Penny Graduation Pics

There were intentions of course. 

Good ones. 

This time we would take graduation photos several months in advance. There would be no last minute, panicked rushing to get them done in time for getting cards to all the high school friends who would soon scatter themselves to the four winds.

Of course, we all know what the road to heck is paved with. ...

Ah. Well. 

With almost no time left, and by me making Penny miss Young Women's (for shame), we managed to find one semi-free night. Of course, Penny somehow ended up several miles from home and out of gas when we should have already been heading out. And we didn't even have any type of plan for where we might take pictures other than vaguely remembering an old gas station transformed into a flower shop somewhere.

But in the end, I do believe we delivered quite nicely! (And thankfully my sister Amy offered to quickly turn the pictures we'd taken into a graduation card.)

One more interesting little thing that I will add at the end here. Graduations. Who knew we would have large graduation seasons in our family??? I did not.

Last year Daisy graduated from BYU.

This year Abe graduated from BYU. And Penny graduated from high school.

Next year Daisy will graduate with her master's.

The following year Abe will graduate with his master's and Jesse will graduate high school.

The next Goldie will graduate from Utah State.

That's seven graduation ceremonies in five years. Huh.

The Wild Month of May

If August is as expensive as December (which, with the number of kids we have in school--and the accompanying number of supplies and fees required at the start of the school year for each--it pretty nearly is), May is certainly as busy. 

I think maybe busier!

 

After a recent semi-sleepless night (my brain circling around all the things it was supposed to remember), I sat down and tried to get it all down on the calendar. (Though new things are brought to my attention daily.) Penny's graduation, seminary graduation, recitals, plays, fieldtrips I'm helping with, elementary olympics (with different times for each grade), Civil War reenactments, class award ceremonies, Girls' Camp planning. The kids Great Aunt Sarah and I are even (at her amazing suggestion) bringing her cotton candy machine to each of my four elementary kids' classes to make cotton candy with them. Anyway, I quickly realized that the idea I had of a month of semi-calm before the wildness of summer ... was never going to be.

In any case. A wee bit of miscellaneous things from the beginning of this wild month:

Summer and Mette have friends whose cats just had kittens. When we came to pick them up they rushed one out to the car for Starling, the most ardent cat and kitten lover I have ever known, to hold.

More things happening at the house. (And a bit of frustration as those little square windows are a fair amount higher than they were supposed to be. But it also has been very exciting to go over and see new areas of the house framed every day!)

Goofy child.

Worst cows ever. (OK, just one of them is. No matter where we move them, how much grazing space we give them, or how sure we are they are secured, one of them finds a way to get through the barbed wire.)

After Summer's orchestra concert.

Mette as Florence Nightingale.

Two of her close friends even came to support her. So dear.

Talking about farmy things at the farm.

Abe with his five oldest children. (He was a bit nonplussed when he went to Penny's play with several of his siblings and was told, afterwards, what an excellent job his daughter did.)

And now onto the rest of May!