Alyssa's Graduation from Avenue Five Institute

A Month Overdue...

Alyssa chose to graduate early, a couple of months after she turned 18, so she could go straight into a Cosmetology Program. After looking around, she chose Avenue Five: A Vidal Sassoon School.  Only about 12 exist in the USA, so it's a fairly prestigious school.  She learned so much there over the 10 month program. The way it works, time wise, is that you have to complete certain tasks, and 1500 hours of work. She quickly learned that keeping lunches to 30 minutes, and coming in a little early, would help click the time off more quickly. And, in spite of being really tired some days, she didn't want to take a hit with regard to her hours. She pressed on. I was so impressed! It was such a different experience from when she went to high school and was leaving early, sleeping late - I think her attendance rate (according to those nasty truancy notes) was about 65%. But juxtapose that with THIS experience - her attendance rate was 104%!!!

Because of this attitude, she was able to shave some time off. She and several of her friends graduated early from this program too. She was in the first week/wave of graduates from the people who started at the end of June 2011.

Graduation Pre-Parties

Happy Hour before the Graduations start

with Paige

Britney & Alyssa

The soon-to-be graduates went out to Hula Hut at Lake Austin. It would be one of the last times for them all to hang out together. Some were going to finish school and get a job in Austin, others would be moving away as soon as they graduated.  Even though some of the months felt like the program was never going to end, when it started winding down to the final weeks, everyone was feeling the bittersweetness of graduating.

Graduations Begin!

On the week of April 23-27, Alyssa's friend Roxy would step up to be the first to graduate. Each day after her, Callie, Robin and then Alyssa would reach their 1500 hours and the graduation would start. Sabrina graduated a week or so later, and Alyssa ran up there to be sure that she could bear witness to her friend's success! 

Callie, Robin, Roxy, Sabrina, Alyssa

Roxy's Graduation

Roxy's Graduation...hugging Alyssa goodbye

Her Little Group: Callie, Robin, Roxy, Alyssa, Sabrina

Alyssa's Graduation Day: 
April 27, 2012!

Sabrina working on Alyssa's hair

At Avenue Five, as the student approaches their final day in the program, they're able to have take advantage of all kinds of services there for free: Facials, hair treatments, final hurrah's before they're done with school.

Sabrina working on Alyssa's curls

Alyssa went up to school around 10 a.m. She only needed to be logged in a couple of hours to complete her 1500 hours. She had spent her days earlier in the week having facials, etc.. Today, Graduation Day, Sabrina agreed to do her hair.
I had gone over to the Party Store to get a big balloon, a small graduation cap/hair band, and some vinyl letters to go on her car saying, "Congrats!" and "#1 Graduate". I needed Sabrina's help to get Alyssa's car keys since these stickers had to be done from the inside. Alyssa had brought coffee for her friends that morning and parked in the back. Sabrina handed me her keys and the twoof us started putting the decals on the car. We were almost done when Alyssa came out to the back where people were gathered at the picnic tables. Glancing over at her car, I could hear her saying, "Who's in my car?" BUSTED. Oh well, we finished the job anyway and she just shook her head.

After I was done with my botched nearly stealth car decorating, I went back to pick up Grandma and Josh to join us for the Graduation.  Sabrina was just taking down Alyssa's hair when we arrived. Ron met us there and we were all ready.

Josh & the Graduate

with Grandma

With Grandma (Redo!)

We brought Tres Leches Cake into the break room, and spoke briefly to several of Alyssa's teachers. They all talked about how impressed they were with her. She was the 2nd to the youngest in the entire program. And here she was graduating a month early! She had a 104% attendance rate (compare that to her 64% attendance rate when she went to High School). Clearly, she wanted this.  Her grade average was 94. The teachers said she learned quickly, was great with customers, and they really enjoyed working with her.  They all predicted that she would do great in the industry.

By all standards, she was wildly successful at this.

Unbelievably comfortable in front of everyone :)

Giving her speech to the student body

So the time came and it was Alyssa's turn to graduate.  It's interesting how they "do" graduations at Avenue Five. When the graduate has crossed the 1500 hours mark, one of the head teacher/administrators rings a giant bell and shouts, "We HAVE a GRADUATE!" At that point, all of the students and faculty stop what their doing, begin clapping, and head the to the hallway. Once everyone has arrived, including the family, and lined both sides of the hall, the graduate makes the final walk toward the time clock to "clock out" for the last time. Usually, they run! When Alyssa did, the other students threw confetti on her as she did. Then there's this pause, and everyone applauds as the Graduate returns down the hallway to make her speech. And, in Alyssa's case, more confetti. She thanked her family - and got a little teary with us. Then she moved on to her friends who had come back to watch her graduate as well as her friends from the other classes. She spoke to each teacher, thanking them and reminding them of some little shared experience. I was completely shocked at her ability to do this. All week long I kept nudging her, asking her if she needed to prepare something to say. I had flashbacks of when *I* had to speak at various functions as I was growing up - times when I froze or just couldn't do very well. She kept brushing me off, saying she'd just wing it.  I had been there for several speeches in the past. Most were very brief and the graduate was clearly uncomfortable speaking in front of a group.  Not Alyssa!  She did go to the store to get some Thank You notes - she wanted to write to each teacher that she really liked. That might have helped her bring some ideas to the front of her head, but she did great! She was so comfortable and just talked - to the entire student body. She was a Natural public speaker.

And, here's Alyssa's Graduation Speech. She told Josh she didn't want him to record it, so he quickly handed the phone off to me. It was just aimed in her general direction, but turned out good.

.

*Be forewarned that this starts out LOUD! It's the students throwing confetti 

and cheering for her as she runs for the time clock!

Lots of Hugs...

After the speech, everyone hangs out to hug the graduate. It's very sweet. I'm sorry so many of these were blurry, because they were so nice to Alyssa. I'm going to include them anyway!

   

Little Reception after the Speech...

Tres Leches Cake after the Speech

Tres Leches Cake - "Happy Graduation Alyssa!
                          YOU DID IT!"

Roses from Josh




               Alyssa's friends came in for cake and we hung out there for a little bit. 


       Afterwards, we went to Hyde Park Bar and      Grill for  dinner. From there, Alyssa met Roxy 
and Sabrina for Happy Hour...somewhere. 


What a great day!! I'm so proud of her!

Like her Graduation Cap?

The 2 youngest students! Alyssa and LaurenV

Robin, Ms. Linda, and Alyssa

SCHOOL FRIENDS

Callie joking around with Alyssa

Dinner at Hyde Park Bar & Grill with Our Graduate

My Cookie Exchanges

The Annual Cookie Exchange! Truthfully, it's not that annual. I missed last year. There was simply too much family drama for me to focus on doing the "extras."  So in spite of a few date changes, we were able to get friends together for the "Annual" Cookie Exchange.

For those who don't know about Cookie Exchanges...typically you bake a pre-determined number of all the same cookie. So if you're decorating snowflake cookies, you bake X dozen of them and bring them to the exchange. What will happen is that you will share your cookies and then come back home with the same NUMBER of cookies; but you will have a variety of cookies, taking some from each of the other guests' batches of cookies.

And that's where the similarities end!  Every Cookie Exchange is different.  Whoever hosts the party can you a wide variety of methods for how the cookies are dispersed. Sometimes the party has themes or activities. You just never know!

I do our Cookie Exchange differently each time. My first Cookie Exchange was in California. It was HUGE. I think 30 people were there - maybe more! She had everyone put their 5-6 dozen cookies on trays all around her the walls of her living room. We milled around looking at the different cookies, picking up recipe cards if the baker had provided them. The hostess  was a minimalist decorator, so this wasn't nearly the problem it would be at my house. I am not minimalist. I am clutterful. Anyway, having never been before, I didn't realize I needed an *additional* carrier for the  cookies I was about to bring home.  We improvised something, I don't recall now.  She had us all draw numbers to determine where we would be in line.  Then she had this very complicated formula to determine how many cookies each person would pick up. The line would pass through a couple of times, each person picking up 2 of each, then 6 of their favorite, then the line would reverse. This kept the front of the line getting all the beautiful cookies, and the back of the line getting only the broken ones. I liked how it ended up, but I don't think I could ever do the formula. Maybe a mathy friend can give me some advice?? At this Cookie Exchange, people seemed to leave soon after the cookies were obtained.

When I moved to Wichita Falls, I went to a completely DIFFERENT kind of Cookie Exchange. The hostess cooked lots of wonderful food for the guests to snack on while they visited. Each year, about 13 people would attend. She'd let us know at the last minute, how many people were attending and that was how many dozen cookies we needed to bring. We were instructed to package our cookies or bread or whatever we baked in bags/containers with a dozen in each. She kept the large bags at the door and we were to put one package in each person's clearly marked bag when we arrived. After everyone arrived, we told about our baking experience. Each person shared their story of smoke alarms, wasted batches of cookies, family members sneaking cookies, as well as why they chose that cookie or if it was a special family recipe. It was funny to hear what everyone had gone through to get the 13 dozen cookies there! Same amount of time as the California party, but more about sharing with friends.

I decided I really liked the idea of Cookie Exchanges. But my Bunco group had never heard of them. The way Bunco works, is that everyone takes turn hosting the game each month. Since it takes 12 people to play, everyone just grabs a month to host. So I decided I would choose December, and turn my Bunco party into a Cookie Exchange. We knew for sure that we had 12 people, so the numbers didn't fluctuate. One year, we made a dozen to share with each person, and another year we halved that. Making 6 dozen and then everyone taking home six of each kind was a much easier way to do this. This was a group of Girl Scout leaders who, most of them, worked outside the home. They were baking late into the night and that was just too stressful!

So, then, when I moved here, I invited friends to the Cookie Exchange. Each time, I did it a little differently. I discovered Robin Olson's Cookie Exchange website that was FULL of great ideas. I got a little carried away and tried to do prizes for things like "Most Christmas-y Outfit", party games, and sharing info about the cookies each person baked. I liked the idea of hanging out with friends more, but they were often groups of people that didn't really know each other. The prizes and the games were a bust. ha!

This year, I baked my Ham Cheesecake (very yummy), and a few other appetizer type foods. I had everyone bring a dozen cookies to share at the party, and asked them to package up a dozen for each participant to take home. We had 8 bakers. Extra people came just to come to the party, but didn't bake. It was MUCH more relaxing. At first, we had date conflicts.  Early in December, Christmas seemed too far away.  Mid-December was full of people attending other parties, or me not being able to get my Christmas decor all up! Just when I was about to put up my white flag for this year's Cookie Exchange, my friend suggested we do it on Friday before Christmas Eve.  Maybe even in the afternoon, so people wouldn't have party conflicts. AND, this allowed everyone to have quite a variety of cookies ON Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

And that's what we decided to do.

I finally got all my Christmas decorating done. Boxes were moved to the garage. We did a mad cleaning the day before. Cookies were baked and packaged. Candles lit. Voila!  A party!

The only glitch that I have with this method of cookie dispersing, is that my numbers fluctuate. I'm not a firm RSVP taker, and I think that's what it takes. But I want whoever wants to come, to come! It's as much about the friends as it is about the cookies, for me. So when the numbers were off, I was quickly opening people's packages of cookies, pulling a few from each and creating new packets for the last RSVPers. I probably did the math wrong, but everyone who brought something to share, went home with a variety of cookies!

The other problem I have is that as we got closer to Christmas, I felt like I needed to have the number of participants be small, so I wasn't asking people to make 13 dozen! There were quite a few people I would have liked to invite, but time got away from me as well.

So here are the lessons I've learned for next year. I'm putting it here as much to share as to remind me next year, when I think, "Now, what was I thinking would be a good idea for this year?"

• Keep the Eve of The Eve date. 
• Keep the afternoon idea.
• Send out invitations earlier in the month. Evites are still good.
• Invite as many people as I want, without concern about # of dozen or pre-packaging
• No pre-packaged cookies from the baker. 
• Baker bakes 7 dozen cookies to share, and 1 dozen for the party to munch on
• Use the California approach and put the cookies on platters around the room and have people select a certain number
• Maybe have the cookies on tables upstairs around the room
• Between now and then, figure out a formula for how to make this work (Suggestions?)
• We'll munch on food and sample cookies for a while, then fill our platters with cookies to take home
  
  So that's the plan for 2012!
  
  Now...which cookie will I have for mid-morning snack?
  

Ladies Who Lunch

Today several of my friends met for lunch at a Junior Forum fundraiser, Christmas at the Caswell House.  I brought my mom, who loves these kinds of events, and so did several of my friends. I'm reminded of the  "Mommy and Me" Events we used to have for Girl Scouts, only the "girl" at the event, was 40-50ish and the mom...well, they'd prefer I just say "older" or "mature." OK. So it struck me as funny when I'd lose track of my mom on one of the floors. I had this urge to say, "I've lost my Mommy!" But I think it would have only been funny to me.  So I tried to refrain. 

The Caswell House is in the center of Austin. It's all decked out in Christmas, inside and out. Each room has all kinds of decorations for us to buy - all part of the fundraiser. They had 2 really cool trees, my pictures didn't turn out, so I'll explain. One was an "Upside Down Tree." Now they have huge 12 foot ceilings at this house. And all the ornaments hang down from the branches, with the widest part happening up at the ceiling and then it tapers down to the point lower into the room. It's just such a great way to show off all the ornaments - they don't get lost in the tree! 

The other tree I loved was a Snowfall Tree. It had TINY little pieces of styrofoam balls - smaller than BB's. The tree continuously sprays them out the top and down over the branches. Then it's all caught in a kind of elastic saucer that spans the bottom of the tree. The styrofoam is then vacuumed up the trunk and shot up against a small upside down saucer that makes it look like snow is falling of the branches. I just loved it!!!

So we shopped for a while and then went upstairs for lunch. It's funny to me how life changes. For years, I went to luncheons like this with the military. Every time we moved, I'd get involved in the Officers' Wives' Club because it was a fast way to meet people. It was just a way of life. Once we moved to Texas, I didn't really do that anymore. Mainly because my kids were a little older and I was really involved in their stuff, carting them from place to place, and I made friends with homeschooling moms more than military moms. 

My mom, on the other hand, really preferred that I do more of this. She LOVED hearing about my going to these luncheons. I think she was always holding out hope that I'd be more "refined" than I apparently am!   So she was thrilled that my friends and I were interested in going to this event - and even MORE thrilled that I invited her to come.  

Clouds rolled in, and even though it was in 70's and quite muggy, at least it was STARTING to look like winter around here.  Christmas at the Caswell House just nudged it along. 

Lists! Lists! Lists!

Sometimes I feel like my To Do List is simply too huge. Other times, I get this feeling of accomplishment simply by creating the ToDo List.  What's that about? It's not like I completed anything on the list. But there I go blithely skipping through my day - accomplishing nothing really.

That's not altogether true.  I just don't get around to the things on my list.  How could a person be so good at procrastinating? YEARS of practice!  I don't even realize I'm doing it. Until about 4:30, when others are about to come home and I'm still in PJ's!  So. Now you know.

Perhaps I should do two lists. (Can you tell making lists simply makes me happy?)

So my Big To-Do List includes:
1.) Finish cleaning my room and move the furniture to the better location
2.) Gather the stuff for the Salvation Army pick up
3.) Get the measurements and replace the drapes in the upstairs game room
4.) Poke around fabric stores and get ideas for drapes in the living room
5.) Figure out a way to get more homeschooled teens to complete my survey for my book
6.) Clean out my closet and put clothes that don't fit in Rubbermaid tubs.
7.) Clean out from under the stairway closet

8.) Scan the Christmas pictures for the video I want to make
9.) Build the greenhouse for the backyard
10) Gather up the huge acorns from my front yard to make some beautiful Fall arrangement

My more realistic, less monumental List:
1.) Make soup for dinner (simmering on the stove now - I love putting things on the list that are already done. Does it count though?)
2.) Run a load of laundry (waiting on the bathroom floor now)
3.) Go to water aerobics (trying to think of reasons not to go)
4.) Blog something wildly interesting and engaging (yeahh right. If only that was my style!)
5.) Help Cydney with her bio (she is such a good writer, why she needs me I have no idea!)
6.) Take Alyssa to get her hair cut by Matt on 6th Street (Yes, she goes to Cosmetology school but really doesn't trust her classmates with her OWN hair)
7.) Get the plants into the ground that were purchased LAST weekend before they dry out. (Really I should water the WHOLE yard. Just because temps have dropped doesn't mean we're not still in a drought here! Just look at my drying up plants!)
8.) Talk to Pam about our projects (NHEN, Learning International, coming here for a board meeting, future books)
9.) Chat with friends (Facebook walls, in email messages, on the phone - that takes up a LOT of time)
10.) Read the blogs at the November BlogRoll on Blogher.com (I really love that website and haven't gotten a chance to look at everything yet! Did you see that I'm #1470 on the blogroll? Of course you didn't, but I'm still soo excited to see it there!)

I didn't add Oprah's Life Class on my list, but I probably should have. Even though it's on the DVR, I seem to be adding it into my daily "routine." I love her new shows.

Then again, looking for cool stuff on Pinterest is calling me!

Halloween 2011

For years we've been big Halloween Celebrators.  It was a fun opportunity to decorate and dress up. It didn't take long before it became "Katie's Holiday."  She LOVED it. All year long, she loved it. I'd have to slow her down from decorating the house - she'd want to start pulling everything out in September. Year after year, we'd bargain to get her to hold off on the decorations until October 1st.

But this year, Katie's far away doing her own Halloween. At first, I had such a hard time with it. Nobody there to pull out the decorations with me.  Ron pulled the rubbermaids down off the top shelves in the garage, but it just felt... off.  Still, Halloween presses on, so I'm simplyngoing to rise to the occasion.

So, first we have our pre-party costumes for the dogs...  

But Buddy's shark outfit was too small and we traded it for a pumpkin costume.

At the last minute, Alyssa decided to join the festivities and found a costume to wear to Avenue Five. Hopefully, she won't have to cut anyone's hair wearing this...

Grandma has her lovely headgear. And, she's bringing "a friend" to our house to hand out candy. They live in a Senior citizen apartment complex and kids don't typically trick-or-treat there. So she's bringing her Bulgarian neighbor to see what this is all about!

Then...after a day of shopping and cleaning.... time for more last minute decorating on the patio!

My favorite witch guards yummy snacks

Gracie, the Sheriff

Last minute glitter eyelashes - A MUST!

  And now we're ready! Josh keeps Gracie on her leash. She's trying to get used to being around children. They rush at her and scare her. But that's no problem because Buddy greets everyone! He looks pretty cute in his pumpkin suit, and the kids are quick to offer him to Trick or Treaters who show the slightest interest in him! Most respond that they already have dogs, and they know that trick of trying to palm their dog off on passersby.

Grandma is about an hour late with her friend, Tudor. He is from Bucharest and has a very thick accent. He didn't realize Grandma wasn't going to drive so that was the delay. No worries. They sit on the front patio while the early trick-or-treaters come by.

Sorry so blurry :(

Still getting used to Ron's new camera

Then the Trick-or-Treaters come out in droves. Alyssa commandeers the hand-outs once I realized that Tudor and Grandma were allowing the kids to grab hands full of candy from the basket! I even had to make another run for candy - before it was even dark! Lucky CVS is just up the street! Monster Mash music is pouring out our upstairs windows. Several other houses have competing music. Halloween is now in full swing!

There's still a burn ban going on. Temperatures are cooler but no rain in sight. So that meant we had to ditch our plan to have a small fire on the front patio. Instead, we opted for orange and purple twinkle lights in big jars. That's why Gracie's face is so orange...the glow from the twinkle jars!

I really think I'm going to create a video about Halloween Patterson Style, similar to what we did for Father's Day... obviously not in time for Halloween this year, but VERY soon. While we're still in the mood. There are so many great memories, we'll walk down spooky memory lane together!