Graduation

It was graduation.  And, no, I am not referring to a teenaged cousin or something.  Justin graduated with an MBA that he has been working on for the past eighteen months.  Between the two of us, we have graduated six times since high school.  He earned his hood on Saturday! 

 

It was good to have a nice camera.  Up until now, every graduation photo taken during the ceremony has been dark, blurry, and hard to see what was actually being photographed.  Now that I have my creepy zoom lens I am able to get good pictures from a distance even in dark rooms!

 

 

The degree is from the University of Mary, which has a religious background.  It was founded in 1959, when a few sisters from the Benedictine Sisters of the Annunciation came from the East coast and opened the university to offer nursing and teaching degrees to the people of the Great Plains.  Based on what I saw at graduation, it seems that nursing and education are still a popular degrees here.  My aunt Kris received her teaching degree from Mary!  Because it is a private and religious based university the ceremony was a bit more elaborate and personal that a large public university would have.  For example, before the ceremony the band played a concert of beautiful music.  Also, Catholic dignitaries were in attendance. 

The man in the bright cape is the Bishop of the Bismarck Diocese. 

Here is the big moment when Justin got his hood!

 

Fortunately and unfortunately, the MBAs were the first to get their hoods after the PhDs and he is at the beginning of the alphabet so he was early in the ceremony and we got to space out to the reading of several hundred more names after him.  There is a large online masters degree program there so there were as many hoods bestowed as there were regular undergraduate degrees so it took awhile. 

 

Afterwards we just grilled at our house with our parents. We took pictures at home since the ceremony venue was chaotic and hot after the ceremony.   

 

This post isn't about me but I was in the basement closet looking for a gift bag for a birthday present for our nephew and came across my own hood hanging in the closet!  It hasn't seen the light of day since 2008 so I wore it around for awhile!

 

Tessa and Ben enjoyed having the grandparents around for the weekend.  Ben would not leave me alone yesterday afternoon and insisted that I play on the floor with him.  Come back, grandparents!

Justin having class and homework has taken a lot of time and left me with barely a break from baby duty even for a few hours (I'm not complaining-it was for the benefit of all of us) but now I suddenly feel like I have more freedom just like I'm sure he does!  I am tentatively planning to sew a quilt or something again!