Whew! I’ve been busy traveling the past week, to Utah, then Idaho, for my daughter’s graduation from BYU-I! Remember when I took here there to check it out? It was four years ago exactly to the week when she graduated! Here’s where I wrote about that. Then when we dropped her off six months later in the first week of January 2014, I wrote about that here. By earning her bachelor’s of science degree in software engineering, in 3 1/2 years, she has shown that she doesn’t let grass grow under her feet, that’s for sure. I’m so pleased at her commitment! She is a driven, bright girl. One of those semesters included an internship in Kansas City, where she worked for Garmin, coding programs for their GPSes. She is so smart and hardworking that they invited her back.

We had such a lovely time at her graduation. The speakers were marvelous! I especially enjoyed Elder Devn J. Cornish’s keynote commencement speech about raising our standard to be what pleases God. (You can listen, read, or watch here, scroll down to the ones listed for July 18, 2017 and listen to all the ones for that day: President of BYU-I Henry J. Eyring, (not his father Henry B. Eyring, who is in the First Presidency,) Elder Kim B. Clark, and Elder Cornish.)

My daughter with three of her brothers.

The weather was perfect, even though the forecast on my husband’s phone said it would rain. A bunch of my extended family was there, including my brother who currently lives in India and one of his daughters. Both my brothers were there in fact, with most of my other brother’s family, his sister-in-law who flew in from Virginia to graduate from the online Pathway program, and my parents.

Here’s a picture of most of the entourage. (Sorry the picture’s kind of blurry, when I get the pictures back from my brother that he took with his fancy camera they will be better.)

My daughter received the honor of being chosen as one of two of the students to speak at her college of engineering’s convocation. So she spoke in front of over 500 people. Maybe it was even 1000! She did a super job. Later she told me that her knees were knocking the whole time she gave the speech, but you would never have been able to tell.

As a homeschooling mom who mentored my daughter through homeschool-based high school (she took a few Williamsburg Academy classes but did not get a diploma) this event was definitely Payback Day for Mom (me). Your child can get to college and get through college without a high school diploma! I credit having a homeschooling community, specifically Liber Academy, for providing her with LEMI Scholar Projects. She loved them all! I am excited for the new chapter in life ahead of her.