Graduation!!.........

We were able to celebrate Tyler's graduation this past weekend. It has been a long and ardous journey - not necessarily for Tyler, but for Monique and I. Some memories (nightmares perhaps?) of Tyler's school years: 8th grade - while feeding the missionaries one evening, Tyler asks Monique if she knows of a book with at least 400 pages that he can do a book report on. After a few questions back and forth it is revealed that the book report is due the next day. At hearing this, or seeing the smoke come out of Monique's ears, the missionaries took their cue and took their leave for the evening! Thank goodness for books on tape! High school - the school district has a system where they call every evening (promptly at 6:00 PM) to inform parents if a child has been marked absent/tardy in class. With Tyler, this was nearly a daily occurence. His solution was to give the school his cell phone number. That way, we wouldn't be bothered with the phone calls! We received a progress report just a few weeks before the school year was ending. The progress report was for two classes - welding and drama. The grades in the two classes were 'F' & 'F'. As both of these classes are electives and classes that Tyler wanted to take, I informed Monique that there must be a new grading process and the F's stood for Freaking Fantastic!

We never knew from one day to the next what we were in store for with Tyler and school. But then again, neither did he! We are very proud that he was able to fulfill the necessary requirements and graduate! It was a happy day seeing him walk and receive his diploma!

Congratulations Tyler!

Happy 19th Birthday Tyler............

As you well know, to celebrate birthdays we are usually up extremely early - too early! Unless it falls on the weekend. Such was the case with Tyler's birthday this year. The family choir actually didn't even perform this time. Tommy was at a friend's house, and Wendy was off to work (nice turn of events when the child is off early to go to work and the parents get to relax and take it easy)! All in all, I do believe that Tyler enjoyed his day. We took him out to dinner and then he was off to Seattle for the evening!

And, of course, a birthday is not complete without a cake. Unfortunately, we didn't have the cake until Sunday evening. It just extended the celebration an extra day!

Happy Birthday Tyler!

Mormon Prom - The Big Night............

After weeks of preparation and hours of anticipation, the Big Night had finally arrived. But, something that must be realized, is the fact that the best place to get ready for a big night is at Camille's house. We were privileged enough to be able to meet up with Wendy and crew and take pictures - a huge honor, trust me! I may be slightly confused, but from what I can tell, the highlights of the evening were getting ready, getting together with the gang and possibly the dinner. Not very much was said about the dance itself.

Wendy and date

The whole group.

Wendy and date along with Camille and date.

Camille and Wendy

After the dance, Wendy was getting together with some other friends for the night. I'm sure they were all comparing stories, laughing at all of the stories, and just being teen age girls. I'm sure it was great to be able to be at home without all of the giggling and screaming and such.

The only thing that could have possibly been better than the entire evening would be something like going to a Seattle Sounders game! Oh wait! One of her friends was taking a bunch of them to a Sounders game for her birthday party! Can you just hear the screams of excitement? My ears are still ringing!

The group at the Sounder game.

What a glorious weekend! The joys of being a teenager!