Graduation!

Everything led up to this moment, and still it was unreal to be happening. 

As I was getting ready today, I had the thought: In 1st grade, Audra came home from school and said, "mom, I'm stupid. I'm in the lowest reading group." And tonight, she walked across the stage a Valedictorian.

We have been through a lot between 1st and 12th grade. It took a long time for Audra's confidence in school to come out, and I attribute the turnaround to homeschooling, but she worked incredibly hard, got lots of tutoring when needed, worked with Ben literally for hours every night with math, and graduated with a 4.3-ish GPA. She's pretty incredible.

It was a glorious day- minus getting in and out of DU. But, I am very glad they hold it at DU, no matter how hard it was to park and to leave at the end. But, outdoor graduations in Colorado are stupid because you never know how bad the weather can be. Sometimes it can be great, but mostly the weather will be rough. So I'm glad it was indoors.

Anyway, they did a great job. The graduation was beautiful. It was less than two hours, with just a couple of speakers who spoke for less than 5 minutes. The longest part was the presentation of the diplomas, which one would expect to take awhile.

My principal was sitting on the stage and took this picture. Isn't it awesome?

                                   

Graduation started at 6 PM, but Claire and Audra needed to be there at 4 for band/orchestra. Our last time watching our girls play together. It made for a weird eating schedule, but we went to a late lunch at Piccino's at 2 PM before heading to DU.

 

It was a great day to celebrate our favorite Audra! (even if I did tell my other girls to just drop out of school now so we never have to go through all of this again! It's A LOT!)