Saturday, June 15, 2013

Small Town Traditions

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My son graduated high school last week.  I have been attending open houses to celebrate graduations for four weeks now.  I have had comments asking about the open houses.  Some people had never heard of them.  I decided to do a post to talk about the tradition.

We live in a small town.  My son's graduating class had about 110 students.  This is a large class compared to the classes in the past.  Due to a statewide policy now you can attend school anywhere in the state not just in your district.  The school gets to choose whether or not to accept you.  They can set guidelines that you must meet to be accepted if you live outside the district.  Our school is one of the best ranked schools in the area, which means we have a lot of students outside the district applying.  We have only been accepting students for about 4 years.  Our classes used to always be under 100 students.  Our classes were usually around 60 to 70 students.

The tradition surrounding graduation is that most students celebrate their graduation with an open house.  They used to always be held at the students home.  Parents are so busy anymore that many of them are renting a building to have the open house.  The parties are spread out over a number of weeks so that more people can attend and not as many parties are overlapping.  So far, I believe, we have attended well over 20 parties.  We still have a few more.  



My son graduated with 29 students that he had attended school with since kindergarten.  That is a low number.  When my older children graduated over 2/3's of their class had been together all the years they attended school.  We still have more parties to attend tomorrow and next weekend.  

I have had a hard time maintaining my healthy eating since it has been constant parties every weekend.  

After the open houses were over with tonight, one of the parents held a bonfire and party for the parents.  It was a chance for parents to unwind after having our children graduate and the work put into hosting an open house.


It was a little too warm to be close to the fire.  

We also attended open houses for my son's friends that have played travel baseball with him over the years.  They are spread out at other schools around our area.

There are probably open houses for students who go to large city schools but I believe since everyone in our small town all know each other we probably attend more of the parties.  We still had to select which parties we could attend since there are so many going on.  It is impossible to attend everyone's open houses.  Most people who attend the open house bring a gift for the students so it also gets to be expensive.

One of the open houses we attended today was for two students who chose to combine their parties.  They probably had over 200 people in attendance.

So, these parties are lots of fun and their is so much food that it makes it difficult to eat a healthy diet.

I didn't do too badly today.  I have been trying to stay away from any of the sweets.  I am also trying to stay away from wheat.  I am not sure why but after I ate the cake from my son's open house my weight has just stayed about the same.  My weight loss seems to have become stuck.  I am reading the book The 100.  Maybe it will give me some ideas to boost the weight loss and get going again.

16 comments:

  1. What a fantastic tradition, I love it! I have never heard of this before but I think it's such a great way of all getting to know one another! :-)

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    1. I think in small towns we tend to be more social because there is a small group of us and we see each other at all the local events.

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  2. I think it's a small town thing. I've been to 4 for Grandsons since relocating to Montana.

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  3. I have always loved bonfires! I agree with Amy that it's a cool tradition but I am sure exhausting and as you say with lots of temptations. Good for you for mostly staying clear of the bad stuff! That is not easy but you are already aware of it and that in my opinion is half the battle. :)

    We don't have all the parties as you guys do here either.

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    1. The mosquitos were a little annoying but it is fun to get together with others. I have to really pull it together and start losing more. I haven't been eating the bad stuff, but maybe I have been eating too much. I know I haven't been exercising as much as I should. Since I have my garden pretty well put together I haven't been doing all the labor there either.

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  4. Wow, from the outside looking in, the huge number of Open Houses and costs associated with them (not just the hosting costs, but gifts for each one? Seriously?) seems, well, no offense, but dumb. LOL

    20 some odd parties, it's a miracle you are anywhere close to the weight you were going into the Open House season. Continue to do your best, and when they finally end, just start kickin' butt again. :)

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    1. It probably does seem dumb. I have known all these kids since they were little though and it is fun to celebrate with each of them. All of the kids put out pictures of their lives and you go down memory lane looking at all of their pics! When my son was in kindergarten there were around 20 families of stay of home moms. We went to the park once to twice a week and took the kids to eat lunch and play. It was a chance for the moms to have adult conversation and spend some time together, as well as keeping the kids entertained.

      I know I have work to do and as you said "just start kickin' butt"!

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  5. Bety, thanks for following Carole's chatter. I have happily followed you right back. There were a few things that helped me lose and keep off weight - only eating what I really liked (but smaller portions), never eating something I didn't like (even if it was at a restaurant or cooked by someone else for you), celebrating each day that no weight was put on (or a little came off) with a spritz of a very special perfume. The other thing is that I would make very small changes in my intake and then stick with that - like having 1 and a half pieces of toast for breakfast rather than 2 (still with butter and jam though)

    Good luck with it all - it is a life long journey for almost all of us!

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    1. Thanks for all the tips Carole. I do believe it is a life long journey. Thanks for following!

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  6. What a lovely tradition! I loved learning about this. I've never heard of it before.

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    1. Thanks Rachel! I love the tradition. We won't attend very many open houses after this. This year all the kids were my son's age and had been friends since they were young children. There are few in the next class, but it will diminish over the next few years.

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  7. We also have a night called Meet the Teacher with an Ice Cream Social. I loved traditions!! I guess I just love being social too!!

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  8. Congratulations!!! What a great and memorable milestone for you all!!

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  9. My graduating class was 20 :) I grew up in a very large city, but I went to a tiny k-12 school. We have open houses around here for graduation too!

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Thanks!!! Betty