Saturday, May 1, 2004

We were late as usual and ended up racing down the interstate at close to 100mph to get there in time.  Fortunately for us, the doors were not locked at 8:45 when we got there.  Parking killed a good 15 minutes --- otherwise we might have made the 8:30 deadline.  And, to throw salt in the wound, the ceremony didn't even start at 9.  Her mom had arrived early and saved us all seats, lucky for us since it was packed.

My niece finally walked across the stage at about 10 am, and we screamed for her as loudly as we could.  I'm so proud of her!  I had tears in my eyes (haha big surprise there from Ms. Sensitive).  We persuaded her to sneak out early so we could all go to lunch cuz breakfast was so long ago already.  :p 

My other nieces who had flown cross-country for this were very well-behaved considering they had about 4 hours of sleep and are both at difficult ages to begin with.  I had been warned by various siblings that they seemed unruly.  Overall, I had no complaints and was very happy to see them.  My 16 year old niece had a crisis at lunch.  I tried to talk to her and listen to her problems.  My heart really goes out to her.  That's such a rough age, and she's trying to cope with so much shit in her life.  She dried her tears and went back inside to make the best of it.

Afterwards, we all traipsed back to my niece's apartment and descended like locusts.  Galahad and I passed a fruit stand and bought a watermelon and some boiled peanuts for everyone to share.   Laugh, most people (including my niece who's lived there for 4 years) had never tried them.  They are very much a Southern thang.  My brother and I scarfed most of them down since we were the hungriest.  :)

Since I'm newly into bats, we jumped all over the opportunity to see a gigantic bat house on campus that houses 100,000+ bats and watch them come screaming out at dusk.  My 6 year old niece was incredibly sleepy and cranky by then, and I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I called her Cranky Pants to her face and told her to chill out.  I'm such a bad aunt.  :p   You might be wondering why she was there.  Somehow, most everyone caught Galahad's and my enthusiasm for the bats and we all caravanned over there after dinner.