It starts off with my and Austin's wedding anniversary. Six years now and we can still stand each other.
Next up is Mother's Day and I hope to one day get a Mother's Day where I can sleep in and don't feel sick. Maybe next year. This year was good, though, in it's own way.
With new people in the family, we get to put a birthday up next, so that's fun. Birthdays are always fun.
After that is the anniversary of Dad's death. I doubt I'll ever forget that day, unless I develop some memory issues later in life. I actually might be ok with forgetting that.
Lastly, another birthday, my nephew. He's going to be 13 this year, which I'm in a bit of denial about. How is it possible these kids are getting so old?
My nephew was born within a week of my high school graduation, so maybe that's why I have a hard time accepting him as 13. I have a hard time believing it's been 13 years since I graduated from high school and 9 since college. But it definitely has.
While I wouldn't want to go back to high school, it was pretty awful, I wouldn't mind going back to my college years. Those were great. Lots of freedom, responsibility, but not TOO much, pretty much getting to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted with no parent consequences. Sure, if I stayed up too late and skipped class the next day, that could be a problem. But that was my problem. I didn't do that ever. I only skipped class if I was actually sick and once for a funeral. My teachers liked me, I had a few friends in my major and more in InterVarsity. It's where I met Austin. So college was good.
Caleb, my big little brother, graduated yesterday from Texas Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. It's been a long time coming. He was in Lubbock for 4 years and at TSTC for 1, which is about a normal time frame for EE from what I understand. He put in the time, applied for the grants and scholarships, and took out the loans when those didn't come through. He missed family events for schoolwork and spent late nights working on more schoolwork. And now he is done and we are all so proud of him.
We talked last night about how now, we can all point and laugh and people still doing school work and say "Suckers!" It's a pretty great feeling to graduate and know that you are DONE unless you lose your mind and want to go further.
Mom, Bob, Austin, Cari, our aunts Linda and Jean, and our close family friends the Martinezes were all there to watch him walk and get his diploma. We found him pretty quickly in the crowd and were able to get some photos of him looking all serious. Then we came back to Abilene, minus the Martinezes, and Tom and his family took their place while we celebrated with champagne and Mom's spaghetti.
Wednesday is the anniversary of Dad, so last night Caleb gave a toast to Dad, and how his death was a catalyst in his life to DO something. He said he hoped Dad was proud of him and we all scoffed quietly because even if Caleb had been a ditch digger, if he did it well, Dad would have been proud of him. Dad would have been bursting with pride that his son had achieved such a difficult degree. He would have been stopping people in the halls at church and gone up to the hospital specifically to tell them, stopping strangers in the grocery store, proud to announce that his son had a BSEE.
He's done us all proud, living and deceased. Now if one of those companies he's interviewed with would just give him a job already things would be borderline perfect.
Can you see him? He's the one in black. No? I'll zoom in.
See? Serious faces. To his left is one of the three girls in the EE graduating class.
For those wondering, apparently the President of the University's saying is "Dream no little dreams" or as the closed captioning said "Drain no little drains" or alternately "Drain no little greens." So take from that what you want. He said if you dream little dreams, you don't belong at Tech.
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