Honored.

I sat in the last available seat on the plane on my way back to CO in the tiny United Express commuter jet. Very last row, aisle seat, right next to the door of the restroom. It was tight quarters. A lot more people use that little airplane restroom than I ever imagined, especially for a short 1-hour flight. Ick.

I had arranged for my friend Jeanne to pick me up at the airport so Bill wouldn't have to make two trips in two hours. When I arrived home, all the Grands were having a chill time in my house that wasn't as ready for company as I would have liked. I was exhausted after a total of about 1-1/2 hours of sleep in the previous 34 hours, but quickly unloaded, did a 10-minute freshen-up (I'm sorry to say that it helped very little), and rounded up the gang for the eventful evening ahead.

Mauri had her final choir concert of the year, and she had a bonafide solo (her first). Quite a few girls had tried out for the part, so Mar was honored to be selected. The concert started at 7pm, but Mar needed to be there by 6:30. Concurrently, Shilo had her Honors Convocation. From our past experience with Lex, we knew it would be a lengthy ceremony and figured we would be okay to miss the first hour to attend the choir concert. Luckily the middle and high schools are only a few minutes away from each other.
We were honored to have the Grands there with us.

As usual, we didn't have the best seats in the house...

Here's Mar's brief, but oh-so-solo solo:

She also had a solo part in the another song, Happy, but we didn't quite catch it effectively on camera.

I am so proud of her.

After the concert we hurried over to the high school. We had no idea where Shilo was sitting, and the gym was set up differently than it was for Lex's, so we found a seat on the upper left side and started hunting for Shilo. We didn't spot her until they called up the high honor students. She was sitting on the opposite side of the gym on the end of the row, about as far away from us as possible. 

We had not chosen wisely.

Upon viewing this picture, Bill insightfully pointed out the empty seats smack dab to the right of Shi.

Yep, we should have sat there.

Shilo received her cords for high honors and NHS.

I am so proud of her.

These same Grands (aka Greats) were holding Scarlett a mere 12 hours earlier. 

We Syddalls know how to schedule events tightly to keep things exciting (wink).

Since I didn't have a thing in the house to cook for dinner,

and since it was 9:30ish by the time things wrapped up,

and since we had all had an extremely busy day,

and since we were all ravenous,

and since it was a momentous occasion worthy of celebration,

we decided to go to the nearest Applebees for their half-price-after-9pm appetizer menu.

In Castle Rock.

I was not very lucid at this point, and probably looked like death, but it seemed like a genius idea.

We loaded up two cars and set off into the night.

(Nothing says "new grandma" like cankles, wouldn't you agree?)

Luckily, this time we had chosen wisely.

The food was good, the service was good, and the company delightful.