We made it! She’s a full-fledged high school graduate!
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I’m just so proud of her. She’s always been a hard worker and these past two years have seen her working harder than ever, which has been awesome to witness. She’s ready for the real world with a plan and a work ethic that will bring her success. I just love these milestone moments; these chapter endings. She’s done with being a child, which is bittersweet; but she’s got a whole blank canvas of adulthood ahead of her, which is so exciting. I am so glad to be a mother and to have done the work of mothering this sweet girl. She’s been such a joy to raise and I can’t wait to see what she does in the next chapter of her life.
Big week ahead! I’m starting to feel really worn out by everything, but I’m trying to ignore the feeling and just enjoy everything that’s going on. Next week will be much less busy and I’ll make sure to take some time to rest and recover, but until then I just gotta keep going!
Cooking
This week’s meal plan: Don’t judge me, it’s going to be an extremely busy week where I’ll only have about thirty minutes to throw dinners together.
Monday: Costco Chicken Alfredo & Mac ‘n Cheese, Green Goddess Salad, French Bread
I cannot find Michael’s khakis, which he needs for graduation. Where could they have possibly gone? Super annoying. I’ve looked in all the places they should be and in places they could be and nope.
Continually monitor the wrinkly-ness of Renaissance’s graduation robe after each thing she needs to wear it to this week and re-iron as needed.
Cleaning
I didn’t even get to the toaster last week, so…don’t hold your breath on any of the other things!
Caring
All eyes are on graduation this week, so everything that isn’t that has been rescheduled for dealing with next week. Oh! Michael and Nathaniel needs haircuts before graduation. They look like shaggy dogs right now.
Creativity
The graduation signature quilt blocks are halfway assembled and they may stay that way through the graduation party. What’s done so far is enough for them to be serviceable at the party, so I’m going to spend my time on more pressing things and circle back to finishing these blocks when I have time, which may not be until after the party.
I need to start sewing up the bunting for the grad party decorations. I just think it will add the nicest touch.
Other grad party decoration preparations will probably wait until next week when I have more time.
Gardening
I need to kill some slugs. As predicted, they’re gobbling up the petunias. If I could just remember to buy slug killer at the store, I could easily move this problem to a much more positive outcome.
Still need to get the Three Sisters planted, but we’ve got an atmospheric river pouring on us right now and the weather’s not set to clear up until graduation ceremony day and I will be beyond busy during that time. Maybe I can get to this on the weekend? Same to the front porch plantings and figuring out what the heck I want to do with the front yard plantings.
Celebrating
There’s so much going on this week—Baccalaureate ceremony, a choir concert, and graduation! There’s still a lot that needs to be done for some of these things, but we should be OK.
Community
I can push most of this stuff to next week and I am actively trying to do so. I did reach out to my ministering companions to try to set something up for next week and one of them has gotten back to me, so that’s a start.
With the release of the thirteen new hymns I have some work to do on the music front at church and I got a bit of a start on it yesterday with good outcomes. Someone recommended that I join the “Music Callings Resources” Facebook group for good ideas, but so far it’s only seemed to be a big bunch of squabbling complainers who are personally offended that the Church didn’t pick their favorite song for release, and if it’s not that kind of person, it’s the super annoying “I know more about music than you do” people who enjoy flaunting their musical knowledge and elevated opinions. I’m hoping it’s just a little agitated over there because of the announcement, but I’ll leave the group if, after my 30 day snooze wears off, it’s still a lot of the same a month from now. What an absolute downer of an experience.
Top priorities this week:
Graduation and all of its associated events
Keep everyday life afloat in the midst of all the graduation stuff
Graduation is really here! I remember my mom friends being all “it’s going to go by so fast!” at the beginning of the school year, and while I think we kept so, so busy this year with all the fun that a senior year brings, it is weird that graduation is actually here. I think I’m still recovering from the epic prom dresses, so graduation feels like it popped up out of nowhere! I was telling Michael this morning that I’m so glad there’s all these graduation warm-up events before actual graduation because, based on how much I’m tearing up at these pre-graduation events, I don’t think I’d make it through the actual graduation ceremony with any sort of composure if I was just thrown into it without any of this other stuff happening first. Emily’s graduation was a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t really involved with her activities and peer group because we were still kind of new to the area, COVID was still impacting things a bit, and she wasn’t involved in as many things as Renaissance is. Graduation feels so much bigger when you actually know the kids who are graduating and have a lot of memories with them. My cup runneth over…see you on the other side of this week!
This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance. It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.
Top priorities this week:
Graduation & recital clothing
Graduation quilt progress
Party decorations & ordering progress
Planting last of plants in garden
June’s hymns
Celebrate
Graduation party preparations are going well. My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment. We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm. Excellent party prepping.
I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders. I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail. I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have. It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance. She’s such a kind soul.
We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.
Gardening
I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil. It’ll be fine. Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries. It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.
It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much. From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend. Fingers crossed!
Community
I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine. I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.
Highlights
Nathaniel’s concert was so great. I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district. Proud to be a part of it all. Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast. So proud of him.
Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever. Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway. It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time. Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment. What a fun week for her.
At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society. A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation! Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school! We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.
Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together. I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness. I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them. We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.
Lowlights
I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long. I look like I have some sort of communicable disease.
Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.
The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors. This is bad for three reasons: 1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes. It’s been a moderate source of stress. One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner. I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future. *silver linings*
Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.
That Crafty Cara 