Elle’s seminary graduation

Seminary graduation was the Sunday evening following Baccalaureate.

So glad my mom and brother were in town to attend with us.

(Although Josh had to leave before we got around to taking a picture…)

Seminary is offered in our school as “released time” so the kids just walk across the street to the seminary building during that hour of high school.

I appreciate that convenience more than ever after living in China where Max and Elle attended early morning seminary.  They had the best teachers ever, but man alive it was early.  And cold.  And made me appreciate so much all the early-morning seminary teachers out there in the world, and the kids who sacrifice to be there each day to learn the scriptures and incorporate them better into their lives.

Released-time seminary can be tricky as well since it takes the place of other classes that could be taken and lots of kids around here have to do summer school and online classes to make up for it.  But oh boy seminary is awesome.  I love that high school kids can have a spiritual portion of their day that is filled with so much other mumbo-jumbo hoopla.  Yes, sure, lots of it is important mumbo-jumbo hoopla but I love that spirituality is mixed in.

Here are two cute girls pretty excited for their older siblings:

Here are some of the kids graduating with Elle who are in our same church congregation:

And here are the “first-grade girls” (we always still refer to them as the first grade girls because that’s where they met and became fast friends).  They all grew up together in the same neighborhood:

So much has changed over the years and each one of these girls has branched off and become quite amazing young women, but I love that when they get back together their faces look like this.

I wrote about their moms back HERE years ago, but their moms love each other quite a lot as well :).
All that love was a great way to top off a great night.