Honorable Discharge

Looks like our son with be discharged from his primary education experience with some honors.

Basically, we've got a 3-day 8th-grade graduation extravaganza going on -- breakfast today, field trip to the Kalahari indoor water park at the Dells tomorrow, then half a day of school Monday with an official graduation ceremony that night.

This morning, we attended an 8th Grade Honors Breakfast for Carter and his classmates.We helped ourselves to a continental breakfast in the school cafeteria, then it was on to the good stuff. Turns out they call it an Honors Breakfast for a reason. The 8th-graders were getting honored with various scholarships and awards.

I think just about every student received some sort of Catholic Education tuition grant from their home parish. Carter received two scholarships from Jim's church so that was unexpected and quite nice. Carter thought that was pretty cool but that wasn't the end of it.

Miss Thomas, the band director, gave out three special awards -- one was for playing solos and taking music outside of the school into their home parish, another was a jazz-related one and the final one was called the "Director's Award" for a student exhibiting leadership skills, always helpful, going above and beyond what is required and doing whatever is needed to help the band excel. Guess who got that one?

He was so excited about that! He honestly couldn't stop smiling! And why should he? That one really says a lot about his character and his commitment. We are very proud of him.We're not necessarily going to get a bumper sticker that says "Proud parent of a band student" ... but we could. And it would be completely accurate.

Besides the obvious, I am really glad they hold this Honors Breakfast for the "graduating" 8th-graders each year. What a great way to honor the class and their hard work during middle school while giving them a boost of confidence as they enter high school.

Now if they could just do something for us parents who are not ready for the next big step!