Nest Shrinkage

The high schools here do an alternating day schedule so that students have half their classes on “A” days and the other half on “B” days. They also publish a Google Calendar that students and families can subscribe to in order to keep track of which day it is — especially helpful after long weekends and holidays. Since my “magic mirror” also shows calendar items, it was easy to glance and see what the school day would be like. I unsubscribed from that calendar yesterday.

You would think that Afton’s graduation ceremony this past Thursday would be what made it sink in that all of our children are done with their public schooling, but somehow it was looking at that school district calendar and thinking, “I won’t ever need this again” that did it. I could imagine graduation and all the associated activities this past week as just being an end-of-year celebration, and high school would pick up again in August. But no, that’s it.

The graduation ceremony was held at BYU’s Marriott Center, which is the arena where the college basketball teams play. With nearly 800 graduating seniors, the huge space was definitely appropriate. We actually had to sit fairly high up because the open sections were so full.

In our rush to get there at the designated time (and breakfast at Waffle Love had to be switched to the Chick-fil-A drive-through), we managed to forget Afton’s graduation cap at home. No worries, though, because we happened to have an extra one in the car. Really.

During spring break, Shannon had borrowed a cap and gown from a family in the ward whose daughter had graduated a few years ago so that we could take some pictures with it. Feeling the need to get it back to them I had put it in the car and we had stopped by their house a couple of times to drop it off without finding them at home. So yes, we coincidentally had a backup cap that Afton wore.

And speaking of pictures, we had some struggles getting those taken for her graduation announcement. I first wanted to go out to Utah Lake since I’ve taken some cool pictures there in the past. Unfortunately, it was 40° F with 20 mph winds that evening, so we didn’t get much before Afton said, “I can’t do this anymore.” The month of May in Utah can be hit-or-miss weather wise.

When our schedules aligned again, we got some nice shots at the American Fork Amphitheater, and I designed her announcement.

Pretty nice, right? Except I had this vague thought that a 4″x6″ print isn’t really 4″x6″ that I didn’t follow through on so the printed announcements are chopped off a little. So we’ll say that they are hand-made, artisanal announcements by Dad, who made it out of love rather than professional skill. So please forgive me when you get them in the mail.

This is being a momentous week. When I wrote an email to my boss asking for some time off, I was worried he’d think I was making it up: Hi boss, I’d like a little time off because it is my 30th wedding anniversary, my youngest child is graduating from high school and my first grandchild is about to be born (stay tuned on that, by the way!).

Of course, school will in fact continue: Afton is planning to attend the University of Utah starting in August, where she’s thinking she’ll study psychology toward becoming a therapist or social worker.

P.S. If you really like graduation ceremonies, you can watch Afton’s on YouTube. Her name is announced at the 42:15 offset.