Gradu-palooza -- the girl version!





So the girl in charge graduated from high school last weekend.  

 I feel old.  I ask you -- does this look like the face of someone who is ready to step out into the wide world? 

No?  OK -- how about this?
I know, right?
 [ The festive bow was after the fact, and I say -- too bad.  ]

While the mortarboard hat does make a definite statement, I think the bow shows way more fashion flair.  Call me crazy.
We partied it up for our girl, with balloons and party platters, and grandparents and aunts and godparents. 

My friend Saskia made this beautiful cake, which tasted even better than it looked, and strictly followed the girl in charge's instructions:  chocolate, with a side of chocolate, filled with chocolate and frosted with chocolate.  Please.

The bestie was there to make the day perfect.  It wouldn't be a celebration without her and her mom -- they make any party more fun!

So, yeah!  My girl in charge is already making her lists and organizing her minions as she prepares to leave for Emory University in the fall, but we're not going to talk about that because I can only absorb so many of these  moments when my life swings on a hinge and everything changes.  I don't really understand how parents make it through life without sobbing every day.

But we do.



Remember: as far as anyone else knows, we're a nice, normal family!"



So back in April the tall boy came home for the Easter weekend, which was fabulous.  And he brought HER with him too, which was also fabulous.  The only concern for me was that we really like this girl -- so we have been trying very hard to keep her from finding out that we're not normal.


Good thing for us, she actually likes playing the kind of uber-nerd board game that lasts for hours, if not days.  This one involves trading things like hides and salt for grain and iron -- and then purchasing "civilizing" abilities like pottery and coin-making and philosophy.  It's not Monopoly, people. 


The Easter Bunny made an appearance, of course.  It addition to way too much chocolate, the baskets this year were filled with bubbles and squirt guns.  Of course, the sunny girl and the girl in charge immediately filled the squirt guns with bubble juice, and SHE joined right in as they all attacked the tall boy-- but the report is that the effect was less than thrilling.  Everybody got crayons too, because that's how the Easter Bunny rolls.


And here's what our pretty Easter dinner table looked like -- before it was loaded with ham and potatoes and spinach salad and asparagus and carrots and deviled eggs and French rolls and butter . . . and the husband made me move the lovely but inedible flowers.

SHE celebrated a birthday while she was with us, and we all went to the Easter Vigil Mass (and to a swell party afterward).  She met the grandparents, and Grandpa fell a little bit in love with her.

So -- all things considered, I think we still have her fooled.

Snapshot: "Measure me!"


 
So here is our family's "measuring stick."  We started marking growth spurts on the doorway in between our kitchen and our dining room, soon after we moved into our new digs in 2001.

 
A few years after we moved in, we painted the kitchen and the trim -- but I was insistent that our growth chart would stay intact.  But then the tall boy and his cousins, the soldier and the Cavalier cousin, just continued to grow.  Coleen's tall boys came over and stood tall to be measured, too.  And they all continued to grow and grow. I suspect that we have not seen the last of the growing among these tall, tall boys.

But that's OK.  We will continue to chart the growth of our urchins, their cousins, their friends -- really, just anyone who is willing to stand up and be measured.

This wall makes me happy every time I look at it.

Snapshot: Three pretty girls and one tall boy

So the husband and I took the urchins to see Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center recently and had as swell a time as you can have while your heart is being wrenched by the poignant sadness of a story that is all about how these people are willing to die for those people, who realize too late how much these people loved them -- and then they all sing about how miserable life is now but how it will all be better when we get to heaven. And how "to love another person is to see the face of God . . ." Hang on. I need a tissue.

But!

SHE came to see the play with us! And we were giddy with excitement, because although the tall boy clearly thinks SHE is all that, we couldn't wait to see for ourselves.

Turns out the tall boy is right.