Graduation Party 2013

Graduation...it's an exciting moment in one's life. Freedom, relief, fear, joy and satisfaction are some feelings that graduates experience. For a few others it's also a scary and confusing time because so many life-altering decisions are expected to be made when they have barely experienced or lived a full life. I think Adam Kotsko summed it up perfectly when he tweeted,

"We ask 18-year-olds to make huge decisions about their career and financial future, 

when a month ago they had to ask to go to the bathroom."  

Graduation is also a time for celebration and to cut loose from all the stress school has caused both the child and parents. So naturally we had a party. Due to conflicting schedules my son's graduation party was scheduled the day before Father's Day and a couple of weeks after his 18th birthday. In order to make things easy, my family decided to combine all 3 celebrations (graduation, birthday, Father's Day) into one party. 

I'm a frugal person at heart and to avoid the cost of stamps on 2 separate invitations I decided to make these tags to be mailed along with the graduation invites. I know I could have really saved money by sending an electronic invite but I am old school and I still love paper. I shudder at the thought of electronic wedding invitations. I am sure companies like Josten's and paper companies are happy that people still mail graduation announcements too.

Note: I'm not being rude asking others to bring a side dish. We have a huge family and our gatherings are always potluck. For outisde-of-the-the-family friends I made a different tag that did not ask to bring food.

My son's name is Alec. I made a play on words "Such a Smart Alec" for a sign I placed above the dessert table where I also displayed mini copies of his certificates and awards. To be honest we were not even aware of some certifications.

As always we had so many desserts.

  

I made custom bingo cards using school references. In order to avoid having double winners in the same game I made 20 cards to have a good variety. While trying to make the cards my eyes started to get googly scrolling through 20 tables and I started to get confused. I noticed some of the cards had the same word on them. So I erased the words and started over. This time I made a list of words and then I scrolled through and randomly placed the words one at a time. This way I didn't have the same words on one card and had a complete list of words to call out during the game. For the game piece to cover the words I used mini stamp cut outs. I bought small prizes such as $5 Starbucks gift cards for the winners.  It was such a pain in the booty to make these so if you're interested I can email the Word file for these cards. Just leave a comment below or send a private message. When I figure out how to post docs on google docs I'll put the cards there but until then it will have to be email.

 

playing bingo

To highlight moments of Alec's progress in school, graduation and our family life I hung pictures around the house. I used twine and miniature clothes pins to hang the photos. When the party was over family members were allowed to take whatever photos they wanted for their own photo albums.

Note:  I actually left the twine up and used it to hang up Christmas cards later in the year.

My Mischievous Graduate 2013

I'm listening to Third Eye Blind's "Graduate" song while writing this post for inspiration but after singing a few lines I realize that it's not really fitting the occassion, especially the "punk ass" part. Still a good song though.

My eldest son, Alec, recently graduated from high school. (Big sigh of relief.) We've been waiting for this moment since his first day of kindergarten. It's been quite the long and winding road for us. School has definitely changed since my husband and I attended and it has been quite a learning experience. Unfortunately for Alec since he is our firstborn we made most of our mistakes with him. We even messed up kindergarten. We were not aware that he was supposed to already know the alphabet and be able to count to 20 before he started kindergarten. No one told us. We just assumed that he would learn it in school. There was not a starter kit that told new parents what to do. Over the years there were many more slap our foreheads and "Why didn't anyone tell us?" moments. But despite our grandest failures and mistakes our boy made it and graduated #40 in class with honors and certifications in Adobe Photoshop and Graphic Design and Illustration.

I was going through some papers and found these communication notes from his elementary teacher. At the time my husband and I got a good chuckle, but we had to hide our amusement and instead show Alec stern faces and have serious talks with him about his behaviour. There were a few other incidents but he stopped getting in trouble because he learned how to hide his mischievousness. I know he was still a rascal because he would tell us every once in a while about stuff at school. Now that Alec is older we can laugh about these notes from his teacher together.

 Chasing another student after spitting on his hand to "touch him" with spit.

Tearing movie tickets so it reads "ASS" and passing it to other students. 

Out of seat during Social Studies, Blurting in class that Santa is gay, Disrupting class during presentations.

We've come a long way since Alec's pranking days and he put in a lot of hard work and effort to achieve his goals. We know his AP classes were not easy and neither of us could help with AP physics. We're so proud of him and we definitely wanted to celebrate it.  Next post is about his graduation party.

First day of school. We still have the Blue's Clues Steve shirt.

Typical teen on phone. 

Minecraft Birthday Party, Pt. 2

As I mentioned in Minecraft Party Part 1 there is not much Minecraft supplies out on the market.  It's not like I could run to Party City and buy party supplies or order a cake from the bakery with a Minecraft theme.  Luckily I found a seller who supports cancer research and sells edible cake toppers on ebay. It was so easy. I ordered a plain cake with only borders from the bakery and carefully added the cake topper. The topper was brightly colored and exactly like the Minecraft image.  It really does not have a taste to it just like gum paste. I'm so glad I found it because my son asked me to make a cake that is in the Minecraft game and I did not have time to do it.  Here's the seller on ebay if you're interested.

http://myworld.ebay.com/cakesforcures2003  I am a mother of a cancer survivor who is 9. I wanted to figure out a way to help cancer research fund raising and I also have been interested in selling on ebay. I combined these two interests and donate a portion of all proceeds to cancer research.  (http://myworld.ebay.com/cakesforcures2003?_trksid=p2047675.l2559)  

You can also find Minecraft toys and T-shirts on Amazon.  Below is the sword in the game.  I don't have a picture of the shirt.  We ordered a large adult shirt and it acutally fit our 12 yr old boy.

Everyone knew the end of the world was not really going to take place on Dec. 21 just because the Mayan calendar suddenly stopped but there was such hoopla about it that it became a joke.  My son's birthday is December 22 so I thought it would be fun to add a music CD with  "end times" and other relateable songs in the goodie bag for the party. We did songs such as "It's the End of the World," "Sugar, We're Going Down," and "Stayin' Alive".

Comic is cd cover.

goodie bag stuff

We had a great time at Amazing Jake's.  The kids are all old enough to run around on their own while we adults sat at the tables and talked for 3 hours. Amazing Jake's has a buffet that we can continue to get food from thoughout the day.  It's not the greatest food but it will do. The kids really enjoy the endless amounts of pizza.  The kids were given cards that they scanned to play video games, ride go karts, rock climbing, and play laser tag and putt putt.  The only drawback is the kids run out of credits for video games quickly on their cards if they're not too careful.