Graduation Open House

Hooray for teamwork! I'm grateful for friends and my own Crew who helped get us ready for Caelan's graduation open house. From the unexpected landscaping and bathroom renovating at our host location, to borrowed items from our youth group, to friends showing up hours early to help set everything up, to help tearing everything down and putting it away when the party ended (an hour and a half late :) it was just a great team effort to celebrate Caelan's accomplishment--high school grad!

The theme was pink, glitter, shimmer, lace, rose-gold, silver, country garden party. I think that was everything :) The wind was a bit much and knocked over a few items of décor (shattering one glass frame), so Buck's NGF rigged up some bonus posts to keep things aligned; it was overall a huge blessing to have my mom's tent available to keep everything safe from blowing away. We researched the best pens to sign photo paper in Caelan's senior year book--gels for the black paper pages and Sharpie markers for the white, glossy pages. Kind of fun to see those pops of color and messages distributed throughout.

My party planning friend suggested wild flower seeds as party favors. I found these pressed paper hearts that contain wildflower seeds. They are so pretty! We have loads of them left, so we will soon have a wildflower garden of our own :)

Caelan's slideshow was 55 minutes long :) I worked on the first half of her life, and Gabby did the rest (it was a bonus history project for school; it even fit the time frame, ha!) Graysen set up a playlist and let us use his new speaker. We found this elegant old table in the garage and I dropped a vase of unchosen flowers (for arrangements) behind the screen. I made sure to tell everyone that that was my arrangement, not Caelan's--one of which is pictured above :)

Lots of surprise faces and guests, like old friends from Bright Lights, my dad's fraternity brother and his wife, my aunt and uncle, and pandemic babies! We had a steady crowd of visitors, but not nearly enough of them ate dessert :)

We've been praying for these babies since long before they were born! It was the first time we got to meet them, and it also was their first birthday. What a miracle this pair is! We also got to meet the third karate baby (born during pandemic), but I didn't get a picture because I did a lot more talking than photographing at this event.

The cross-net game was a non-stop hit (no pun intended :) It had a steady line of players for more than four hours! Super glad the youth group let us borrow it for the party. Other highlights--the helium tank our friends lent us worked! Perhaps a confetti-filled balloon or two popped in the house, but they sure looked nice on the mailbox and the turn from the highway. The giant Caelan grad sign mom made last year got to be put on display--not sure what we do with that next, though :) My brother and his sweetheart got us JJ's and K shared half of hers with me--she chose the kind Caelan always gets because she though Caelan's order sounded so good. She also carried like four jugs of water at a time down the porch stairs during clean up--we had a lot of water left over because I thought we'd be refilling the lemonade throughout the day. Buck was in charge of mixing the initial batch, and it turned out to be potent enough that just adding ice throughout the event made it gradually more drinkable ;) Pucker up lemonade lovers! A lot of people thought it was just right, so I guess it depends on one's taste buds' preferences.

Let's see, oh, well we tossed the majority of two whole cakes (and still had another in the fridge). I learned later that my oldest younger brother challenged my youngest son to face plant in the cake--the tradition continues! G$ did score some life points on the deal, and no longer has frosting in his eyebrows. We also had two full containers of cookies and a giant bag of candy--the chocolate didn't do so well on the tables, so all that mushy goodness got tossed, too :)

I've been trying to think of all the important, funny, or unexpected details of the day, because we may not remember them later--that's why this post is so long in coming. For instance . . . original sentence: After the party, we loaded up four vehicles with stuff and drove home. Modified sentence(s): After the party, we reset the property to pre-celebration status, loaded up four vehicles with party stuff, and got ready to head home. At this point we realized, we still didn't have Gabby! She and Brennen moved their work schedules to earlier in the day so they could attend the party. Gabby is usually up and ready to go at 9 a.m., but was pretty wiped out from her previous day's work. At some point, mid-party, she went inside to take a nap. Good thing she woke up as we were leaving or she would have been pretty confused to be without people and wheels out in the country :)

Back at the house, Buck bought a sandwich tray and I was surprised that we were all hungry enough to make it disappear. Some watermelon might have disappeared, too. Here's me trying to take cute selfies with M like his 20-something auntie does--yeah, she's way better at it than I am. I'm sure her being half my age has nothing to do with it, ha!

Caelan's gift, gift card, and graduation card collection has grown and grown! I think there's at least another half dozen cards I've put on the wall since this photo. Pretty cool!

The Crew finished the evening with a game of badminton--Caelan and G$ bought the net lights at Hobby Lobby, and I ordered the glow shuttlecock so they could extend their game time. It looks pretty cool rocketing across the net!

Whoohoo! One graduated, three to go :)