Hello, World.

This weekend should be all about my boy. No, not the boy I talk about in every single post, whose pee and spit up and sleeping patterns I want to share with the world. But, the other boy, the one who is responsible for creating team Allen in the first place. Only my best friend, my best example, my best half. This weekend he should put on his cap and gown, and march across a stadium with pride, looking handsome and becoming officially grown up. I have the ceremony pictured in my mind actually going very well. I would probably shed a tear when the first few notes of pomp and circumstance began, because that's what I do whenever I hear the first few notes of that song, even if I don't know a single soul in a cap and gown. Graduation is a tender subject for me.
Graduation brings change. I don't always love that about graduation, the way you feel the morning after, when life as you know it is all something new, and there is no classroom on your schedule that teaches you exactly where to go.

I am fairly positive my camera would be in the grad's face all day long, capturing every detail of the hat, the gown, the red and white field, the expressions on the accomplished face. I think I would sit in the sunlit stadium and reflect on our years as students. I am certain I would feel that no wife in the place could be quite as proud as I. I would feel privileged, that I am the one who gets to be the number one fan. What fond memories I have. Student memories, where what we do and how broke we are doesn't matter, because we are not really part of real life yet. An excuse to just let unsettled futures be okay, and be exciting. I will miss these days. For that reason I am grateful that one lingering summer class is still tying us to that "student" world for just a few short months. It is in those quick months we have to decide where a more grown up life will actually be taking us.

For a few reasons, my boy is not putting on his cap and gown this weekend. One being that he just doesn't care for stuff such as that. Another being that for him it would feel like a fake out, since he still has that lingering class. But that doesn't mean that this weekend is still not significant to me. As long as we have been married we have lived life this way, and I'm excited to see what life holds now that this phase is coming to a close. The butterflies are starting, because whether we are present in the crowds or not, Shawn's tassle is being moved over to the other side of his cap this weekend, and we have one foot out the door. This side of the cap means big adventures are right around the corner, we just don't know quite what they are yet. I will be playing the graduation scenario out in my mind this weekend, while we are holding hands and sipping a soda, or sitting by a campfire in the canyon-and I will be extra proud of my boy, whether he knows it or not.

I am grateful that he deserved his cap and gown this weekend, and that he would have worn it so well. Grateful knowing that he has worked himself ragged between full time school and full time work. Knowing that he is someone I admire, look up to, and am privileged to be next to day after day, just hoping his awesomeness rubs off on me. He will not appreciate this post when he sees it, but 20 years from now that will be different. Then he'll look back and he might be a tiny bit grateful to me, that I documented this monumental moment in some way. And at that point we will laugh at how little we knew on this carefree weekend, two twenty four year olds and a baby. And we will smile, that we knew nothing about our future and the gifts it holds that we have yet to discover..In that case-Hello, world. It's about time we get to come explore you in a whole new way.

Happy Weekend. It's Friday, every post sounds better on a Friday.