Warning – Picture Heavy Post!

I know today is Friday and usually we do #TBT on Thursday, but I saved this for today.

Fourteen years ago Youngest started school at the age of four years and nine months old in Reception Class.  Today is his last day of formal education after fourteen years.

This was taken last September aged seventeen years and nine months old!

This also brings to an end for DH and I twenty years of taking them to playschool, school, college and:

Going to Nativities, plays, concerts, Easter productions, Harvest Festival productions, Christmas productions, End of Term Shows, House plays, endless sports days in baking sun and pouring rain, Parents’ Evenings, Fundraising events, endless bake sales, getting their new uniforms and sewing their name tags into everything including their socks and handkerchiefs  (!), buying school supplies and getting extra for after the first week when they had lost most of what you bought originally (!) sewing costumes the night before the event, collecting Youngest from his first trip out at senior school at 3.00am as they were stuck on the motorway because of an accident (!), several trips to A&E with both of them when they had hurt themselves playing sport, being there when the first relationship crashed and biting you tongue when you didn’t like the girlfriend that they thought was terrific (!), encouraging them and explaining why they needed to revise for their exams and then picking up the pieces when the results were not as they had hoped, but they were ashamed to admit that Mom and Dad were right!!!!!!!  

I could go on with a lot more things but you get the idea of the last twenty years and I would not swap one second of it ever.  I might have not said that at the time but I never meant it!!! I loved taking them to all the things and seeing them doing things and being there as their Mom and the same goes for DH being their too of course.  Working for ourselves meant that we were able to be there and see all this and do all this with them so we were very lucky in that respect.

The following pictures are both of them taken on the first day of school each September until Eldest left.

I just now need to go and cry for a little while!!!!  These pictures always make me this way!!!!!

We are taking Youngest out tonight for dinner to celebrate his finishing and then he is working all weekend.  DH is at home tomorrow and then is out tomorrow evening being the Compere for an event and Sunday he is out all day as it is the Crowning of the Carnival Queen and picnic on the park.  I will be staying home and quilting as I have plenty to keep me busy. 

The weather is going to be hot again but not as hot as some places such as the East Coast of the US where they are going to get temperatures over 100°F and I know some parts are already getting that, so our paltry 84°F is nothing really.

I hope you lovely lot have a fantastic weekend whatever you are up to and if it is hot where you are stay inside, stay cool and drink plenty of water.

Hugs, Susie xx