Niece's High School Graduation

Before 2pm yesterday we left to drive north. North Dakota is the epitome of rural with long straight flat roads and wide open fields as far as the eye can see. Just north of Minot sits the Air Force base, this being the south entrance that I went through all the time that has been closed since 9-11, only the main gate is used.

Behind that fence line and trees just off the highway sits the weapon storage area where I worked. The trees and bushes have grown a lot since then, fortunately since the structures behind it hold nukes. Back in the mid 80s there was an incident with some protesters driving a vehicle through the fences and they managed to get nearly to the WSA interior. That caused them to upgrade the security which then they revamped in the late 90s and again in the 00s.

We got to the school in the tiny town of Newburg where the boys went and played on the playground for a while until it was time to go inside for the ceremony.

Being a tiny town and tiny school, rather typical of North Dakota, the graduating class had 2 students. You read that right, 2 students. 2 years ago they graduated 1 student.

For 2 students graduating there was well over 100 people in attendance. Hayden started with his speech then Trinity gave her speech.

The school principal then gave out awards to students from the school for student of the year and president's fitness awards before getting to their diplomas.

Trinity then got her honor roll award and a scholarship award. They then put up the slide show with the childhood photos of each of them and then once that was done they both waited for the crowd to file past and congratulate them.

About 200 yards from the school is the senior center, (I told you it is a small town) where we all went for the after party. Food and caked was served and the kids all ran around with an immense sugar high.

R found his fingers to be the better utensils than a fork. Though I find the same thing fairly often myself, just not with cake or frosting.

It was trying to rain all day and finally kicked in late in the evening. This is the standard North Dakota view while driving, farmland as far as you can see.

It was about 10pm last night when the storms moved in. They were trouncing the areas to the west between us and the ND/MT border. It took until after midnight before I woke up to hearing the thunder and the intense downpour of rain. It looks like they got about an inch of rain in the 6 hours or so of it dumping, thankfully since that should go a bit towards their drought issues. The next few days should be nice, windy but sunny and warmer. Today we are going to the zoo then this evening Hive account@stryeyz and I have a hotel for a night for us but the kids will get to go swimming before spending the night with Granny or Auntie.