Graduation! Graduation!

Seminary graduation was held early this year—May 4th! 

The girls have been attending seminary in the Roswell Stake. We're in Lilburn Stake, but are geographically closer to a lot of buildings within the Roswell Stake than we are to buildings in the Lilburn Stake and when it comes to early morning seminary, commute time matters. Plus, these seminary kids were kids that we met when we first moved here (before we were split off of their ward and then off of their stake), so...anyway...

Last year was the first year Rachel and Miriam attended in-person seminary. Grandpa was their teacher, along with Brother Moser—who is being released at the end of this year after four years of teaching early morning seminary. This year it was Brother Moser and...someone else.

Here's Rachel with Rachael:

And here's their graduating class (Rachael, Arturo (who attends the Portuguese ward), Bro. Moser, Garrett (brother Moser's son), and Rachel):

Three different wards, three different high schools, one great seminary class.

Today we went to the botanical gardens to take pictures. We have official ones coming from our good camera, but here are a few snapshots I took:

This caterpillar was crawling on Rachel's robe and she wanted a picture of it:

The kids were each given a white cord to wear with their graduation robes, signifying their achievement of completing four years of seminary. 

Here's Rachel with all her siblings:

And getting to be a little goofy:

It was a beautiful day! Rather cool for May! And the gardens were just lovely.

People kept walking by and congratulating Rachel, which she felt weird about...but also she was legitimately graduating so it's not like she was tricking them into saying anything!

I have many more picture to share from our time in the gardens...but I also have a final paper to finish writing and Andrew said that we can't look at the pictures from the big camera until I finish my paper (not as, like, a threat...but as motivation—a prize, if you will). So, I really should get working on that!

We're so proud of Rachel! We can't believe it's time to send her out into the world...but we're proud of her and are excited to see where life takes her!