The Tassel Was Worth the Hassle!

I'm a little bit blown away by this, but my niece, Kaylee, graduated from High School on May 20th. HOW in the world she's old enough to have graduated is beyond me, but life just keeps ticking by. I mean, this certainly doesn't feel like twenty years ago, but it was!

Anyhow, so Kaylee's graduation ceremony was on Monday, May 20th, at 7:00pm. We knew we for sure wanted to attend even though it meant taking the kids out of school for a few days. When I got to looking at the calendar to set plans in stone, I realized that it was actually the Monday of their last week of school. What that meant was that we would drive to Tennessee on Saturday, attend the graduation on Monday evening, drive home on Tuesday, and the kids would go to school on Wednesday and Thursday before being out for the summer. We actually ended up changing those plans and taking a short Nashville vacation after the graduation, but I'll go into more of those details in my post(s) about Nashville.

We left the house at 6:30 on the morning of Saturday, May 18th to head to Tennessee. Our kids are good little travelers for the most part, and I'm always grateful for that! Our first stop was the Arkansas visitor's center which is about two hours down the road from our house.

Brenson, Brecklyn, Brianna, and Brooke

We've made this trip enough that we can easily plan our stops along the way. We stopped again just east of Little Rock for lunch, and the kids were happy to run off some energy! 

Some of the other patrons of the restaurant where we stopped saw the kids running, and told us how great they thought that was. I told them it was survival for me, haha!

Travelling with littles is always an adventure. Our trip to Tennessee was going super smoothly until we had an incident about an hour and a half from our destination. Brianna had worn flip-flops for the trip, and when we stopped for fuel, one of her flip-flops fell out of the van. The gas station where we stopped only had a one stall bathroom, so we went down the road a few miles to use the restroom where more than one of us could go at a time. Of course, when we got to the place to use the restroom, Brianna only had one flip-flop *sigh*. She was melting down and Chris lost his patience with it all until I finally told her to wear Bren's flip-flops to use the bathroom. We drove back to the gas station where we quickly spotted Bri's flip-flop under someone's vehicle. Chris grabbed it, but unfortunately it had been run over and was smashed to about half the height of her other one. We didn't care though . . . we were just thankful to have it!

Minus the flip-flop incident, our trip was great. The kids were so happy to be at Jeremy and Shawna's house and out of the van! It was about 4:30pm when we got there, so we had made good time. 

That evening, Kaylee had a banquet at church honoring the 2019 high school graduates. Almost as soon as we arrived at their house, Shawna, Kaylee, Mom, Mallory, Brianna, and I went up to the church building to set up a little spot for Kaylee to display her interests and/or accomplishments.

Kaylee with her spot

Each graduate had a special shirt made for them that was sitting on a chair at the head table.

The set-up crew 😊

Mallory, G-Jo, Chelley, Shawna, Brianna, and Kaylee

The reception honoring the graduates was really nice. They had catered in Chick-Fil-A for dinner, had several speakers who spoke about each graduate individually, served cake, and had a keynote speaker. 

2019 high school graduates

Grampy, Kaylee, and G-Jo

Brianna and Kaylee

Shawna, Mallory, JT, Jeremy, and Kaylee

That night, my family stayed at Jeremy and Shawna's house, along with Jeremy, Shawna, JT, Kaylee, and Mallory. It was quite a crowd! Chris, Brooke, Brecklyn, and I slept in Kaylee's room while Brenson slept in JT's room and Brianna slept on the love seat in the living room. 

The next day was Sunday and the church where Jeremy preaches on Sundays had planned a reception for Kaylee after morning worship services. They had a nice dinner, then honored Kaylee with cake and cards afterwards. 

That congregation has a mid-afternoon service after a potluck every Sunday. We all stayed for the mid-afternoon service, then headed back to Jeremy and Shawna's house (about 1.5 hours away). We let the kiddos play, and they had a great time with the Daltons (close friends of Jeremy and Shawna's).

Two sets of twins!

Brecklyn, Chara, Brooke, and Chloe

Bren and Isaac are close in age and good little buddies.

Brianna has always loved JT, so she spent time hanging out with him and Mallory.

We ate hamburgers for dinner that evening, then had our family devo.

Bren thought he was big stuff staying in JT's room with him.

The next day was graduation day for Kaylee, and she had quite the busy day! It started with a senior breakfast, then a parade through town. 

We were all cheering for our graduate, but she was trying not to look at us, haha!

After the parade, Kaylee had graduation practice. Once she finished with practice, we all headed to a fun country store and cafe a little outside of town for lunch. It's called Ada's, and we really enjoyed it!

Ada's had a great front porch complete with rocking chairs and a couple of lazy dogs. Quintessentially southern!

Brecklyn and Brooke rockin' on Ada's front porch

Kaylee and Brooke

Momma and Brecklyn (who was ready for a nap!)

Chelle and Kaylee

We had some down time that afternoon before preparing to go to the graduation. The ceremony didn't begin until 7:00pm, but we wanted to get there by 5:30pm to get good seats. That meant that we had to start photos by 4:30pm (so I had to start getting everyone ready by 3:30pm), so the "downtime" went by very quickly!

Shawna, JT, Jeremy, and Kaylee

G-Jo, Grampy, and Kaylee

Brecklyn, Brenson, Chelley, Chris, Brianna, and Brooke with Kaylee

Our beautiful graduate!

Way to go,girl! We are proud of you!

Getting good seats at the auditorium meant there was a lot of waiting time before the ceremony began. I was a little nervous about the kids waiting so long THEN sitting for the graduation, but they did great! I couldn't have been happier with them. While we waited, we watched photos of the graduates scroll across the big screen. 

Micah-Grace took a little nap 💓,

Bren and Isaac enjoyed some screen time, 

Brooke looked cute, 

and everyone else just kind of did what they could to pass the time.

Finally, it was time to watch our girl walk across the stage and officially become a high school graduate! She has overcome so much, and we were thrilled to be a part of this big moment in her life. 

I was the appointed photog at the graduation, and I wish I'd been able to get better pictures. They are just so hard to capture in a setting like this.

Hooray for the Class of 2019!

Once the ceremony was over, we all went back to Jeremy and Shawna's house for a little party before Kaylee headed to Project Grad for the night. I love this photo of her . . . she's just beaming!

It was after 10:00pm before the kids (and the rest of us!) even thought about going to bed, but we enjoyed celebrating with our girl! I also feel that it's important for my kids to see their cousin reaching goals and accomplishing things that may not be easy, so breaking my sacred bedtime rules was worth it!

The next morning, we all went to breakfast before Mom and Dad started for home and my family headed to Nashville (I'll share all about that in another post). I'm so glad we were able to join all the celebrations for Kaylee's big accomplishment!