Graduation

I was totally going to write this post last night, but then I realized I was going to have to edit half of the pictures to remove Spencer's name and the name of his school, so I took the easy way out and went to bed and pinned on the kindle.  When in doubt always go to bed and pin on the kindle.  Always.

 

We went ahead and ordered the graduation picture package for Spencer.  Since we're not having yearly pictures taken at JC Penney anymore we had some frames with pictures of him at age 4 and age 5 that needed updating.  They gave us 6 pictures and about 24 backgrounds to pick from.

 

This is what we chose.  He's just too cute.

My mom and dad went to Alabama in mid-May for a conference my dad attends every year.  My dad came home after the conference but my mom stayed and went on to visit her brother in Missouri and other family in Arkansas. 

 

My dad and Michael's parents came up the night before the graduation.  We had a full house.

 

We got there just as Spencer's class was walking from their room to the multi-purpose room.

 

Spencer had been talking about these risers for days.

It's a good thing Spencer is short.  He got to stand right up there in the front row.  The little boy next to him (in the tie) is a fraction of a fraction of a half of a millimeter shorter than Spencer.  So technically, Spencer is not the shortest in his class.  But he pretty much is.

 

They did 4 different songs. 

 

The principal made a nice little speech.

My camera is too slow so I didn't get a picture of him shaking hands with the principal or getting his diploma.  I'll have to check Michael's parents camera sometime and see if they did.

Spencer's teacher is having her 2nd baby any day now.  Thank goodness she made it to the end of the year.

 

The graduate!

Then we went outside and took 1 million pictures.

 

Elliott was acting very toddlerish so this is the best brother picture we could get.

 

He was much too interested in straddling things and jumping off of them. 

We weren't supposed to go back to the classroom once graduation was over, but Spencer's teacher had a thank you gift for me from the 1st graders I did Art Masterpiece with all year.  They all wrote me letters and bound them in a book.  I got a little choked up when I started going through it.

 

It was the perfect opportunity for a slightly blurry picture with Spencer's teacher.

We had told Spencer that he could go anywhere he wanted for lunch.  He picked Which Wich.  He loves their pizza grilled cheese.

After all the grandparents left and Elliott went down for a nap we started on phase 1 of a 13 phase project.

 

About 6 weeks ago I designed and bought shirts for both kids.  The shirts say Class of 2026 for Spencer and class of 2030 for Elliott.  The plan is to take their picture on the last day of school every year standing in the same spot wearing the same shirt.

 

I bought a large for Spencer but when it came in the mail it looked too little (for an 18 year old, not a 6 year old), so we also ordered an extra large.

 

I wasn't sure where I wanted to take the pictures, so we tried out several options.

I really wanted someplace that is not going to change in the next 16 years, which eliminated a lot of options.

In the end I settled on the dining room.  I like to imagine that we can compare Spencer's height to the location of the pots in this picture.

We also figured out that he needed to put his arms out since the shirt is so big right now.

 And this is it.  The final shot that will be compared to all the future pictures.  It's very exciting.

We were all tired from the festivities of the day and decided that making dinner was too much work, so we went out for dinner too.  We let Spencer get a milkshake.  It was pretty much the only thing he had for dinner. 

 

Oh, and Elliott sat in his new car seat in Michael's car for the first time. 

 

And just like that, we have a pending 1st grader on our hands.