Graduation Looming

Seven years ago our daughter began her academic journey at Plano Elementary as a kindergartner.  Seven years later, she has turned into a young woman.  It seems like it happened overnight.  I sometimes look at her and wonder...who is this child sitting next to me, snuggling up, grabbing my hand.  I hardly recognize her.  She has literally grown UP.

 To say she is driven is an understatement.  This girl raises the bar for herself and is passionate about what she invests her time and energy into.  Academics are a big deal to her.  She was telling me the other day that if she gets all 'A's' this quarter, she'll get the Presidential Award, meaning she has been on the All 'A' Honor roll every quarter since 4th grade.  She also received Distinguished marks in all four subject areas of KPREP testing last year and will be recognized at the Celebration of Excellence event next month.  

Sports are a big deal to her.  Currently, she is in four open gyms weekly.  She goes to volleyball two days a week and basketball two days a week.  This week basketball was cancelled, and because my BFF and talented photographer friend lives super close, I totally put her on the spot and asked if she could squeeze us in for a session in her beautiful canola fields on Thursday.  She said if we could come right after school, she'd be happy to take some pictures.  It's been a while since I've had nice photographs taken, and the setting at her place is breathtaking, especially this time of the year.

I was overwhelmed by the pictures she sent me that night.

Friends are a big deal to her.  We talked at the first of the year about the possibility of planning a special trip for all the 6th Grade students towards the end of the school year.  I met with my Peeps Christy and Amy to plan the event.  Once we got the okay from our school principal, we set our plans in motion, distributed flyers, reminder notes, e-reminders and set up a facebook event under our Plano school group page.  We wanted to do a trip that didn't require us to collect money ahead of time, wasn't on a school day and was special - a NASHVILLE FUN DAY.

 

And that event happened TODAY!  Despite the fact that Mother Nature was calling for major thunderstorms, we kept our fingers crossed and thankfully ended up with a gorgeous day.

Our friend Nathan has been terribly sick this week and wasn't able to come with us so we decided to take him with us in "spirit" - stick head Nathan.  The kids all signed a card for him as well!

 The first stop was at SKY HIGH Jump, a trampoline park in Nashville.

 I'm sure the kids got sick of all the pictures, but we didn't care.  We parents were like the paparazzi snapping away =).

 

 We had tried to get a reservation at Rain Forest Cafe at Opry Mills because that was going to be our stop after SKY HIGH.  However, since this was the weekend of the Country Music Marathon and a few other events, the manager told us that it would hard to fit us in.  That news was a blessing in disguise because we found the perfect restaurant about 4 minutes away called Monell's at the Manor.  I had eaten with friends at Monell's in Nashville (Germantown) years ago and remember it being really good.  The cool thing about Monell's is they are wonderful about accommodating large groups of people.  We RSVP-ed and told them we'd have about 35 people coming around noon.  We didn't have to wait to long and all got to sit together.  It's a pass-the-plate environment and the food is endless.  We were all stuffed by the end of the meal. 

 After Monell's we took the kids over to Opry Mills.  We'd planned to go see a movie but many of the kids just wanted to walk around the mall and hang out together.  We decided to forego the movie and let them run around together.  I didn't get any mall pictures because almost immediately after we arrived, the kids scattered like flies everywhere.  We hung out there for about an hour or so before heading back home.  It was such a fun day and hopefully one the kids will never forget!  Sniff, sniff...round one of graduation begins this week with the 212 Graduation on Tuesday night.  It's going to be an emotional few weeks ahead.