Graduation Parties 2013

Graduation Parties 2013

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 16, 2013

When I was driving home from work on Friday night, there was a group of cars backed up on a road near my house.  When I was able to see what was happening, I discovered this guy trying to navigate a baby snapping turtle across the road to avoid being hit by traffic.

The guy was just trying to help him, but the turtle let us know pretty clearly that he wasn't a very big fan of the shovel.

On Friday night, we went to our first graduation party of the weekend at one of Miss Sheri's co-workers house.  Her daughter was celebrating her high school graduation.  Miss Sheri quit her job recently to become a full time mom, so the ladies were giving her a hard time about retiring so young.  If I'd have known that she wore hats like these when she was around her co-workers, I would have encouraged her to stick it out for another year or two.

On Saturday morning, we decided to go for a boat ride, but first we had to stop and have a discussion with Natalia who works for the DNR.  She works at the boat launch near our house and educates boaters on the invasive species they discovered in Prior Lake a few years ago like zebra mussels and milfoil weeds.  It became the law in Minnesota that boats are no longer allowed to drive on the road with their bilge plugs installed.  Lucky for me, my wife is pretty good with a wrench.

Luke and Avery brought a couple of friends from school with us to go on the boat.  It never ceases to amaze me how much better behaved my boys are when there's a couple of girls their age around.  We may need to adopt a couple of them to keep these guys in line.

I like pulling the kids around on a tube because it helps me to keep them all in line.  When they start acting up too much, I just send them over higher and higher waves and they scream themselves to a calmer mood.  It's a very effective technique.

Another one of the boy's classmates arrived with his family and we tied up the boats together to have a real party in the middle of candy cove.  Well, maybe not a party.  There weren't any other boats around us and the cold water kept us pretty mellow, but it was still fun all the same.

Saturday night brought us to our second graduation party of the weekend.  We went to join the celebration of  the lovely Jamie Erickson who is excited to move into her next stage of education studying pharmacology.  We've known Jamie since she was just a little girl, so it's weird to see her as a young lady moving out on her own.  It's weird to get old.

Jamie is the daughter of my good friend and former co-worker, Jay Erickson, who you never heard me talk much about before because he would never let me take his picture.  Now that we don't work together any more, he lets me.   If I would have known that's all it was going to take, I would have quit my job years ago!