Our newest college graduate

B. graduated this morning with a B.A. in Environmental Science. We were all there to witness the event. B., we are so proud of you and love you very much!

This is B. receiving his diploma. The one really bummer about J. moving schools is that he missed being able to hand B. his diploma. (It's a perk of working at North Park and having your child attend that you can be the one to present the diploma. J. was able to present M.'s a couple of years ago.)

And then we took a family picture. Family pictures are not really our thing, evidently. Some families end up with these lovely portraits. Us, not so much. Some of us are not so, uh, cooperative, shall we say, so this is the best that we can mange. I'll take it, though.

So here we are all. Looking at it, I'm realizing that K. is growing while H. is not. K. was so little for so long, we never had to think about where he stood. Since you can barely see H. behind him.

Then we realized that K. had been scowling in all the pictures so far.

Then the attempt to get him to smile and G. to take her thumb out of her mouth.

I'm not sure this is better.

But we were all here, together, to celebrate with B., and that's what matters.

As a complete aside, there do not seem to be a whole lot of parents who are at the college graduations of their children, who also have young grade school age children in tow. I forget that we are somewhat outside the norm on most days.