Kindergarten Graduation

Sarah officially graduated from Kindergarten four weeks ago today.  It was quite an occasion.  When Andy graduated from the same school three years ago they had felt hats and gave them a blank piece of paper rolled up to look like a diploma.  The year before that, for pre-K graduation, they got hats made from poster board and crepe paper.  Well, they've come a long way. This year the kids had real caps and gowns and they even got a little yellow tassel with 2012 on it.  They were even miniature tassels, much shorter than a high school or college graduate would have gotten.

The ceremony itself wasn't anything that special.  They had the kids sit in rows in front of the parents and then called them up one by one to give them their fancy diploma.  Then they had the kids say, in Spanish, what they wanted to be when they grow up (just in case you don't know, my kids go to a Spanish Immersion pre-school/Kindergarten so it's not so strange that they were doing the ceremony in Spanish).  Most of the kids had realistic career goals except the two kids in a row that said they wanted to work at Sea World (which I guess isn't a totally unrealistic goal, just not likely).  Sarah said she wanted to be an artist, which doesn't surprise me at all because we talk about that a lot.  In fact, I would have been surprised if she had said anything else.

After the graduation they had a little party in their classroom with pizza and juice and a cake with the class picture on it.  Overall, a very sweet little celebration.  We took pictures with her teachers and they even gave her a little Spanish doll as a gift.

There were definitely parents there who were all choked up and sad that their kids were graduating.  The woman behind me was even crying.  I probably would have been that way had I been watching it on tv or in a movie, because that's just the sap I am, but in person it was no big deal.  Maybe because she's going to do Kindergarten again next year or because I still have one more kid to go, but I don't think that's it.  So far I just haven't been that sad when my kids pass their milestones.  I guess I'm just more excited about what is coming next than what we are leaving behind.

There's so many things to be excited about, why dwell on what's in the past?  Easy to say now, let's see if I can stick to those words in the weeks moving forward.