Monday, June 22, 2009

Jamie's Graduation Ceremony

My son, Jamie's, graduation was held at the Toyota Center in downtown Houston. It's the same venue where we saw Elton John and Billy Joel perform. I had no idea what to expect, since I thought the place would be too big. but it actually turned out really well. Nobody needed tickets, you could bring as many guests as you wanted and they sold food in the lobby (haha!) They even used the jumbo-tron:



One of Jamie's teachers accompanied the choir on a song he wrote himself: "How Can We Say Goodbye." It was lovely. It made me and my sister cry.



Here's Jamie, turning around to watch his teacher play piano.


I'll be honest. I'm pretty sure that's not Jamie on stage. Don't know why I took the photo.

Jamie's name was the very last one called out of a class of roughly 500 students! He hammed it up. The arena erupted into applause because the ceremony was over but Jamie pretended it was for him. (He knew it wasn't) He raised both arms in a sign of victory and smiled out at the crowd as they cheered.
It was a nice ceremony. Not too long.


(more to come)

Astros Game

Things have finally quieted down enough for me to do an update. My youngest son, Jamie, graduated from high school a couple of weeks ago. My mother, two of my sisters and a brother-in-law came to town to help us celebrate. We did so much in the five days they were here that it took me a week to recover.

Some back story: My husband and I worked our butts off for two weeks before company arrived, repairing some of the damage my older son had done around the house before he moved out. We replaced doors, fixed holes in the walls, painted and put down a hardwood floor in his old room.

Thursday morning:



The floor was put down Thursday, the furniture moved back in Friday morning, company arrived Friday afternoon. whew! (My Mom came a few days early and was a huge help in getting the house ready.)

Friday night we all went to an Astros game at Minute Maid Park. I took a carload of people to the game while my husband and brother-in-law picked up my sister at the airport and met us there. Ha! We didn't actually meet up with them for about an hour, because we kept receiving phone updates from them as they moved around the ball field, sitting in empty seats.

We waved to them across the field at one point but when they were finally shooed away by security, they joined us waaaaay up in the nosebleed section.



It was fun. An 18 year old guy sitting across the aisle from us won $25,000 in a contest during the game. That caused lots of excitement. people came over to congratulate him and of course, his picture was shown on the jumbo-tron.

As the game ended and the sun disappeared, we stayed to watch a fireworks display.





We got home after midnight and pretty much headed straight for bed.

More to come!