Ode to Mom

This past weekend we went up to Granbury and Fort Worth for Mom's graduation from TCU. She has been working on her Masters degree in Nursing for a couple of years now. A lot of what she's done has been through online classes.

We ate lunch at Red Hot and Blue which is a little piece of heaven in Texas. I actually got a pork BBQ sandwich---with slaw on it! That's Memphis-style. And your drink? It's served in a pitcher! (You can see one in the photo of Me, my Mom, and my sister.) We don't have any of these restaurants here where I live, but I'd love it if they did.

Dad drove Mom to the coluseum to get in line for graduation early, and we followed for the ceremony at 1:00. I had my whole family there, plus my sister had her hands full with her two younger kids. It was a long 3-hour ceremony, but I'm glad I went. Now my sister, I don't know, since her little one was so tired of it half way through.

We sat behind the stage, which I recommend for anyone. We could see my Mom in her spot, and she located us after she sat down. In the picture below, she is on the end of the row by the aisle, & rows from the back. We were pretty close to the stage, and although we couldn't see the front of the speakers, we could see them on the big screens if we wanted to. The gowns were all purple, as you can see, and Mom's Master's hood was "apricot" (the actual color of an apricot, not peach-y). It gave the effect of a purple-gold Granbury Pirate color scheme, we thought. They had a list of the hood colors in the back of the program, so I told Larry to pick a color and work on whatever that was for his Master's (which might actually come to be in Fall 2007). The closest thing to Aggie Maroon was the Scarlet of Theology or the crimson of Journalism.

It was at least 3 o'clock befre Mom walked across the stage. I coldn't get clean shots of her walking, but here's my best effort. At this point, we were drawing dot-to-dots in the back of the program for B and E to do. I even drew some mazes for E---he's almost 4, and loves dot-to-dots and mazes! S was being walked around by her Daddy a lot at this point, but we were all in the coluseum for the actual handing of the diploma to Mom. Yea! Go Mom!

She has been working at Harris Hospital, and got a job offer from TCU on Friday night to teach nursing students at Harris. Pretty cool.

So, Mom, we're proud of you, and hope you are doing just what you want to in life. I know that your accumulated wisdom of nursing will be put to good use as you take on your new job. Congrats, Grad!