May is extremely terrible.  Unlike April, May just always seems bad.  We work in education, which is fine until you realize every May your friends graduate and move away.  You come to know and love people - they become your family.  Then they finish their coursework and leave.

It's not that our friends move across town.  Our friends take moving seriously.  They go all out with moving.  They move to places like Iraq.  Europe.  China.  South America.  Africa.  Jacksonville Florida.  It's cruel.  We know they have to go and leave us, but that doesn't make it any easier to stay behind while they go off into the world.  Each May gets lonelier. 

This May Kenneth, Lesley, Brandon, and Kerry-Lea are leaving us.  They are going home to Johannesburg.  While I am so excited for them to return home to their families, I can't help but think we won't have friends like these ever again.  We've watched them grow up.  They've been there for us.  My children think they are family - and they are.

We took pictures at the gardens the other night.  I've put them in the Album section.  In August new students will arrive, but to be perfectly honest it's hard to make friends when you know they are just going to leave you in a few years.  We're starting to have abandonment issues. 

But, that's what the internet and blogs are for - so we can see what is going on in Iraq.  Europe.  China.  South America.  Africa.  Jacksonville Florida. 

We will miss our friends so much more than they know and so much more than even we know.  They are such a beautiful family with such a love for each other.  We've learned so much from them and May just seems a little too cruel this year.