Corey graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication last Friday, May 15th. The Commencement was on Wednesday, the 13th, at which President Barack Obama spoke. Here are some pictures from the events:
ASU Sun Devil Stadium--super crowded and a long hot wait for President Obama
The Graduate
We're so happy he's finally done!
Corey's mom came out from CA for the graduation. So did his sister Traci and her husband and son. We didn't get any pictures of them, though. His other sister Jamie came up from Casa Grande and his brother Toby was at the Convocation on Friday.
Dad has his bachelor's degree! Yay!
At the Convocation on Friday
Half of the Giant 6 ft sub we got for the occasion
A couple of weeks ago, I was back in the office doing the checkbook and budget (oh, so not a favorite chore of mine!), and it was kind of quiet in the living room so I ran out and found Eliza up on the counter between the living room/kitchen, eating chocolate. Her brothers were playing in the toy room, so when I discovered 4 empty chocolate wrappers under her, I realized that she had eaten all that chocolate by herself! She had climbed up onto the love seat, which is up against the wall between the kitchen/living room, and from there onto the counter, which has the laminate cap. The rest of the Easter treats were in a bowl just on the other side of the counter top, on the kitchen counter top, supposedly out of Eliza's reach. But she found a way to get to them.
Now she spends about 5 time-outs a day in her room with the gate up every time I catch her sitting on that counter top. She is always climbing up there. The only way to stop her would be to move the love seat, and we really don't have anywhere else to put it.
I just love that my children love each other and freely share their affections! For bedtime, each child chooses one book and I read to each of them. While they're waiting, they look at their book, either alone or with each other. Westley is reading, of course, so he often reads his book to himself before I read it to him. Tonight, though, Eliza demanded on joining us for books. I went to take her to her bed while the boys were just choosing their books and she threw a fit, wanting to choose a book herself, so I brought her back in with us and she chose a book and settled down with it while I read Travis his book. Then, while I was reading Caleb his book, Westley had already finished reading his over once, so he took Eliza's book, took her by the hand, and went to another corner of the room and sat down with her in his lap and read her book to her. It was so sweet! I just wanted to go and squeeze and cuddle those cuties, and I had a hard time reading Caleb his book because I was so focused on watching the exchange between Westley and Eliza. He was so patient with her and let her touch the pictures and talk to him while he read the counting board book. If only I'd had quick access to a camera, but I knew that jumping up and running for it would have disrupted the moment, so I just watched quietly.
When Westley started throwing out ideas for a Star Wars birthday party several weeks ago, at first, I kind of blew it off. After all, growing up, we only really got one birthday party, and most of us had it for our 8th birthday, or right around there. And I can see why--they are expensive and they are a lot of work! But when he would get so excited about coming up with a fun game or idea for the party, I decided to go ahead with it. After all, if we only invited a few friends, we could keep it fairly small and simple.
Yeah, right.
Not so small, not so simple, but it turned out to be quite fun.
This was the invitation...
I got the idea after googling "Star Wars birthday invitations". I just took black cardstock, cut it into fourths, and wrote out the lines on the front with a silver scrapbooking pen. Then I cut out little light sabers from red and green construction paper and gray construction paper for the handles and glued them on. Caleb helped me with the gluing.
I should have started working on the activities for the party much sooner, but I didn't start until middle of the week this week. On Wednesday, Corey picked up some supplies from Home Depot and Party City and Walmart. Then I put together light sabers for all the kids by cutting PVC pipe insulation into 2 ft long sections and spray-painting half of them green and half of them blue. After they were dry, I wrapped about 5 inches of one end with duct tape for the handle and then Corey drew on buttons with a couple different-colored Sharpee markers.
I also drew up a "Pin the Light Saber on the Jedi" poster. I used the DVD cover for Star Wars Episode I as my guide for the drawing. It was a little rough drawing on poster board, rather than butcher paper, which would have been my first choice. It was hard to color with colored pencil, but I thought it turned out quite nice. I cut the light saber for the game out of blue cardstock with black cardstock for the handle. I was going to make a light saber for each child, and maybe I should have, but it turned out to be a lot of work, so instead we used one light saber and then marked the spot where they put it with a post-it note.
The other thing I got busy doing on Thursday and Friday was an idea from my cousin's wife Lori. She told me about a way to make a simple Jedi robe for the kids, so I ran to the nearest fabric store--a Wal-mart Supercenter about 35 minutes away--and bought some cheap brown fabric and some belt material for belts. I spent several hours on Friday sewing the costumes--cutting the hole in the top for the head and hemming them. Basically I made a poncho and then tied it off with a belt. The three boys now each have a Jedi outfit to wear when they dress up.
I also decorated the cake to be two light sabers fighting. Westley wanted a Darth Vader cake originally, but I talked him out of it. I did the black frosting thing for Travis' birthday this last year (black widow cake) and didn't want to do it again, so we talked him into something with light sabers. The cake was a hit--the kids thought it was cool.
Westley himself designed the obstacle course we used for the Jedi training camp. After training them with their light sabers and playing "Pin the Light Saber on the Jedi", we took them outside in the 102 degree Arizona midday heat and ran them through the obstacle course. Westley thought it all out in his head and drew up a map for Corey to use when he set it up. I think Corey had to make only a few minor adjustments, like not including throwing the ball to Snoopy. We timed the kids going through it and the fastest (well, really the second fastest--the fastest kid turned out to be the same one who won the light saber game, and the prize was the same thing) won.
We had pizza for lunch and the kids just seemed to have a lot of fun. Most of the party the theme for Star Wars was playing in the background, courtesy of my cousin Andy who sent it to me via email on Thursday morning and Corey burned it to a CD when he got home from work.
Thanks everyone who helped! Westley had a lot of fun, and I think all 10 of his guests did also (supposed to be only 8, but we kept adding names after the original 8 and ended up inviting 12, but 2 didn't come). I'm plain worn out from all the work, so I don't think we'll be doing something like this again for a while. But who knows, come October, we may decide to do something spectacular again for Caleb.
I can't believe that my oldest child is six years old! Time sure does fly!
We took cupcakes to Westley's class for his birthday. Here he is playing with Eliza while choosing the tables to come up and each get a cupcake. Westley opened his presents from family on Friday night. Westley blew out the candles on a cupcake, since his big cake, the one I make all fun for him, is for the party on Saturday.
A couple weeks ago, we attended an awards ceremony for kindergarten at Westley's school. He won two awards: An Elementary Scholar, which came with a bumper sticker for the car "My child is an honor student at Copper Basin" or whatever it says, and an award for knowing all 50 kindergarten sight words, one of like 6 students in the whole kindergarten to get that one.
ASU Sun Devil Stadium--super crowded and a long hot wait for President Obama
The Graduate
We're so happy he's finally done!
Corey's mom came out from CA for the graduation. So did his sister Traci and her husband and son. We didn't get any pictures of them, though. His other sister Jamie came up from Casa Grande and his brother Toby was at the Convocation on Friday.
Dad has his bachelor's degree! Yay!
At the Convocation on Friday
Half of the Giant 6 ft sub we got for the occasion
Corey's graduation cake
Corey King with his bachelor's degree
