Simon's Graduation

Simon graduated from Mountain View High School Thursday, the 21st of May. He was one of 809 graduates. It rained, which made the weather cooler, which was fine with most of us. Better than the heat at Jon-Erik's graduation 2 years ago. There were 8 of us in our little Simon fan club, including my parents. We had 1 raincoat, 2 ponchos, 3 towels, 1 little blanket and, thanks to my mom, 5 umbrellas. Emma was the non-happy camper.She kept informing us over the course of the evening how she was freezing...but she survived. I reminded her that she is the girl who likes to put on her bathing suit and run around outside when it rains. She told me she hated the rain. I'll have to show her this picture to refresh her memory. :-)

This was our view during the graduation. ( I used Simon's camera at the graduation and even then sparingly...a point and shoot that I didn't know how to turn the flash off on. I didn't want to get mine wet. I had to use photoshop to fix them afterwards, but not too bad.)

This is what the field looked like afterwards. It didn't take too long to find Simon. He was lucky and got to sit under the BIG tent because he played in the orchestra and sang with the choir.

Adam finally joins us under the tent. He's wearing Jon-Erik's jacket and it's bulging. He opens it up only to send about 18 graduation caps tumbling to the ground...our little scavenger. So, if you know someone who couldn't find their cap afterward the ceremony, it's probably at our house. Sorry, no tassles, though, and the caps are only a little water damaged.)

Here we are demo-ing the said caps. We look a little like drowned rats, don't we??

It's been a crazy month leading up to graduation, with end of the year activities for 5 kids in 4 different schools. Here's just a snippet of what Simon was up to just last week, including a "before" pic before his haircut. Simon got to do a lot of the things that he loves to do: Sing, Dance, Act, play in the orchestra among other things. It's been so much fun watching him grow these past few years. We're going to miss not having someone at Mountain View next year. He's headed up to NAU in Flagstaff in the fall. We're excited for him. We both went to NAU and have fond memories of our time spent there.

Did I mention how much I'm enjoying these new templates from mcpactions.com? Here's another one with some of Simon's graduation pics.

Hooray for Graduation! Congrats, Simon and the rest of the graduates out there.

( Now that it's summer, I"m going to spend some time catching up on blogging)

Alexandra Adams: Senior 2009

Alex is one of those teenagers who make you feel hopeful about the future. She is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. The first time I saw Alex was a few years ago, when she was dancing in Dance Barn's end of the year recital. Her mom, Kristin, owns and runs the Mesa dance studio. Alex really sparkles on stage and she sparkled in front of the camera.

Here's she is:

Alex does these awesome spins that just go on and on and on AND she doesn't even begin to look like she's tipping over, so I asked her to do some for me and I just loved the hair, the movement, the joy of just being in this one:

And finally, just as I was falling asleep the other night, I figured out what I wanted to call these and I decided on Personality Portraits. (I loved learning how to do this a couple of semesters ago.)

You go get 'em, Alex!

Presenting Robert: Class of 2009

It's Senior picture time.

Meet Robert. He's been a star volleyball player at his H.S. He plans on attending ASU next year. Robert's parents and my husband go way back to High School themselves. Good friends. Great to see the next generation ready to make their mark on the world!

We had some fun with his volleyball.

Best of luck to you Robert!