Both of my boys graduated last week!  My oldest son from high school, my youngest son from middle school.  In September my boys will be starting on new adventures in life.  I think they are very well prepared.

Austin will head off to college in August.  He will be attending his top choice school, 6 hours away, with an eye towards majoring in Biochemistry.  I will miss him so much.  This past year has been a difficult one for our family.  We have all changed.  I wish that we hadn’t had to go through this, but I know that my sons will be better men for it.  They have matured in this year and we have all come closer together.  Austin’s caring and loving heart has helped me through some difficult moments.  His caring and loving heart has helped his sister through difficult times.  I will have tears when I leave him at college, but I will also have a heart filled with joy for the man that he is.

Brian will begin his high school years.  He is ready.  He has always excelled at school work and I’m sure he will continue.  He had a crash course in maturing this past year.  I hope that all that we’ve lived through this past year hasn’t been too much.  I hope that he can still have a light heart.  My wish for him is that he find his passion during the next four years.  I hope that he will take advantage of the clubs and groups that are available in high school.  I hope that he lets his heart guide him.

Happy Graduation to both of my boys!  You are both men that I am very proud of!

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Sometimes I ache, for the days when their tears were from a scraped knee, when I could whisk them up onto my lap and hug them and kiss it and make it all better.  Sometimes I ache, for the days when the worst thing in their day was if their sister or brother messed up their Lego creation.  Sometimes I want to wrap my arms around them, even though two out of three of them are teenagers, and keep them to myself, and never let go.

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Your kind, supportive words warm my heart and help carry me through.  Thank you!

I will pass the love on to my daughter.

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• Yesterday was the first day of school in our town.
• My daughter is a high school freshman.  Even when they’re in high school you never stop worrying about them, right?
• My oldest son is a high school senior.  He has no class last period so he gets out early.  He has no car, so my hubby picked him up from school yesterday.
• I printed out our bus route information in August when it was posted online like a good, efficient mom.
• My daughter got on the bus that I told her was our route to come home, along with some other kids that live on our road.
• I saw a bus fly down our road at the time my daughter should have been dropped off.  Oh, crud.
• 15 minutes later I call my daughter’s cell phone.  No answer.
• I call the bus company.  They contact bus driver.  He says he let kids (multiple kids) off at our stop which is not visible from our house.  This is strange because there are no other kids that get on or off at our particular stop.
• I call my daughter’s cell phone two more times.  No answer.  I’m scared.
• I call bus company again.  They contact bus driver again.  Oh, yeah, she is still on the bus (along with the other kids that live on our road) and he’ll come back and drop them off at their stops.
• I try to bring my heart rate back to normal.
• This morning.  Second day of school.   I get an email that tells parents to look at the bus routes online.  I think, I already printed them in August when they posted them, but I go to look anyway.
• THEY CHANGED THE BUS ROUTES AFTER THEY ORIGINALLY POSTED THEM!  And, they’re just telling us now?!
  
• AND, why didn’t the person I talked to at the bus company yesterday tell me that my kid was on the wrong bus!
• Now, the second day of school, my daughter and son (who will take the bus home today because they have a get-together for seniors until bus time) don’t know that the bus routes have changed and they will get on the wrong bus!
• I call the high school office.  The secretary tells me I should contact my kids myself.  Ummm…school policy is that cell phones should be turned off and kept in lockers.  Besides that, my kids don’t ever look at their cell phones.  They would never get the message.
• Finally, reluctantly, the secretary tells me she will try to contact my kids to give them the correct bus number to get on.
• As of right now, the secretary is out to lunch and I need to call back in a hour to see if she managed to get the message to my kids.
• I need to go exercise to relieve some stress.

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We’ve been busy buying the necessary school supplies, backpacks, lunchboxes and clothes.

We’ve been checking out new schools, classrooms, lockers.

Getting in the “before school starts” dentist appointments.

Getting a 9th grade schedule fixed so my girl doesn’t have two different English classes every day.

We’ll be going on our mini two night vacation this weekend.

We’ll visit a college while we’re there.  My high school senior’s first college visit!  I think it will be crazy.  It’s the weekend that the students arrive.

And, we’ve been roasting marshmallows in our pool ruins.  Because this is where memories are made.

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The randomness of this week:

My 17 year old son is finished with 11th grade, except for state tests of which his last is Friday morning.

My 14 year old daughter finishes 8th grade tomorrow, except for her foreign language test on Monday, and graduation rehearsal on Monday.  Then, graduation next Wednesday!!!  She will then officially be a high school freshman!

My 12 year old son finishes 7th grade next Tuesday.  He might have Lyme Disease.  I’m bringing him to the doctor after school today.  I can’t stand tics. 

I had to fend off two hawks yesterday morning.  This is ridiculous!  I let Timmy outside and a couple of seconds later heard the screech of a hawk.  I ran out (in a towel because I had just gotten out of the shower!) and two hawks flew over.  One was making a circle, so I waved my arms and yelled at it to go away!  It did.  Thank goodness my backyard is private!  I hope Google Earth’s satellite wasn’t taking a photo at that moment!

I’m subscribed to my own blog by email and I just realized I don’t receive my posts!  I wonder if I somehow marked myself as spam.  Sigh.

We bought my husband the game Molkky for Father’s Day!  It looks like a cool family game.  Hope he likes it!

I’m knitting something!  I have trouble with knitting, but I’m really liking the simple pattern.  It’s the Long Beach Washcloth by Lion Brand.  (I didn’t make this a link because I think you have to be registered and logged on to Lion Brand to view it.)  I’ll try to take some time this week to take photos of what I’ve been making to show you!

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We went apple picking last Sunday.  We really lucked out because it wasn’t too crowded but as we were leaving there was a line of cars driving in.  It’s a pretty small place with not much parking, but apparently this year it was discovered.  Maybe they advertised.  We tried to go a couple of weeks ago and the line going into the parking lot was huge, so we just drove right by.  I know it’s great for the owners but I feel a little sad that it has become so overrun with people.  Sigh.  There weren’t even many apples left on the trees!  There were plenty of apples on the ground under the trees – in the poison ivy.  You know I stayed away from the poison ivy!

My oldest son didn’t come with us.  He was at a friend’s house practicing with their band with the goal of performing in our high school’s rock concert in January.  It is a very big fundraiser for the junior class.  He has had a tough time getting his band-mates together.  I’m hoping that they get enough practice in to perform and to feel proud of their performance.  In February of this year he and two of his friends performed at our high school in a fundraiser for the people of La Carpio, Costa Rica.  That performance came off with not much practice at all!

As soon as we got home I made Apple Crisp!  Next I want to try Christina’s Apple Crostata!

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My son is on the left, I used soft focus on this photo.  I didn’t want to be showing his friend’s faces too clearly without permission!

They were the second group to perform, right after a female barbershop quartet!  They did a lot of practicing at my house before the show and they did an amazing job!  They didn’t use their own guitars, so that made things a little more difficult, but they did a great job anyway.  They were told that only acoustic guitars were allowed and they all only have electric guitars.  The plan was to borrow two acoustics from one of their teachers that was also performing.  When they arrived, they discovered that electric guitars were allowed.  So my son borrowed an electric and his one friend borrowed an acoustic, and their singer…sang!  They performed Nothing Else Matters by Metallica.  Their guitar playing sounded so beautiful.  I can’t tell you how proud I am of my son!  I sure do love that young man! (I was going to say boy, but he’s going to be sixteen this month!)

I want to give a special thank you to Shelli at Shelli Pabis Photography for giving me some really great pointers to get some wonderful photos of the event!  Thank you, Shelli!

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Happy Weekend!

Check out more of November in black in white at Springtree Road!

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