An emotional week! Kinder graduation, 9 years of marriage & so much in between!

It started in the pickup line last week.

I don't know why I thought I'd make it through the final days of school without losing it in my car. I really did think I was going to be fine. And then I pulled into that line last Thursday and something just hit me — the way it does sometimes when you're not braced for it — and I sat there in my car with sunglasses on doing the thing where you blink really fast so you don't actually cry.

It didn't work.

The final days of the pickup line have come and gone and here we are. We have said our goodbyes to the best chapter.

Three years at The Learning Center

Lennon has been at The Learning Center in Alamance County since K3. Three years. Three years of morning drop-offs and afternoon pickup lines and school pictures and field trips and Christmas programs and report cards and all the tiny daily moments that somehow add up to something enormous.

And now we're at the end of it.

I want to take a minute to say what I've been feeling about this place because I don't think "thank you" is anywhere close to adequate — but I'm going to try anyway.

The Learning Center is not just a school. I know every parent probably says something like that about wherever their child goes, but I need you to understand what I mean when I say it about this place specifically.

From the moment Lennon walked through those doors as a three-year-old, she was known. Not just enrolled — known. Her teachers (& every teacher in that building) knew her name and her personality and what made her light up and what she was working through (hello my velcro baby with severe separation anxiety). The staff invested in her not just academically but as a whole child. As a child of faith. As a little person who matters.

They poured into her. Genuinely, consistently, with the kind of care that you can't manufacture or require — it just comes from people who have chosen this work because they love it.

Lennon has learned and grown in her own faith at this school. That sentence alone is worth more to me than I know how to express. Watching your child develop her own relationship with Jesus — not because you told her to, but because the people around her showed her what it looks like — is one of the most profound gifts anyone has ever given our family.

She graduated kindergarten

Two days ago, Lennon graduated kindergarten.

She walked across that stage in her cap and gown — this little girl who showed up to K3 barely big enough to carry her own backpack — and she was so confident. So ready. So completely herself.

I have been a mother for six years and I am still not prepared for the moments that parenthood hands you without warning. The moments where you look at the person your child is becoming and you feel everything all at once — pride and joy and grief and love and this ache that comes from knowing that every milestone means another version of her is behind you now.

Kindergarten Lennon is behind us now.

And she was so wonderful.

A new school in the fall

In the fall, Lennon is heading to a new school for first grade. A new building, new teachers, new friends, a new chapter beginning.

I am excited for her. I genuinely am. New things mean new growth, new experiences, new people who are going to get to know her and love her the way The Learning Center did. She is ready for this. She has been made ready for this by three years of being in a place that gave her a foundation that will carry her everywhere she goes.

But I'd be lying if I said the transition felt easy. Because the school you trust your child to — really trust, with all of it — is not something you find everywhere. And we found something rare at The Learning Center. Something I'm grateful for every single day.

To The Learning Center

If you are in Alamance County and you are looking for the perfect fit for your child — a place where they can know and follow Jesus, where they can learn and thrive, where they are truly loved and invested in — this is it. From K2 through K5, and now launching their first grade program in the fall, they are the best of the best.

Thank you doesn't feel like enough. But thank you.

Thank you for knowing her name. Thank you for pouring into her faith. Thank you for celebrating her wins and walking with her through the hard days. Thank you for the friendships and the memories and the three years of experiences that shaped who she is right now.

We will carry The Learning Center with us wherever we go.

To Lennon

Baby girl. You graduated kindergarten and you did it with so much grace and confidence and joy. You are heading into first grade at a new school and I know — I know — that you are going to walk through those doors and make it your own, the way you always do.

Keep being brave. Keep being exactly who you are.

I love you so much more than you'll understand until you're standing in a pickup line one day with sunglasses on, blinking really fast, watching your own child's last days somewhere special.

Then you'll know. 🤍

And because kindergarten graduation & the last day of school wasn’t enough…

I said this was a lot for a Thursday and I meant it. Because today is also our ninth wedding anniversary.

Nine years of building a life with Jesse. Nine years of figuring out how to be a team — through the easy seasons and the hard ones, through becoming parents, through the version of me that decided she wanted to build something of her own and stayed up late dreaming out loud about what it could become. Through all of it he has been steady and kind and in my corner.

I'd pick him every single time. Nine years down, forever to go. 💍

And if that weren't enough for one Thursday — today is also the last day of Super Mom finals.

I have been in this contest for weeks now. Asking for votes, pushing through the discomfort of putting myself forward, showing up for it every single day because the cause — Children's Miracle Network — is worth every awkward vote ask and every story reminder.

Today I find out if I finished where I needed to finish to move on to the BIG VOTES!

Whatever the result — I am grateful. Grateful for every single person who voted, who shared, who cheered for me in this. You showed up for me and I don't take that lightly. Not even a little bit.

So that's today. Kindergarten endings and anniversary love and contest finales and the first day of summer starting tomorrow. It's a lot for a Thursday in May & I am unwell!!

But if I've learned anything from six years of motherhood and nine years of marriage and a lifetime of loving this little family of mine — it's that the big things tend to show up all at once. And the only thing to do is be present enough to feel them while they're happening.

Today I felt all of it. 🤍

Real life. Real magic. Real dreams. ✨

If your child attends or has attended The Learning Center — drop a comment. And if you voted for me in Super Mom — thank you from the bottom of my heart. 🤍

xoxo,
Katie