With all this talk of Mother’s Day and lollipops, I haven’t even had the chance to tell you about our wee Katie’s graduation from college on Saturday!

Katie was, as expected, a lovely grad! After the ceremony, everyone headed to lunch to celebrate her four years of accomplishments. I decided to celebrate them via gifts because, hello, that is my main love language.

First up was a cute box containing a couple of different things for the grad including her favorite snack (white fudge pretzels) and pictures from her graduation ceremony. That’s right — I took pictures of her before and right at the start of her ceremony, uploaded them during the ceremony and had them ready to pick-up at our local Walgreens on my way to her lunch. Yes, you may call me Miss Productivity.

There was also a copy of the letter I wrote to Katie while she was on her way to her graduation ceremony.

Here’s Katie looking through the box, getting her first chance to see what she looked like on the front row of graduates. And yes, we’re at Chick-Fil-A for her graduation lunch. Listen, we live in a small town and every restaurant was packed with graduates and their families. Plus, I’ve never known Katie to turn down a trip to Chick-Fil-A, so why should her graduation day be any different?

Okay, I gave this gift to Katie the night before her graduation but I just have to insert it here because I am dying for y’all to see it since I know you appreciate a well chosen gift as much as I do. I should have fixed it better before taking a photo, but these are graduation thank you cards that are personalized!!! Underneath her name it reads “Bachelor of Arts in Psychology | Lee University 2009.” How cool is that?

But back to Chick-Fil-A. Here’s Katie reading the letter that y’all saw first.

And then opening her final gift from me, a shadowbox I had made for her graduation. You can’t see it very well but inside is a graduation cap and tassel from her ceremony (I have inside connections!) as well as a large picture of her sitting on the front row before she walks up to get her diploma. I had the box pre-made and ran the picture to the company right before lunch so we could get it added in at the last minute. There’s also room in it for her tickets and program from the ceremony as well as for her diploma. I just LOVE Katie’s expression in this picture; she’s a fun one to surprise.

After lunch came the dreaded trip to her house here in Cleveland to pack the rest of her stuff up. As you can see there wasn’t much more to go, and with her dad, Eric and his dad all helping, it was done in less than an hour.

I did good throughout that hour, mainly because I refused to watch her room be cleared out because I couldn’t stand to see the things from our time of living together (back when I first started my blog) be packed into a moving van that was headed to the apartment she’ll live in when she’s married (which just so happens to be a month from today!). I got myself together in time to help load a couple of things and then, without warning, it was time to say goodbye in the driveway.

Someone actually took a picture of us saying goodbye but I’m not going to post it because it would seriously make y’all cry yourselves if you saw how hard we were crying in that driveway. Let’s just saw that we were both doing the ugly cry and it lasted for a bit longer than we would have wished. Finally she got into her car, I got into mine and we pulled out of that driveway for the last time. When we got to the stop sign at the end of the street, she turned right and I turned left.

And I’ve been missing her ever since.