Three Kids and a Dog: Austen's High School Graduation

It was touch and go all week as the week started off with some pretty terrible weather. Lots of rain and with the rain came the cold. Austen's high school holds their graduation ceremony in the stadium and if they decide to call it and go indoors instead, then each student only receives four tickets to the graduation ceremony. We received many emails stating that they will wait until the last possible minute to make this call as they were going to make sure that they really could not hold it outside. And they did.

The weather cleared up on Thursday (May 22nd) albeit it was a bit cool (which made me change what I was planning on wearing for the ceremony). The Seniors had their run through and then celebrated their last days with a Senior class picnic. After that, it was back to their elementary school to take a picture in front of the sign and for them to chat with their 5th grade teachers for a bit before returning home to get ready.

We had a 4pm dinner reservation at our club which is just down the street from the high school. Parking was sure to be a problem so we decided to walk from there and just leave our car in their parking lot. We got in some early pictures with us and the grandparents in his graduation garb too and we all got to eat. We arrived at the ceremony a bit after 6pm. There were still seats available (I did not run like many others to reserve them earlier that day which was against the rules. I thought that rather ridiculous since they asked us not to anyway). There were plenty of seats still available too. We settled in and it was shortly thereafter that the graduates started to process into their seats. Austen ended up on the other side of where we were sitting but friends were sending videos of all the kids they saw walking in so we got one of him walking in too. The ceremony was just under two hours - it went fast (except the announcing of the 600 plus names in his graduating class and being an "S" certainly proved a long wait to get to Austen going up to receive his diploma). But, almost as soon as he got back to his seat, the ceremony was done aside from the throwing of the caps. Then the celebrating began and the cigars came out!

It was a long but special night that I'm sure we'll all remember. Now it's on to all the graduation parties!