Finished

He did it!!

After all that hard work, Caleb passed his maturita exams yesterday, with almost perfect scores. WHEW! Good job Caleb!

The morning started out at 30 degrees and ice on my window as I took Claire to school. But it ended with a warm 70 degrees as we gathered with dear friends at Malenovice for Caleb's graduation celebration.

This room, the "salonek" has been the site of many Patty family gatherings, particularly during the three years we spent living at the hotel when we first moved to Frydlant. It was so special to have another celebration there, set up so beautifully by our dear staff.

And of course, special people to sit around the table and join in the celebration!

After dinner, Dave led everyone in a fun "mock maturita" where we got to write questions that Caleb had to answer. Much laughter followed as he answered everything from "Who is your favorite Avenger" to "When was Google invented" and "Name the original 13 colonies" (a difficult question considering he has never studied American history! Ask him a hard European history question and he'll probably know it though!)

This was followed up by one of our traditions of giving "words" to people at special occasions such as birthdays, graduations and good-byes. It's one of my favorite things about JV - that people are generous and loving with their words. It was so meaningful to hear the words of blessing to Caleb.

We'd forgotten to take a family picture when we first got there (glad we at least got the group one outside when it was so pretty!). So the evening ended with some photos inside the hotel.

Noah, Caleb and Jacob...the awesome threesome! They've been through a lot of life together. So thankful for the deep bonds of friendship between them.

Rob and Nate, JV staff, have also been great mentor friends to Caleb...and they have a lot of fun together, as you can see! 

So thankful to the Lord for seeing Caleb through this part of his life journey, and for the people that have walked through it with him.

Now he has ten days to say his good-byes here in Czech and prepare for the next part of  his life journey!