Happy 21st Birthday Ryan!

Popping in to wish Ryan a happy 21st birthday!  He is back at OU celebrating with his friends...and I'm praying that this morning isn't too bad for him!  It was so nice to have him home this past week. We're so proud of the young man he is becoming...working hard at his music production and his classes.  Love, love, love him with all my heart.

In addition to sharing his card I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorites of him over the years!  Not sure how I am old enough to have a 21 year old.

With Sympathy

Happy Saturday. I woke up super early this morning and have been catching up on fun things like paying bills, reconciling payments for my volunteer treasurer role for my kids show choir and perusing blogs!  And now it's time to pop in and share a card with you.  Just Us Girls has an Anything Goes challenge which is perfect to share this card I made last week. Love that gorgeous font on this Lil Inker set.  I am sending out two sympathy cards today to friends who have lost a loved one.  I also seem to need to send out so many this time of year.

On to a much lighter subject, Ryan's band performed at a local bar down by the University of Cincinnati last night. I rarely get to see him perform live since he is off at school, but it was absolutely awesome!  Here's a quick (and very poor shot of him on stage). Love him and am oh so proud.  Tonight we'll have performances by Collin and Marcel as show choir season kicks off today.  In my mind, a perfect weekend of watching my kids do what they love!

Ryan’s Graduation

Good morning friends.  Photo heavy post today!  I'm back sharing two things today...a fun very CAS card and lots of pictures from Ryan's graduation. First up is a card set that I made for a dear friend whose daughter graduated.  Love CAS clean cards. This card was made with stamps from Concord & 9th and Uniko.

Now onto Ryan's graduation. What a special, heart filling day it was!  This first picture is of Ryan and his dear friend, Austin, processing in to the ceremony.  The kids don't go in alphabetical order for graduation; rather they get to pick a friend they want to walk with in the ceremony.  Austin lives two doors up and these two have been friends since second grade.

Looking over to give me a smile! :)

Many of these pictures including this one below were taken by friends. The boys intently listening to one of the commencement speeches. Their principals speech was my favorite of  them all.

It's almost their turn to get their diplomas. Each students name and picture accepting their diploma was flashed on the big screen in the arena.

It's official...Ryan accepting his diploma from our school board president and friend, Art Jarvis.

Ryan and a few of his friends tried out to be able to sing at graduation. Talk about being proud.  So, so proud of him. Here he is up on the big screen as he's singing and playing guitar.

Ryan, Austin (on snare), Alyssa (vocals with Ryan), Ben (on base) and Amanda (not shown - on piano). What an amazing experience and they sounded incredible singing Tame Impala's, Yes I'm Changing. If you follow me on Facebook, there's a video over there :)

 

All of the senior students in choir also sang...yes my heart is full!

Can you tell the grandparents are oh so proud! 

And we are too!  Collin wasn't really in the mood for pictures :)!

Ryan with several of his close friends!  I could share tons more but I think that is enough!  We're off today for his orientation at OU. Time is certainly flying.  I'm one proud mom and excited for what's next for Ryan.

 

Musical Thanks!

With the end of the school year, I'm always in need of teacher thank you. Over the weekend, I needed to make five thank you notes for the three directors and two parents who put a ton of time in support of our show choir programs.  So...I thought I'd share them all at once with you. The picture of us with Ryan above is in his last show choir event this past weekend. The kids performed a Beatles show. They were truly amazing. A little bitter sweet as I am going to miss seeing him perform!

 

This card below is for the  mom who takes care of all the performance outfits for over 150 students. To say she is amazing is the biggest understatement of the year. She puts in countless hours to make sure they look pristine on stage!

And this is for the dad (whose wife is the costume person!) who makes sure all the musical and stage equipment is set. He's incredible too...building sets, teaching the student crew and overall being fantastic

This card features the logo of our show choir.  Since we live in Loveland, we have a heart and we also have a big star with three smaller stars representing the three show choirs.

 

Aim High

It's been one week since I came back from an amazing crafty weekend away...and it's time to get caught up on the blog!  One of my goals last weekend was to get a lot of graduation cards done.  In three months we'll be celebrating Ryan and many of his friends graduation.  If you've been around here before you know how much I love one layer cards and a touch of collage stamping.  These are Avery Elle stamps. Thankful to be able to borrow stamps throughout the weekend.

On my way home I caught up on my Project Life pages about this weekend. Words really can't express how much this weekend fills up my heart.  Love these ladies so very much!  A huge thanks to Amy and Laurie for organizing such a fantastic weekend.  Wonderful to reconnect with old friends and make many new friends.

I hope you are all having a fabulous weekend.  I'm sitting here blogging and waiting for Ryan's show choir to perform at about 11:40 EST via live stream in Mississippi. Pretty thankful that even though I'm not there I can still watch them perform!

Warm Wishes

Happy Sunday my friends.  I'm sitting here pretty tired after two days of show choir competitions, but honestly I wouldn't trade it for the world. Both Collin and Ryan's groups did really well - both coming in second place.   It is so fun to watch Ryan as a senior with five years in the group and to see the smiles on Collin's face as he competes for the first time.  I asked Collin what the best part was...and he said, "I don't know...all of it. It's just so much fun."  He's so adorable up there and is very proud that he's a good dancer.  My favorite part with Ryan is the early morning and late night talks we have when he is getting ready to leave or when he gets home. The day started with a quick breakfast talk at 6 am and ended with a long conversation when he got home at 2:15 am. The friendships they make through this group, the life long skills they learn of being part of a team and working hard will forever serve them well. We are very blessed to have wonderful directors that set  fantastic examples for our children.  My heart is full every time I watch them perform.  

Getting a start on Christmas cards for next year...when I saw the challenge for the Merry Monday challenge, I knew I had a few tiny scraps of this plaid paper left so I quickly put it to use with this very CAS card.  Always nice to get a jump start on my Christmas cards!

And now...I'm off to go pick up Jonathon from his youth group retreat!  After which I'll promptly be sitting on the couch!