I know that isn't a real word, but somehow that's what came out of my mouth every time I marveled about what has actually occurred.  I know people say this a lot, but how did this happen so quickly?  One day he is our golden haired 6 year old graduating from kindergarten.  Then he is our 14 year old entering the "Freshman Center" at Allen High School.  Then, and this one happened in the blink of an eye, he's in a blue and white robe, walking into the Tacoma Dome, graduating from Gig Harbor High School. 

The magnitude of what it all means just staggers me.  Three days from the time of this post, we will be leaving to take him to live with his brother and attend a summer semester at BYU.  About 10 weeks after that, we will be flying over the big ocean for his first semester at BYU-Hawaii.  Four months after that, we will be saying "See you soom!" as he departs for a two-year mission.  (I didn't spell "soon" wrong, that's just how we say it in our family because Troy said it that way when he was little)

I suppose my musings are getting tiresome, so I will proceed with the fun part of graduation:

Pictures of The Graduate!

I'm hoping you noticed the money, draping around our graduate.  Sarah, Ryan's girlfriend, and I spent a lovely couple of hours stringing $1 bills together for this fun graduation lei.  So much better than the flower lei we originally planned, right?

We kept it as a surprise, so Sean was stunned and beyond excited when I put this around his neck after the ceremony.  He was the envy of his crowd of friends!  I think this is quite possibly one of my best moments as a Momma.  It's not bragging if it's the truth, right?

Another surprise for Sean this graduation weekend, was having Ryan and Sarah secretly driving up from BYU for the festivities.

The best picture of the day, though, was this one:

I'm not sure how this slipped through the cracks for so long.  But, if I really dig down deep and honestly come up with a reason I kept putting these pictures off, I would have to say that I just wanted to go back to Texas and have Brian Crofts take Sean's pictures like he did when Ryan was a senior.  He is a friend, a talented photographer, and we had a great experience with him.  I just didn't want some random photographer for something as important as this.  I will concede that I probably made a mountain out of a molehill and the result was a photo shoot on the Monday before graduation.

However, we were blessed to find out that Sean's seminary teacher, Lili Grover, has a love of photography and is quite skilled with Photoshop.  Sean mentioned that a few months ago she had offered her services to the kids during seminary one morning.  I called her up and we made a plan to meet in the harbor the very next day. 

She did a fantastic job and we got several shots that we love!  It helps immensely that Sean has a great smile and, in my very biased opinion as his Momma, is a very good looking young man.  She put a grad announcement together and within 48 hours of the photo shoot, we had announcements in hand. 

Now, if I could just find 3 uninterrupted hours to address them all...

Sean has graduated from 4 years of early morning seminary!  When I say early, I mean early.  He has gotten up at 5:30 in the morning to be at seminary which goes from 6-7am.  I think it is incredible that there are high-schoolers all over America who participate in this wonderful program. 

We are so proud that Sean completed all four years.  It is really hard and exhausting to get up that early every day, and still be able to stay awake during school, get good grades and participate in all the extra-curricular activities that teenagers want to do. 

Now it's time to catch up on some ZZZZZZZs!

For my religion class, Teachings of the Living Prophets, we formed into small groups to do a research project on one of the Prophets and Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Elder L. Tom Perry is a wonderful man, husband, father and Apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  His biography, written by his son, was recently published so I had the privilege of reading it as part of our research.  He is so endearing and such a great example of faith, commitment, positivity and enthusiasm. 

It turned out that I was the only one in our group with video making know how.  It was a huge undertaking and even though it was very time consuming, I really enjoyed putting it together.  I'm so relieved that it is done and handed in, though!

Here is the finished product.  We included a couple of fun facts about Elder Perry at the end.  Least of which is that Sean (P. Diddy) Combs once tweeted a quote from Elder Perry and a photograph of the "First Apostolic Fist Bump"!