I graduated on the 15th, and the party was last night.
I included a slide show of pictures from graduation and the party, but I just have to warn you, they are of very poor quality. The lighting inside the gym (where the ceremony was) was horrible, so I didn't even bother to include many pictures that were taken while we were inside. The few pictures that did turn out okay, were still not that great, as we weren't all looking at the same camera or there were people behind us. As for the graduation party, most of the pictures were really smokey (because most of them were taken next to the fire pit). I'm waiting for Anne to give me a CD of the pictures they took that night, hoping that they will have a few more that turned out. When I get more pictures, I will post them, and hopefully they'll have turned out better. **By the time you are done reading and make it to the bottom to see the slide show, it will already be over. Click the 'X' in the corner of the box to play it again.**
I don't like to be in front of people, in fact, I can get myself worked up into such a frenzy just thinking about being in front of people, that I will usually end up feeling sick. But it went very well, and I didn't trip over my robe or pass out while receiving my diploma!
I graduated with two friends, Anne and Chris, so that made the whole thing more fun. I personally didn't even want to do the ceremony, but my mom insisted that I should, and finally said, "You are going to do it, for me. It's not for you...it's all for me."
We had to be to the school where the ceremony was to be held three hours early for practice. The seating was alphabetized, and it was funny how it worked out. We all ended up one row behind the other. Chris went first, then ten people later, it was Anne's turn, and then ten people later it was my turn.
After practicing for two hours, we were given a thirty minute break to eat a snack and get ready. Annie and I got our gowns on and took turns pining each others caps on. Then the three of us spent the next twenty minutes complaining about the hideous gowns and how we'd love to shoot whoever invented them. I personally felt like a blue angel and wanted to sing an angelic song, but the desire to pull a trigger on the head of whoever invented those ugly things out willed my fleeting thoughts of singing. I was able to keep a good attitude, though, telling myself: the next milestone in my life, I'll be wearing white.
After our thirty minute break, it was time to go sit down, as it was due to start soon. We all sat down and the graduation ceremony started. When we filled out the paperwork to graduate, there is a section on the paper where the student writes what he or she plans on doing in their future. I didn't realize that whatever the student writes in this section gets read out loud while they receive their diploma. So I wrote something about "my desire in life is to get married and have lots and lots of babies. But until I meet my Prince Charming, I'm going to study natural health and holistic healing." Well, I couldn't remember what I wrote, and I panicked when they announced that what we wrote would be read out loud. I was mortified and embarrassed, because I was convinced that I wrote something along the lines of: kissing a frog and meeting prince charming. Why I would write anything about kissing frogs, I don't know, but I was convinced I did. I squirmed throughout the ceremony, waiting for my turn, praying that I didn't write anything about kissing frogs. I was very relieved when I found out that I didn't.
I sat by a girl, who during the practice and the ceremony, talked on her phone and texted her friends the WHOLE time. She was talking on the phone as her name was announced!! She hung up as she went to shake hands with our principal!! It was amazing. (And not in a good way.) On the other side of me was a guy who was at least 6' 3''. While we were outside practicing, he was asking me a question about the line up, I was staring up at him while he talked and he paused for a second and then said, "Gee...you are short." Still staring up at him, I said, "Yeah? Maybe you're tall?!" The guy was huge!! I was seriously looking UP at him.
After graduation, all of us graduates were supposed to leave the building until it was cleared (which by the way, hardly any of the students actually obeyed this request). Anne and I waited outside for several minutes for our parents to come out, after ten minutes of them not coming out, we decided to head back in to see them. On the way in, an 80-something year old woman pats my shoulder and says, "Don't do drugs girls." It was very odd.
Anyways, after the ceremony and after we finally found our parents we spent the next thirty minutes posing for pictures and talking. Finally we left.
We went to Uncle Micah and Aunt Lynette's house after we left and celebrated Lynette's mom's birthday. We had cake and ice cream and enjoyed hanging out with her family. (she has a fun family!)
The next morning we all got up around 9-10 and got busy working. We had a lot to do before the party.
At 7 o'clock the party started. We had an open house and nearly 70 or 80 people came. It was a fun party, everyone seemed to enjoy it. We set up six tables, and had 26 chairs set up, not counting the picnic tables and our patio chairs. We also set up the fire pit.
There were people every wear!! All the kids were really well behaved and Poppet and Lolly did a good job fending for themselves. Lolly was loving the table of junk food, which was at the perfect height for her greedy little hands!
Us teenagers had so much fun with the fire pit! My dad had told me earlier in the afternoon, "At 8 o'clock you can ask your boys (as in Hayden, James and Chris) to build a fire in the fire pit. Don't give them anything that sparks or blows up. No gas, no hairspray, no cooking spray, ect. ect."
Every time I have a get together at my house, we use the fire pit. And every time we take the fire pit out, the boys want to light it. Us girls are really starting to scoff at their "skills." We decided that sometime soon we are going to have a fire lighting contest. The boys: Hayden, James and Chris, will get one barrel; and the girls: Anne, Mandy, Esther and I will get the other barrel. Each of the teams will have the same tools to light the fire with and no cheating is permitted. We will see who really knows how to start a fire. (Let me tell you though...they (the boys) sure can make good smoke!)
When they finally got a decent fire going we got the smore stuff out. Some of those little boys, as in a few of my brothers, are going to be constipated for weeks!! There was one little guy, who roasted four marshmallows at a time...like ten times!! I promise he had at least 15-30 marshmallows!
Around 9:45 the party started to dwindle and soon all that were left was: my aunt and uncle, who hanged out with my parents. Christopher, *Hayden, *James, Mandy, Esther, and Anne. They stayed and hung out until 12:00am. It was a lot of fun.
(*Hayden is Annie's brother; *James is Mandy's brother.)
I found a can of Pepsi that I had hid in my room several months ago. We decided that we should blow it up in the fire. The boys had been playing with our marshmallow skewers and found out that if you left them in the fire for a while they would turn red and sizzle. So, Hayden and James heated the skewers up, while Chris set the can on a birdhouse in our garden. After the skewers were red enough, Christopher poked a hole in the side of the can. (Might I add this can had been shook for several minutes prior to this...so it had a lot of built up pressure!) Soda sprayed out from the hole and showered the side of James, who jumped up in complete shock and tried to run, but was blocked in by chairs, the fire, and Meko, the dog. Finally he jumped on Mandy's chair and tried to duck out of the way of the spray. That didn't work out so well, Mandy indignantly shoved him off of her chair and tried to escape the soda spray herself. The soda only sprayed for 15 seconds or so, but they were still very sticky.
This is what happened during the evening:
1. Poor Meko caught on fire twice times. (Everyone claimed that it was her fault, and she shouldn't have been so close to the fire...but still...two times?)
2. I accidentally flicked a piece of flaming popcorn onto Hayden's hand...burning a small crater into the top of his hand. Ooops.
3. Chris caught his pant leg on fire.
4. Hayden sizzled his shoe.
5. James's hat started smoking from a stray spark.
6. The grass almost caught on fire multiple times, and one of us would have to quickly stomp it out.
Whoopsy-daisy.
After a while, we decided to play on the teeter-totter. The guys all decided to try to ballence the tetter-totter with all three of them on it at once. It started out with Chris on one end, Hayden on the other, and James standing on the middle of it. Then they switched sides, Hayden and James on the ends, Chris standing on the middle. I included pictures of this in the slideshow, I'll let you be your own judge...how smart does it look?
It was a very fun evening, with much more I could write. But for now...
I included a single picture, with everyone's names so that when you watch the slide show you will know who is who, as I was running out of room to write names beneath pictures in the slide show.
James, Hayden, Esther, Me, Christopher, Anne & Mandy
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