May 20, 2016 was Austin's preschool graduation. I was both really looking forward to and really dreading the ceremony. I had been seeing friends' kids ceremony all week long and knew that I would be emotional. But I'd also been looking forward to this day for a really long time. It means he's growing up. It means he'll be in full time school next year. I used to long for him to just get to kindergarten, but now that it's upon us, I want to freeze time so we don't have to go there yet. I know that I can't have it both ways, but it's a reminder that "these are the days."
We've been coming to this school for years and soon he'll come no longer.
The ceremony was in the sanctuary. I just expected it to be in the gym because that's where things always are. We'd never been in there before, it's very pretty!
After we dropped Austin off at his class, we went and waited for the program to start. Carson was super restless and Graham was being a pill. I didn't pay much attention during the actual ceremony to how they did because I was so busy trying to get video and pictures (which was super hard to do given that some aides sat in the front pew, right in front of some parents).
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| Typical Graham. |
They got into place, waved at the parents and then began singing three songs.
Song One.
Song Two.
Song Three.
Here's Austin walking to get his certificate. (I missed his name being called.)
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| Austin's pre-k class |
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| best buddies |
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| Mrs. Self and Austin |
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| Ms. Sherry, the director, and Austin |
I had told Austin that he could pick the lunch place after graduation, fully expecting him to pick McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, or Mellow Mushroom. He chose Chuck E. Cheese's! Seth and I exchanged this glance of "oh no, we've been played." We went home to change first which was really good idea because ended up making a whole afternoon of it. We had originally planned to go to the Galaxy Drive-in that night as part of the celebration, but "lunch at Chuck E. Cheese's" lasts for three hours and people were tired and cranky, so we drove in the car for a bit, wanting to get them to rest and head to IKEA to look at the cupboard I want for the laundry room. (We had thought we'd do lunch, naps, dinner and then Galaxy, but we ended up being out all day long! It would be nice to do the Drive-in on a day Seth has off because heading down there will be hard with traffic and such on an evening he gets home at 6pm.)
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| Some cakeballs by Diana that'd I'd bought as celebration. |
Here's a video of Carson and Graham riding the tea cup of hot chocolate.
After Chuck E. Cheese's we went to Nebraska Furniture Mart and then IKEA. The bigs got to play in the play place at IKEA for their first time and Carson walked around with Seth and I. He loved pushing the cart. At one point, we were walking along and I realized he was no long between us pushing the cart! He was only 10 feet back or so, but it was both scary and hilarious. Now if I can just get myself to pull the trigger and get my cupboard!
