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Graduation

It's done.  Emily is officially a high school graduate!

 The ceremony was nice.  Because all the students are homeschoolers, the diplomas were presented by the parents.  Each set of parents had to walk up on stage, give a two minute speech, and confer the diploma.

It was really sweet watching the dads choke up as they tried to talk to their kids.  Kerry made it through his speech with no problem!

Before the ceremony, Emily strapped her phone to her arm with a rubber band as she didn't have pockets on her dress, and trying to get to it through the robe would have been difficult.

 When we walked on to the stage to present her diploma, she said, "Hold on a second!"  Then she whipped out her camera and took a selfie of us on the stage.

That got a good laugh from the audience.  We always go for the laugh.  We don't usually like things to be too serious!  

There was a reception afterwards in the gym.  Each graduate had a table where they would put pictures of themselves and items that were special to them in some way.

We surprised Emily with a life-sized cutout of Jared Padalecki.  He was quite a hit with the ladies!

I was on the decorating committee.  We had spent a large portion of time earlier in the day hanging up all those decorations on the walls, setting up tables and chairs, making a photo booth, and just generally trying to make a gym not look like a gym.

After the reception we had to take everything down again!


 It was a long day, but well worth it to mark the graduation of one super smart lady!

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