Diplomas, Diseases and Deals Oh MY!

Diplomas...

There's nothing quite like your senior year in high school - I have lots of fond memories of mine. I'll admit, however, it's not quite as much fun from the Mom standpoint (pandemonium rules, not to mention the pain it causes your pocketbook - wOW!) It is hard to believe my daughter will be graduating from high school next Friday (eek!) It has been quite a journey for both of us. If you would like to read more about our mother/daughter adventures, just visit my lens Momography: Parenting A Deaf Child.
Number One Son graduated from college *gulp* last week - his degree took slightly longer than anticipated because he was deployed with the Guard somewhere in the middle of it, but that just means we get to be proud of him in two directions at the same time (Boo-yeah! :o)

Diseases...

Since we're having some folks over after graduation (not to mention the spring cleaning factor) I thought I should probably try to find the flowers in the front garden. You know, the ones that are rapidly disappearing in a sea of weeds? I guess it's a good thing I did, as two of my favorite flora required immediate medical attention. My Carpet Roses and Pink Lady Hawthorne are looking a bit the worse for wear due to:

They are both on heavy medication, and a full recovery is expected (whew! :o)  
Our school's FFA - Future Farmers of America - group boasts the largest student-run greenhouse in the Southeast (isn't that awesome?) so I bought some flowers from them to fill in the empty areas out front.  
Guess who I found when I was watering those plant purchases yesterday? None other than one of our favorite little frequent fly-ers (woo, that was a really bad pun *grin*) peeking at me through the Portulaca. Of course I watered him right along with the flowers, but he didn't seem to mind. Let me go ahead and remind you that I am prone to random acts of silliness (there is an official disclaimer in a previous post somewhere around here). We have lots of frogs living in and around the flowerbeds, so I decided to give them all names: Ced, Ed, Fred, Jed, Ned, Ted and Zed (yeah well, I had a theme going and it was free entertainment, okay? We don't have cable, don'tcha know :o)

...and Deals

I've opted to be a cliche and save the best for last. With any business comes paperwork (and if that business is a kid focused non-profit, you can just go ahead and slap an exponent on said paperwork) and supplies. Aside from the usual correspondence, forms, general information, grant information, etc. we have stickers, postcards, and bookmarks, plus handouts, puzzle sheets, and color sheets, that are tailored to each horse. Then there are the Fan Club packs (a work in progress) containing items donated by various horse related organizations in a number of other boxes - can you say papers, papers, everywhere? The scary part is that this isn't even all of it. Yeesh. Anyway, I was number crunching (and cringing) earlier this week over the price of filing cabinets; and as they say in the South, "They sure are proud of those things." A four drawer lateral file (without a lock), runs $160 - OUCH! Seriously? Methinks (well, methought anyway) I might be stuck with gazillions of boxes all over the house indefinitely, but then we stopped by the Rescue Mission and...HOT DIGGITY DOG!!!

Isn't God great? After running in circles for months chasing paperwork from box to box all over the house, we can finally put it all in the same place - not to mention actually eat at our dining room table - Hooray! Of course now I just have to figure out where on earth to keep a filing cabinet until the office is finished. I think maybe we'll just worry about that later though, don't you? Have a wonderful weekend everyone!