Graduation Weekend

I know it's out of order, but I'm backtracking and blogging about our summer--starting with (drumroll please).... 

Graduation weekend!!  

Yeah.  I'm way behind.

Starting off with:

Clark's kindergarten Track and Field Day!
Complete with popsicles and little siblings!

 I volunteered to help--well, okay, a friend volunteered for me to help her, actually, but same difference, because it meant showing up with my two pre-schoolers to help run the parachute station.
It was windy and chaotic, and about as structured as you can expect, but still lots of fun.

 After that was Clark's Kindergarten Graduation, which was just plain awesome.  That kid is so adorable.
He was pretty excited that Steve, me, AND his NanaDee were all able to attend, along with Maggie and Calvin, of course.

 Can you tell?
 He sang and performed brilliantly (I love how he gets so into the movements, haha).

And afterwards posed for a picture with his principal, Mr. Owens.

 We really love Mr. Owens.  He is a great guy and an AWESOME principal.
We also loved his teacher, Mrs. Slade:

 And his teacher's assistant, Mrs. Sipes.  She lives in our ward, so she was extra invested in Clark, which really pays off when his mom is wanting to know how things are going!
That weekend, my sister, Katie, who I don't get to see NEARLY enough, came up to visit (for McKay's graduation, because high school graduation is apparently a bigger deal than Kindergarten Graduation when one lives hours away), and I snapped a picture of her and my mom.  
I just love these ladies.

 The main event of the weekend was McKay's graduation, of course.  Because he won the J. Rufus Crandall Award (basically the music award for the school), he was asked to perform a musical number for the graduation.  He asked Molly and I to accompany him, which we were happy to do, and we all decided on The Piano Guy's "It's Gonna Be Okay" to perform.

It turned out nice, and as a bonus, Molly and I got to sit in the parent's section so we could be close to the stage in order to play, which meant I got some decent shots of McKay walking in!
 Crazy.  That's my baby brother.
 Another Memorial Day Weekend tradition is that the family does branding--there are usually more kids than cows at these branding sessions, but it's nice for me to have my kids experience at least a little bit of the ranching life that I grew up with.

Including Maggie's own personal "Coin Purse."
 If you don't know what that is, ask a rancher.  They'll tell ya (Don't worry, I made her wash her hands after handling it, and when her back was turned, it "accidentally" got thrown away).

Another Memorial Day tradition is that we go and visit our family members who are located in the Snowflake Cemetery--Grandpa Flake and Alma, of course, are the first ones we visit:
after which we wandered a bit.  It's been fun for me to go to the cemetery, now that I've been a little more involved in my family history, as I recognize many more of the names on the graves, as well as the stories about the people there.  

What a lovely weekend that was, and I'm glad that now we have it recorded.

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