Grad Night

Today was graduation day. I always have mixed feelings on graduation day because it is such a special day for the kid graduating but it is shear torture sometimes sitting in the hot sun on the hard seats for hours on end just to hear that special ten seconds when your kid walks up and receives his diploma. I wouldn't miss it for the world though. We were fortunate today to have all but one of our children at home. Alycia flew into town yesterday and only Brandon was absent.

I took the day off work and this morning was spent helping Lisa finish up the last of her stuff for grad night. Shortly after noon we headed over to the stadium and with Evan's handicapped parking we were able to park very close to the stadium and bypass the miles long line up outside the stadium. We could have carried Evan of course but the convenience of the handicapped parking was really nice for Lisa's mother who is also in town. It was fun watching Alex walk in and I've rarely seen him so excited. The program wasn't nearly as bad as I was worried about and after everything was over we got several pictures of Alex with his friends and then we held true to our tradition and headed off to the Soup Plantation. After the soup plantation Ben and I went over to the school with Lisa and helped her with some last minute setting up.

I don't know if you are all aware of what Grad Night is. To encourage the graduates to avoid the many parties with alcohol and to help them to live past their graduation day the PTA puts on this big party. The kids buy tickets to it but it is an all out affair. They have to be inside before 10:30 and then no one is allowed in or out until 6:00 AM. For Kira's grad night Lisa volunteered to be the entertainment chair and she has done that for everyone of the kids who have graduated since then. She is very good at it but she gets so stressed that for the last few weeks before the event no one wants to be around her. I think they give her a budget of twenty or thirty thousand dollars and she gets some very good deals. All the party people know her now and so she gets the best events around.

Lisa would have to give you more details but just some of the things that they have are:

a dance
a casino (poker tables, black jack, craps, and the works)
a movie theater
ping pong tables
pool tables
several arcade games
astro jumps including some pretty fancy obstacle courses
laser tag
caricature artists
crazy hair people
tattoos
guitar hero
dance dance
karaoke
and all the food you could possibly want

Lisa books and schedules them all.

When we got home from the Soup Plantation Alex headed upstairs for a short nap before grad night started. He said something about waking him up before 9:00 when it all started. As it happened Peter and Maren showed up to say goodbye to Kira before she leaves tomorrow, Ben and I headed over to the school to help Mom and Sarah and Alycia got lost on the computers. Lucky for Alex one of his friends called him about 9:40 for a ride to the school. He was sound asleep and actually thought it was the next morning. He would have slept through it all.

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Westview High School is ranked among the top 200 schools in the United States for academics.

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