we made it!

Last day of school! Everyone did well.  Now 9th grade, 6th grade and 3rd grade are done.  Next year Grace will be moving to a different school but the other two will be where they are now.  Crazy!!

Today it's been raining all day.  This morning we had quite a thunderstorm, which the dogs and I enjoyed for the peaceful solitude of my room.  No more peaceful mornings...for a couple of months anyway.

It was my carpool week and as I sat in the elementary school parking lot (The bus hub for Ethan) and waited for the kids to arrive I watched as tons of "graduating" 5th graders and their proud parents and grandparents came streaming out of the double doors of the school.  They were all dressed up and many held bouquets of flowers or floating helium balloons that said "grad".  Excited voices carried across the parking lot and into my car as they jubilantly headed to their cars in small groups discussing where to go to lunch or what they were going to do.  It was very festive and very dumb.  Moving up from 5th grade is not a graduation.  I know these kids, many of them are barely literate and some are terrible at school.  Even the good students/good citizens aren't "graduating".  All they are doing is going to the next grade...which everyone does.  I get being happy the year is over and the excitement of going to a different school with older kids and I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any celebration at all but really we celebrate the most mediocre "accomplishments" with such pomp and circumstance that it makes the big stuff less meaningful.  Pet peeve.

For the record, yes I have attended my children's "graduations" and even gone out to lunch after but I have told them it's kind of dumb and while I am happy they are doing well and progressing we expect a lot more of them over the years and just like I don't pay for "As", which they should get regardless, I am happy when they do and tell them that and am happy to celebrate every day with them because every day is a gift.  I just don't like the momentousness of it.

I'm like the grinch of graduations I guess.  Why they bug me so much I don't know.