Daisy Moves Beyond Handwriting With Tears

I don't know quite why, but when I think of Daisy, a part of me will sort of always think of the 2 to 8ish version of her. Not necessarily the baby Daisy. Or tween Daisy. Or teen Daisy. Or even now adult (!) Daisy. I know she is all of those stages. And I have loved and adored her at all of them. But little kid Daisy? It was just such a very Daisyish phase! And she doesn't really exist, in my mind anyway--and probably in her own soul as well--apart from that child version of herself.

Even so, one must admit, she has lived a decent chunk of time beyond those years! And accomplished a fair amount to boot!

Here she is celebrating her 24th birthday with us all.

(The three pictures below were taken by Starling--who needed to document all of the creations she gifted Daisy.)

And here she is graduating from BYU with her master's degree in statistics! (Did you read that? Masters in statistics!)

We ran into my brother Aaron's daughter Josie at commencement. She was there for the graduation of her boyfriend. Aaron and Allison happened to be in town as well (for their daughter Olivia's graduation), so they came over to Abe's house to see us for a while afterwards. That was happy.

Sadly, Goldie and Wyatt had to work. Gayle was there as well--splitting the time between Daisy's graduation events and Mike's brother Greg's wife Rhonda's graduation with her PhD. (We all went to their house after to celebrate.)

The four girls from Daisy's cohort.

Abe and Kenya waving goodbye to us from their cute little house with its white picket fence.

One of the best parts about Daisy's two years working on her master's degree was her statistics cohort (the 15 people she went through the program with). They all got along so well and were forever doing fun activities together. Even the married ones brought their wives along and participated. They all became such great friends. Here several of them are running a 5K a few days after graduation.

A few of them at graduation.

All of them (minus one who didn't come to graduation).

Daisy herself after the post-graduation 5K.

Congratulations on all the growing up and becoming, Daisy! Even I, the one who still sees you partly as a five-year-old, must admit that you've long ago outgrown Handwriting With Tears. (Handwriting With Tears was one of the workbooks I used for Daisy when I homeschooled her for a time in 1st grade. It was actually called Handwriting Without Tears, but we had to rename it ... for obvious reasons.)