The 5th graders did the walk to honor through the main hall of the school before the ceremony. All the younger kids lined the hallways and clapped as the 5th graders walked down the main hall. Loads of whooping and hollering. It was so fun to see how the little kids really enjoyed cheering for the older kids.
It was so interesting (as I expected) to watch the girls walk into the auditorium. Most were wearing dresses in black/white. I found that SO interesting. And what's great is that there were no repeats of the same dress. Such variety of dresses too. My daughter had a flapper style dress. There were girls with petticoats underneath. Only one young lady was wearing pants. ONE out of 30 girls. I thought that was pretty amazing since most of these girls wear jeans/pants/shorts every day. Skirts/skorts/dresses aren't their normal garb.
They acknowledged achievements. The kids did a few speeches. Then the kids got to walk across the stage and get their "diploma" so that each one got the limelight. It was great. They put together a DVD with photos that captured their year. That was fun to watch and also hard to watch as well. There was a part they showed a baby picture of each student followed by a current photo of the student in a cap. Oh...it really caught me off-guard at how that touched me. Tears formed in my eyes unexpectedly and I caught myself. I stopped the tears from flowing but I couldn't help my lip from twitching at the emotion I was feeling. It was so hard to control. But when the DVD ended, I looked to my right and that Mom was wiping visible tears from her face. It was nice to see that I wasn't the only one who was brought to tears.
Once the ceremony was over, we walked outside and were handed a piece of cake. What was great was that the rest of the happened to be coming out for recess. I went to the fence to look out onto the playground searching for the Bear but couldn't find him. But as I walked back to my table, he was right there with my Mom and my BIL. He ran up to me and did a Spiderman style jump at me. I caught him mid-air and gave him a huge hug. Then I realized that we were not at home, but at the school's lunch area surrounded by his peers. I looked at him to see if he was embarrassed and he didn't have one inkling of hesitation at all. Just joy. And I LOVE that. He isn't embarrassed to show his love. I'm amazed I've got a son that's so open like that because my daughter (who is so much like myself at her age) is so restrained. My son had my cake, he played with my littlest niece for a bit, his friends ended up hanging out with us for a bit, and then it was time for him to go back to class.
All the kids in my daughter's class were meeting up for lunch. We put all the kids at some center tables, while all the parents/families stayed at the smaller tables surrounding. It was so much fun watching all the kids interact -- talking excitedly together -- move from table to table -- all smiles and laughter.
Oh gosh...I was so happy to watch them. To watch my girl in the midst of it all. She's growing up. And this is just the first of many more milestones before I totally let her go into the world on her own. I'm so proud of her. I'm so lucky that she's my daughter. I feel so blessed to have the privilege to be her mother. I love the little girl she once was.
I love the young lady that she is.
And I know I will love the woman she will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment