Celebratory Syracuse!

The weekend of May 8-10 was quite a busy one! The entire family headed to Syracuse to celebrate my sister-in-law Maureen's graduation from SU's School of Education. Mom and Dad picked me up in Princeton on Friday afternoon and we got to enjoy each other's company for the 4+ hour drive to the hotel outside of Syracuse. Once we checked in, I convinced them to head over to Erie Blvd. to have dinner at one of my favorite Syracuse restaurants (and the first place I had Thai food), Erewan Thai! It was delicious! The spring rolls were every bit as fresh as I remembered them from my undergrad, and the sauce that goes with them is like no other.

On Saturday morning we headed over to Manley Fieldhouse for Mo's convocation. We got their early enough to get good seats and I had so much fun sitting with my nephews John and Liam:

They were both so proud to see their mom graduate. At one point Liam said "They're all wearing funny hats!". It was a lovely ceremony, Don McPhereson was the speaker and the graduate student speaker did a great job, too. The boys were very patient, but we all clapped and shouted when Mo's name was called and she walked across the stage:


Here she is, processing out after the convocation - obviously proud of getting to this moment! Congrats, Mo!

Here's a photo of everyone from our family who attended the ceremony. It was a little bit windy, so the hair isn't looking too great, but you can tell we were all pretty happy. L-R Dad, Liam, Dan, Mo, Mom, John and me.

After the ceremony we all headed back to my Aunt Marianne's house to celebrate not only Mo's graduation, but John's 8th birthday, which happened to fall on the same day! John and Jill and their kids met us out at the house for the party. The ceremony would have been too long for Emerson and Sebastian to sit through, so they decided just to come out for the celebration. Here is a great photo of Nathaniel and John the Birthday Boy! They are such good friends even though they don't get to see each other more than once or twice a year. It's great to see them together.

We also celebrated Mother's Day at Aunt Marianne's! We had an awesome lunch catered by Dinosaur BBQ (Mo's favorite) and two seperate cakes - one that said Happy Birthday, John! and one that said Congratulation Maureen! It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon and evening.

On Sunday morning we headed over to the Carrier Dome for the University-wide commencement ceremony. It was full of pomp and circumstance! I've been to quite a few of these ceremonies at Syracuse (for friends while I was an undergrad, my own in 2000, for Mom when she got her Masters in 2003 and now for Mo). We had good seats and got to see Mo march in right in front of where we were sitting. She was beaming! I cheered loudly when Newhouse was announced and Mom was excited to see the School of Information Sciences proudly represented.

The speaker was Joe Biden, who is an alum of SU Law School, and he did a nice job. It was everything you'd expect from Joe - very down to earth, he talked about his family and his time at SU and of course encouraged the graduates to go out into the world and take advantage of this unique moment in history to change the world for the better. It was a good speech and I'm glad I got to see it.

After the ceremony we all went down onto the turf at the Dome to congratulate Mo and get some photos. Well, my brother Dan was so proud of Mo that he grabbed her and dipped her, and wouldn't you know that a local newpaper photographer, Dennis Nett, was there to get the whole moment. It was very sweet and made it onto the newspaper's website:

After leaving the Dome, we walked through campus and took some photos here and there. Mom got a shot in front of the new iSchool:

Dan and Mo got a shot in front of the Hall of Languages:

And here are the three SU grads in front of the Hall of Languages:

We ended up having lunch at Aladdin's (another of my favorite Syracuse restaurants) and then headed out of town from there. It was quite a whirlwind weekend, but tons of fun and totally worth the drive to be able to celebrate together and see so much of my family in one place.

Congrats, Mo! Happy Birthday, John! Happy Mother's Day!