in the air and bids farewell to a high school that has been so good to her.

Its been an emotional week all around – on her part and ours. There’s so much excitement and anticipation and with that comes the sadness of a beautiful book coming to an end. I can’t even begin to describe the roller coaster of emotions. I saw a meme, “Check on your friends with seniors, they are not okay.” Agreed. They are struggling.

Just the other day someone asked how we were hanging in there with our oldest graduating. Just earlier that same day Steve had walked in my office and said, “I feel like we’re just going through the motions, are we really taking this all in?”

The best way I could describe it was, “We are having a Father-of-the-Bride moment.” In the movie “Father-of-the-Bride” a father is helping his daughter pull off a beautiful wedding – and he spares no expense both time and money. The wedding arrives and it turns out just as beautiful as they had hoped despite some inevitable hiccups. But through the wedding, dinner and reception, the dad was so busy trying to make sure every thing was perfect and fixing problems, he wasn’t really present. And as the daughter is preparing to drive away with her new husband she was looking for her dad to say goodbye but she couldn’t find him – he missed the moment. He was too late to say goodbye.

I have thought about this so many times. We’re doing all the things – celebrating her in all the ways, but there’s a part of me wondering if we’re missing the moment. There’s just so much going on. The end of school is crazy even without a graduation. Throw a graduation in the mix and it’s a lot to take in. But this is such a special time. This is her moment.

I want to remember how this feels – the good and the bad.

For 18 years we’ve carefully and deliberately raised a family under one roof. And we’re moving to a stage of life where we’ll be raising kids under multiple roofs and that hurts my heart to think about. When I say we’re experiencing all the emotions…I mean ALL the emotions.

But tomorrow we are in celebration mode – happy day!

Baptism invites…

Apr 17, 2024

Briggs put on a suit and went from little kid to grown man.

I almost didn’t send out invites to Briggs’ baptism – crazy, I know! We were waiting to have his time confirmed and it came later than we expected. I had an announcement designed and ready to go but with just over a week before his baptism, I figured I may as well just send out a text instead. But the “tradition” in me couldn’t have our youngest be the only child we didn’t send baptism invites for, so we printed them. I’m sure some of our family members who don’t live close probably received the invite the same day as his big day. But at least his handsome face can grace their refrigerator for a while.