My Baby Brother Graduates...

What can I say except that I feel really, really old right now. My youngest brother graduated from Highschool. That is a complete WOW factor to me. My trip to see my CA family this year included Jonathan's graduation, which is crazy in and of itself. My last sibling out of highschool!


I only had a few hours with my sister, Elizabeth, but it was fun to be able to see her school life and hear a little more about Ignite. I flew into Santa Barbara on Friday night and on Saturday morning, we got up early and drove down to San Diemas to visit with Elizabeth. We went to lunch at a great place called Mexican Food. Really creative title, I know, but the food was good.

We spent the day shopping for some final things that Elizabeth needed, like snacks, a bag, and some shoes, before her missions trip to Spain and Moracco. After an afternoon of shopping, we went back to Elizabeth's school and hung outside at the volley ball courts and just sat and talked for a while.


Besides the regular family, we had my cousin Seth's daughter with us who is just adorable! She was totally fun all day long and a total cutie! In this pic, Carol, Sierra, and Elizabeth are sitting outside at Elizabeth's campus by the volley ball court. Jonathan was taking about a million pictures with my camera, and this is one.

Here's another picture of Sierra that Jonathan took...she's beautiful!

We had a great time! After a while, we went into Elizabeth's dorm and helped her finish up packing her stuff, both for her trip and to load up for us to take home for the summer for her. We said good bye later that night, and she flew out on Sunday for her first stop on her mission trip (Spain).



The next few days were filled with me kicking my brother's butt (for once) at Mario Party 8. I've never beaten him in my life, so that was pretty exciting. The problem was, I had been practicing here in MN on Marisa's Wii and he hadn't played Mario Party 8 since the last time we played together...

Just before Jonathan's Graduation, Sierra's sister was born. She was really cute too! We all got to go see Savannah, but only two were allowed in the room at a time. She's just a day or two old here.

And then came the time for Graduation. So weird to have my youngest brother graduate! The ceremony was great, other than the change of the year on the hill from 2009 to 2010 by the incoming seniors (which really made the outgoing seniors mad).



Debbie and Michael came up for the graduation, Ashley joined us (who is in school at UCSB and who I used to babysit!!), as well as Janet (New Life Church's former paster's wife). After the Graduation ceremony, we went out to dinner for mexican...nummy!



I also got to see Staci, my childhood best friend, while I was in Santa Barbara. It was a blast to catch up with her and see here two beautiful kids.

Santa Barbara was great. Although the fire/burnt area was just weird to see how far it came down into the city itself. My parents had to evacuate their home because of how close it came.

The pic here is from about a mile from their house. Crazy! You can see the burnt hill and how alot of the trees around it have burnt or dried out. It looks like the leaves are turning for fall, but they aren't...they are burned! I only got a few pics of burnt area because I spent more time just hanging out with family.