Countdown: Operation Graduation

No more classrooms. No more books. No more teachers’ dirty looks….

I finished my last day of teaching, and I have three days to laser point my focus squarely on what really matters, more specifically who really matters.

And that would be Miss Whimsy and her upcoming graduation.

A few more graduation gifts need to be purchased for her male friends. Celebration party plans need to be perfected and brought to fruition. Pictures need to be taken as we set yet more historical markers along Senior Road. Last things...

In my blog absence, I packed the last breakfast basket for that 30 mile country commute. Rushing to get myself ready, I stopped to give my last hug and my last wave from the front porch as she headed out for her last official day of school.

Super Dad stood in the driveway and snapped these shots for me.

Thus redeeming himself from a 13 year old photo flop which occurred when this little girl of ours started kindergarten.

Yes, I've posted this picture before. I posted it again because, well....it's cute.

In a twist of irony, I “taught her way in” to school and came entirely too close to teaching her out of it. You see, when Miss Whimsy started kindergarten, I decided that it was an appropriate time to hang up my apron and return to the classroom. I thought this prudent because there was an opening for a middle school English teacher – my specialty - in the small Christian School which the girls attended. Surely, I reasoned, I could help with income and tuition while not missing the moments a mere walkway away, right?

Wrong. I missed the most important moment of all.

I spent the last week of my preschool mom era elbow deep in preplanning.  I also failed to remember that my presence in my own classroom on that first day of school was critical. Rather than walk my little peanut head kindergartener to her room and take our traditional first day of school picture with the teacher, I had to delegate that task to Super Dad and report to my own room to help my own students make their own first day of school memories.

So I handed the camera to the dad with careful instructions, and he took on the dual task of photographer AND videographer for the special day, emphasis on the latter. You see, there was, and still is, no toy that Super Dad enjoys any more than his video camera.

And Stephen Speilberg was in his element. We have her getting into the car. We have her getting out of the car. We have the sisters walking hand in hand across the parking lot … and the grand entrance into the classroom… and the yakkity yakking it up with the teachers…

He did remember to snap this picture of her sitting in her first desk and opening her shiny new pencil box to begin her first assignment. It’s a bit blurry because we have the matching video… taken simultaneously.

Well, of course...

And then, we have this.

Notice anything different?

Yes, this would be the traditional second day of school picture. Apparently, in the midst of his Oscar making cinematography, what he didn't take was the traditional first day of school picture with the teacher. It was supposed to match the photo that I took of The Practical One wearing the same dress at the same event.

I was planning to frame them together…

Instead, they live in The Box.

The next year, I hung up the teacher bag and put back on the apron.

And so I devote these next three days to making memories. And to making sure that those memories are adequately chronicled in The Princess Diaries with my shiny red Kodak.

Because Super Dad recently replaced is rickety old video camera with a shiny new toy... and I really don’t want to have to call the principal on Saturday morning to stage a day after graduation picture.

Stay tuned...