{NeiLSoN}: Austin's Graduation

It's a month past due but Austin is done with the Fire Academy! Our life has been crazy since the moment he graduated - more of that madness to come:)

So Aaron, his older brother, called us a few days before the graduation and said he was coming. So fun to have him here. We went to Outback on Saturday night for a little grad party with the girls and my mom and dad.

Sunday was the big day down at the Crest Theater in downtown Sacramento. The place was soooo cool! It was an old theater that had been re-done. I guess I was picturing a hot auditorium with folding chairs but it was nothing like that at all. Grandma Vickie and Papa Frank drove all the way from Utah to surprise Austin for his graduation. It was the first time that Frank had seen Miley. It was fun to have them there. Since the moving truck (yeah, don't worry...we've moved again!) was showing up bright and early to pick up our furniture, Aaron got to sleep on an air mattress and G&G Neilson stayed at the hotel I work at.

Back to details about the graduation. (My mind is all scrambled. I have about 10 posts I need to do and they're all mushing together in my head!) Every class does a class present to all of the Captains and DI's. Austin's class took rusted axes and sanded them by hand to make them pretty again. They had each DI's name burned into the wooden handle. Then they got a piece of steel donated from the twin towers and had a plaque engraved with all 400+ firefighters that died that day. A class from
'07 made a bell out of an old style metal air tank. Austin's class did a tribute to a Captain that died in the last year or so and had his badge welded onto the bell. It was pretty neat! A lot of hard work went into these project aside from the fact that they were at school everyday for about 6 months straight. Their class also won the fittest class ever. It was a really special day. Austin will have memories of this Academy for a long time.