12 June 2016

Our big event this week was Sofi's graduation from high school!  Besides her cap and gown, Sofi wore a blue cord to show she attended the school of Business, Innovation and Science, yellow cords to show her GPA was in the top 5% in her class and a medal with a blue ribbon to show she was valedictorian of her school.  

We showed up an hour early to get good seats.  Graduation was held outdoors in the football stadium.

Becky made bingo cards to keep Abe, Helen and Gibson entertained during the ceremony.

The graduates lined up based on which of the three small schools they attended, height and alternating boy and girl.  Except they ran out of girls and just had a long line of boys at the end.  By random luck, Sofi ended up at the end of the front row.  We could see her the entire ceremony.

The program was fairly simple: the three principals offered a few welcomes and acknowledgments, the three valedictorians (one from each school) spoke and then the graduates received their diplomas.  Here's a photo of Sofi giving her speech.

Bella, the valedictorian from the Renaissance Academy, brought her school's unofficial mascot, a green garden gnome, to graduation.  Bella gave the gnome to Sofi to hold while Bella gave her speech.

Based on her seating assignment, Sofi was the last student to receive her diploma.  We cheered for everyone!

The Class of 2016!

We found Sofi in the gym after graduation.

We're super proud of Sofi!  She did a fantastic job on her speech and showed extraordinary poise and grace.

All the graduating boys got a white rose boutonniere and all the girls got a red rose stem from the school.  Here's Abe modeling Sofi's hat and rose.

Joey, Bella and Sofi have been friends since 8th grade.

Maybe getting a little tired of taking photos?

Sofi's friends met up after graduation for a bonfire at Joey's house.

Here's a flashback to Sofi's first day of school as a kindergartner at Marrion Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington.

Here's a photo from Sofi's last day of school.  We had a hard time choosing her last day of school (last day of high school classes? graduation day? last day she helped out in the freshman English class?) and finally decided on June 10.  She took her physics final at the community college on Friday and is now truly done with school work for the summer.  Sofi, Abe, Becky and Brandan celebrated by going out to breakfast before school.  The elementary school started too early for Helen and Gibson to come.

Here's another flashback: Sofi's first piano recital, held on 26 October 2006.  It was a Halloween themed recital and Sofi played a song called "Cops and Robbers."

Here's a photo from Sofi's last recital.  She played "Cristifori's Dream" as a solo and "Homestead Hoedown " as a duet with Joey.

Their song was written to be played on two pianos, but Joey and Sofi thought it would be more fun to just swap places at one piano.

They jumped up and changed positions more than once and never lost their spot in the music. Fun!

Joey's mom, Andrea, has been Sofi's piano teacher for the last four years and has been a mentor and friend to her beyond piano lessons.

Today was Sofi's last day in Young Womens.  Her leaders gave all the seniors candy posters.  Sofi has her first grown up calling at church: family history consultant.  She helped teach the family history Sunday School class today.

Sofi's Chinese class came to dinner Sunday night.  Yes, this is the whole class of higher level Chinese speakers.  Chinese was Sofi's favorite class this year.  Their class talked about EVERYTHING, in Chinese, of course.  From the left are Eliza, Renna, Zheng Ling, Sofi and Colton.

Zheng Ling and her son, Jerry, taught us how to make dumplings.  Before tonight, Becky would have called dumplings "potstickers." This is a photo of Zheng Ling kneading the dough before rolling it into little circles.

 She made two kinds of filling, pork and vegetarian.  Traditional dumplings are made with wheat flour, but we experimented with rice flour to make some for Abe and Helen.  Fei chang hao! (Super good!)