Friday, May 10th
We left at 8:00a headed south! The plan was to drive to Charlottesville, VA and pick up Maddy from that airport and then continue another hour into Lynchburg, home of Liberty University!
The last two hours of our journey had us on secondary roads through the rolling hills of Virginia. I saw my dream house! Such a pretty drive. Kids cooperated. We had Chick-Fil-A for lunch. We got our Maddy back! Pretty great day!
We arrived within 15 minutes of her little puddle-jumper plane at the teeniest little airport. She's ours for the summer! I can't believe how fast those nine months went by! With FaceTiming daily and actually seeing her about every 3 weeks, it really wasn't that bad.
We finally pulled into our ridiculously expensive, ridiculously crappy motel around 7p. Boys in one room, girls in the other. The kids got right to playing basketball off the balcony. I LOVE being together. I love being away from all the distractions and responsibilities. I love adventure and travel. I love watching them play together at all ages. I love celebrating milestones as a family. It was a very sweet evening.
From my Instagram post:
As I kneeled in the hotel room steaming her graduation gown, I reflected on this milestone. Total gratitude for His goodness in my life, our lives. I'm so undeserving of all of it, but also just.so.grateful for all of it.
The days are long but the years are short. Can't believe we are here. Again. Another kid ready to wear the cap and gown. Another milestone for our little family. I've tried so hard not to grieve these, but to celebrate them. "Happy Tears"-that's a thing, right?
Saturday, May 11th
We were up, packed, out, parked, shuttled, securitied, and seated for the 10am start.
They weren't playin'!
Maddy's class-about 200 of the 500+ high school grads came to commencement from all over the world. It's the biggest class yet. I'll add a couple fun facts here: the late LU president, Jerry Falwell, Sr. had a vision for online learning, conceived long before it was a mainstream thing. His vision was for Christian education to be available to missionary and military families who were all over the world. Liberty was on the cutting edge of online college and more recently added elementary and high school homeschool. Also fun to know: the University's (college level) oldest graduate this year was 87 and it's youngest, 17. From college!
Maddy chose to sit with us until the individual schools broke off.
So grateful Ninny and Papa could join us for the big day!
Everything was first class! We were so impressed with everything about the day. So encouraged how Christ-centered EVERYTHING was. Even on a day when the focus could have solely been on the milestone, every speaker took the opportunity to point the students to Christ. He alone is the Source! We also loved the strong flavors on military appreciation and entrepreneurship.
Mike Pence was great! He shared about his faith and finding Christ in college. You can youtube much of the commencement. But the campus pastor had about 5 minutes on the stage. He was to announce posthumous grads and then introduce the university president, but his ended up being the most profound moments of the day. All the big kids even noted it at dinner later. I'm so glad they were impacted by it.
Click here to listen.
Also very moving was when they were concluding and the Voices of Liberty sang their traditional "Lord, You are Holy". Powerful song. Quite something when the Vice President stands to honor the holiness of the Lord, so everyone else on the platform stands, and then 40,000 in the arena stand in reverence and worship.
Afterwards, all the different schools broke apart for the actual reading of names and diplomas. The high school had its own little ceremony. Maddy ended up sitting next to a dancer (a serious enough dancer that the dancer does online school so she can dance more!) that she had competed against at the national level in New Orleans.
One more little side story: Imagine my shock when the high school part kicked off and I looked up and saw the ASL interpreter 20 feet in front of me and said, "Colombo! I went to high school with her!" He didn't believe me. I was shocked! We're friends on FB so I knew she lived in VA and I knew she was an interpreter, but still!!! Jenn Siggins and I played basketball together in high school. We got to chat briefly at the end and I'm so sad we didn't take a picture tougher! She had to 'spell' every single name that was called for their diploma!
We hit the road for a couple hours and then stopped to eat at a nice Italian restaurant and then back on the road to the halfway-home point and stopped for the night.
Our hotel rooms were sooo perfect for our group. It was a bummer we couldn't be there longer to enjoy them, but we did get a lovely Mother's Day buffet included!
Our plan was to go another hour north-closer to home-and spend Mother's Day in Philly. Melody had given me some great ideas. I wanted to do Harbor Park, hang out by the river, and eat at the food trucks, but the weather didn't cooperate, so instead, we did the aquarium which ended up being a lot of fun for all ages. Good together time.
It just crushed Nathanael's heart to be IN Philly, and literally drive past Independence Hall and not do anything historic. Same with driving past D.C. Sorry, Bud. Next time.
Real Philly cheesesteaks for lunch!
What should have been an easy 3.5 hours home turned into more like 5 with NYC traffic. But we stopped somewhere along the way for blizzards. Everyone survived and I was even showered with loving messages and cards before everyone headed to off to bed. All of the kids notes were heartfelt and sweet. They are generous with their words even if most of it feels very undeserved. They made me laugh and cry.
Best Inbox ever!!:
It was a good day! Definitely one I'll always remember and cherish.
