June 4, 2017

Graduation Party for Luke and Avery Swank


Graduation Party for Luke and Avery Swank
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 4, 2017


It's hard to believe that the time has come for Luke and Avery to be graduating high school.  It feels like they have grown up so fast.


Our friends, Dan & Jen Walters, helped us prepare for the party by lending us their tent and mosquito fogger.  The tent worked great.  The fogger, not so much.  Dang mosquitoes!


Winning the award for farthest travel to the boys' party was Miss Sheri's college roommate, Robin Bauman.  She lives in Hawaii and flew in for the celebration.  Her and Grandma Haack were so helpful throughout the event that we just don't know what we would have done without them!


Uncle Jerry also came early to help us set up the party.  We like to refer to him as "The Muscle".


Technically, Luke & Avery don't graduate until this Friday.  They have two days left of school so we're hoping nothing blows up on them and they end up not earning their diploma.  Otherwise, we just wasted a whole bunch of cupcakes.


Grandma Linda came to pitch in a hand and we felt like the kitchen was fully loaded and ready to go.  We had 200 tacos catered in from a local Mexican restaurant called Teresa's and a whole bunch of lemonade that proved to be quite popular.


We had a pretty good crowd come through our house over the four hour party.  We asked the Trump Administration for an estimate of the numbers and they said more than 1000 people stopped by.  Our records showed it was probably closer to 150 - 200 people.  Everyone who came over were all very nice. 


Krazy Kory and Harli drove up from Iowa for the celebration.  Which was good for us because a party ain't a party without Krazy Kory there to kick it off.


Ron "Sugarman" Myers brought his family up from Iowa which was nice as they brought a lot of energy with them.

  
Dr. Bollig and Cynthia made an appearance with their family which was fun.  We don't get to see them nearly as much as we'd like.

  
Our good friends, The Zitzewitzes and Browns, joined us for much of the evening.  It's so much fun having a party like this where all of our friends are there, but it's also challenging because you want to spend all your time with each of them.  We need to have another graduation party next weekend so we can spend more time with everybody. 

  
Winning the award for the youngest attendee was 3 month old Victoria Bailey along with her lovely mother, grandmother, and Aunt Jen.  It was the first time we'd seen her outside so that was pretty cool.


Luke said we had to get a "Spike Ball" set for the party because it's a lot of fun.  I'm glad we listened to him because it was a pretty popular activity.  I love spiking balls!


Some of the kids got a bit carried away with the ball spiking and sent one over the fences.  Lucky for us, we had a sugarman in attendance and he came to the rescue by scaling the 6 foot privacy fence.  We were a little worried he wouldn't make it back to us, but he's pretty bouncy.


Our virtual reality set-up was also a hit with the kids.  For some reason, they like to make their friends play a "Scary" game so they scream while all the other kids laugh at them.  Seems kind of sadistic to me.


Even the adults were getting into it including Jackson's grandfather.  I wasn't watching while he did it, but I sure hope the kids didn't make him play one of the "Scary" games.  That just ain't right.  


The graduation wasn't the only thing we were celebrating.  Robin's 50th birthday also took place this weekend, so we made sure to honor that special occasion as well.  Happy Birthday, Robin!


The party went late into the evening with the last guests not leaving until after midnight.  The next day we kind of felt like we had a whirlwind go through our house, but we also had a lot of laughs and memories of good friends who were there to help celebrate our sons' latest milestone.   Thank you all who were able to come!!

Here's more pictures of friends who stopped by to visit:


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