So Tomas went and graduated from high school yesterday. It was a gorgeous day. Puffy clouds. Mid-seventies. A light breeze. The ceremony took about an hour, and he and the other graduating Fiddlers played a set as part of the festivities. He’s got a busy summer ahead of him: heading to Europe for a month next week with Denisa and the girls, and then he’s got a week of Fiddle Camp in August. After that, it’s “off” to the home MTC on September 19th, the Provo MTC on October 5th, and then Slovakia on November 22nd, where he’ll be until fall of 2024. At that point, it’s BYU for mechanical engineering. He ended up graduating magna cum laude, and he’s done a great job in high school. We’re very proud of him.
I’ve enjoyed seeing people post pictures from their graduates’ lives, and I thought I might do the same thing today, giving a bit of a “best of” selection of blog posts I’ve written about Tomas over the years. I’ve been blogging almost every day for most of his life, so I should have more than enough to choose from. Not sure who else will find this interesting, but I know I will, so here we go:
- One of my first posts ever. Tomas’s original poem, entitled, “Cheetah, who burped in your ear?”
- I wrote on his fifth birthday. “He’s my fellow theme park explorer, my video game partner in crime, my super spy agent collaborator, and I love the fact that he loves to spend time with me.”
- I used to take him to work with me on half days. He had a great time at the library, culminating in this post from 2009, 2 years after I’d been working here. “You know, Dad, when I grow up, I think I’ll be a librarian at this library, too. That way we could work together every day.”
- He had a chat session with my sister, Gretel, before he went to school at all. His typing and spelling skills, I’m proud to say, have improved greatly.
- Here’s the entry I wrote on his first day of Kindergarten, along with a report back from him on how it went. He was five.
- How about when he lost his first tooth? That was way more traumatic than it should have been.
- I used to write a journal with him off and on when he was little. Here’s a selection of journal entries from when he was six years old.
- He had his first ski lesson in 2011. He’s a regular pro at this point, ready to go down just about anything.
- Here’s his first story, written in third grade.
- And his first violin concert, in 2013. Still playing today and going strong.
- He liked that experience so much, he decided to stick with violin, despite my best efforts to win him over to woodwinds. He made the right choice.
- Still one of my favorite birthday presents of all time. Still on my desk.
- Reflections I made when he finished fourth grade.
- Remember when I helped him clean his room when he was ten, and I had a long talk with him about how important that was, and how I hoped I didn’t have to help him again? Neither does he.
- Few conversations I’ve had in my life have been as painful as one I had with Tomas back in 2014. He was nine. It was a bit before Christmas. I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
- Here’s the entry from the fateful day when he knocked out his front tooth while ice skating.
- How about that time his braces started to carve holes in his cheeks?
- I make him mow the lawn for the first time. Mwa ha ha!
- A report on his eleventh birthday.
- On his love for Baman Piderman.
- He got a concussion skiing back in 2015. That wasn’t a fun day.
- In which the two of us go on a quest for a pumpkin in Minecraft.
- Who can forget our first foray into Pokemon Go, back in 2016? He’s still playing, for the record.
- Some thoughts by me on how tricky parenting can be, and how it changes as kids get older. He was 12 . . .
- He turns 13, and is very focused on building his YouTube viewership for his Minecraft channel.
Honestly, I could do this for a long time. I’m just up to his 13th birthday, and there are already a ton of posts I’ve skipped over. After his 13th birthday, I noticed many of my posts about him changed to “this is what Tomas is doing” to “this is what I think about what Tomas is doing.” Instead of talking all about how he’s in sports, I talked about what it was like to be a sports parent. I think it’s the transition I had to make to be able to give him space online. He didn’t need his dad constantly telling people what he was up to, but I could still talk about what I personally was going through.
In any case, I’m out of time for today. This was fun to look back, and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Tomas, ya done good, and I know you have lots more good in front of you. Congratulations!
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