Our Graduation Story

I’m sitting here in our hotel room, trying to think of how to share everything that’s in my heart and camera memory card!

Both are very full.

Seeing as the internet is super slow, we’ll stick to the heart stuff, and do lots of pictures a different time!

Our weekend was such a great time of celebrating Ben’s grad, meeting all of his friends out here, and getting a glimpse of what he experienced each time he came to B.C. for his Master’s courses. I can see why he always came home so full of life and stories, and wanted us to see it all for ourselves.

Back when he was starting his Master’s, he had no plans of attending his graduation.

But as time went on, he started talking about how it would be kind of cool to experience it. Then last summer, when he came home from another trip to B.C., we started talking about what kind of story we want to tell with our life, and he suddenly said, “I want our family to go to my grad ceremony together. That’s the kind of story I want to tell.”

And it’s a good story to tell.

It’s a story about going after a dream, and finishing something important. It’s a story about the value of learning, about celebrating big milestones.

Ben asked me how much I thought the girls really understood about what was going on as we went from one graduation festivity to the next. I really don’t know the answer to that question, but I know that we’re saying something to them about what is important to our family when we pack everybody up, and fly away on an airplane just to get to Daddy’s graduation.

I want our girls to see that we’re here, and we’re proud, and we’re together as a family. We will look at pictures in the years to come, and we’ll tell stories, and remember this week as one that was important.

And fortunately, we will have plenty of pictures to help us remember! It is so outrageously beautiful out here, I’ve been feeling bad about all the pictures I’ve been taking. I’ve been wondering when my family will get completely sick of me always lagging behind, snapping away with my camera.

But when we got into our vehicle today, Ben said, “Thanks for all the pictures you took.”

I thought he was joking, but then he said, “We need them for the memories in the years to come.”

So then I took about 100 more photos that afternoon.

It’s all part of the story! Will share more soon.:)