Graduation Night

This is the only picture I got of him by himself, even though his eyes are not quite open. We can pretend he was trying to keep the rain out of his eyes.

Heidi looks a little too excited! Heidi and Staci made all of Tate's necklaces that he eventaully all gave away, except one.

Dad trying to keep the rain off of him

Tate will some of his good friends standing in the rain.

This is a funny picture, because the security guard was standing there and so I told Tate and his friends Travis and DJ to have their picture taken with him.

I can't believe how long it has been since I have written, because so many things have been going on this summer. I will try and back track over a few of them. Tate graduated on May 22, 2008, which happened to be our 33rd wedding Anniversary. Tate's graduation was not quite what he expected, but all things considered, I thought it turned out really nice. We first attended baccalaureate on Sunday and we got a lot of fun pictures that night. It was a nice evening even though only about 200 graduates attended. The weather was perfect and a lot of Tate's friends went to it. It was a good thing they did, because Graduation 4 nights later was a different story.



The day of Graduation, all the students were given tickets for their parents to attend in case of rain. It hadn't rained in more than 30 years, so we had not worries, right? Wrong. About 5:30 that evening we got an automated phone call that said graduation would be held indoors, due to rain. Tate was so upset by this. He wanted to be with all of his friends. Half of the class were to meet in the auditorium and 1/2 were to meet in the gym. They weren't large enough to hold everyone. It did rain during the entire graduation and it was cold. As far as parents were concerned, we enjoyed it. However, none of our children could attend, to which I am sure they were grateful. Haha.

We did call Heidi and she came back to watch them come out, into the rain and took some pictures with her friends. I think Heidi knew as many people as Tate did. We took pictures for quite a long time. At the end Robert had already gone to the car, because it was cold (another rare thing for Az. this time of year), so I called him on his cell phone to pick us up by the gym. He told me he was holding his umbrella over a woman that got hit by a car in front of the seminary building. Heidi and I walked over there as fast as we could. I walked out to see what was happening and ended up using my umbrella to block the rain too. The Fire Dept. hadn't even gotten there yet. They had gone into the parking lot by the stadium, which would have taken forever to get across all those speed bumps. It turned out to be one of Tate's friends, who had just graduated. She was walking with her friend and they both got hit by a car that just didn't see them in the rain. They ended up being okay, but did get to spend the night in the hospital.



After graduation, his family and friends came over for a little open house so they could celebrate with Tate. It was definately one night Tate will never forget. After the open house I went to Sunsplash to help chaperonne from 1:00am to 4:00. Luckily since it was so cold I only had to stay until a little after 3:00 because they closed all the pools. I don't know how anyone went swimming that night. It was 53 degrees and that's cold for us!