Graduation

Wow what a weekend!  Last weekend was Ryan's graduation for his Master's degree and we were so lucky to have most of our family in town to celebrate with us.  I am so, so proud of Ryan and all of his hard work.  He took less time than the normal two years to finish AND had a 3.97 GPA (nerd alert!).  This is the same guy that used to only pretend to study and go to class to try to impress me when we first started dating (yes, I'm a nerd too).  It meant so much to both of us to have our families with us for this exciting event.

My brothers and nephew Cole were the first to arrive on Thursday night.  It was such a treat to get to spend some time with the boys.  I'm pretty sure I have the best big brothers ever. 

Then the rest of the family arrived on Friday.  Everyone came to the house for a bit to visit and then we headed to Old Capitol Grill in Golden for some yummy dinner and drinks.

 Mojo has some new favorites.  He wouldn't leave Kylar and Ashlynn alone all weekend.

 Here Ryan's mom is giving Clayton what she "thinks" is Tylenol. 

 I'm pretty sure little sis gave that awesome T-shirt to big brother for Christmas.

Then Saturday was the graduation ceremony in downtown Denver at the Denver Center for Performing Arts.  It is such a cool area and it was a perfect day!  Thank goodness we got there early because the place was full!  Tom was such a good photographer I'm pretty sure he could moonlight as paparazzi.  He was all over the ballroom snapping pictures.

We celebrated with a delicious lunch at Sam's No. 3 which is an awesome diner in downtown Denver just a couple of blocks away from the Denver Center for Performing Arts.  It was recently featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the delicious food and milkshakes and we definitely shared a lot of laughs and good times.  It was the most hilarious thing that my brother Clayton, who is from Kansas, ran into someone he knew at the restaurant.  Typical social butterfly I suppose. 

Later that evening, we had a graduation party at home with just family and we enjoyed food (I don't know how we found room to eat) and games.

Time flies by WAY too quickly when we're with our families and last weekend was no different.  It was really tough to get up for work on Monday after all the fun and excitement but I cheered up quite a bit when I got to my office and found the notes Kylar and Ashlynn left me on my white board.