Forgot to post about prom and graduation, oops!

In all of the chaos about MIL, I forgot to post anything about prom or graduation.  Middle DD went to her Sr. prom early in May (don't even remember the date, LOL) and looked sooo pretty!  She found the dress in our local mall and it was pretty cheap as prom dresses go.  I splurged and got her sparkly shoes and a handbag too.  She went with a group of girl friends, no dates and had a great time. 

 

Then the first weekend in June, she graduated, hooray!  It was a beautiful day and we had a terrific party on the deck - just a simple cookout with family and some of her friends.  There was a lot of painting and cleaning going on outside the house to get ready though!  And Marci was a huge help because the boyfriend got to come to the party too, and it was her first chance to introduce him to the extended family .  All in all it was a wonderful day and I think we all had a great time.

 

 Marci gave every single piece of lawn furniture a fresh coat of red paint, well, in between texts to Collin of course, LOL

Aunt Colleen used deck cleaner to freshen up the deck so we could paint it, but we ran out of rain-free days to paint it, so it was clean and pretty but not painted for the party.

 

We painted the insets of the front porch columns red to see if it would be nice and it was pretty sharp looking so we kept it.  I really wasn't certain at first and almost painted the first one white again!

 

We had a simple buffet of hot dogs and burgers, Marci's bean dip, baked beans, potato salad, and chips.  And of course, cake from Aunt Colleen!  (gee, the siding on the house looks filthy!  I don't think it was really that bad in real life?)

Glad we got this family shot, so often we get busy at these special day events and forget to get a picture of all of us together.  Especially if I'm taking the pix, I forget to give the camera to someone else and let them get all 5 of us (well, plus gr'ma and gr'pa in this photo). 

These are Ellen's friends, actually, not a very good pix, but it's kind of neat because you can see Robert, the one looking at her.  Turns out he likes her, and they have even gone on a few dates as of the writing of this post.  They worked together at Chuck E Cheese and he was the first one to arrive at the party - even was about 10 minutes early, I think he likes her :)

 

This was Ellen looking at her hope chest after the boys carried it up to the deck from the barn - thank you Chad, Collin, Robert & Leelynn!  The front panel slides over and reveals padded, hanging storage for necklaces.  In the background (L to R) are Gr'ma Bobbie, Robert, Collin & Marci.

 

Her pretty cakes, with her diploma and an awesome pix of her marching her freshman year.  She didn't have senior pix taken, but this one was from family pix done in January.

Our graduate, mostly she's glad the graduation is done and the hanging out could start!