He's a Graduate!!!

We've come to the North Carolina mountains this weekend for a wonderful celebration -- Peter's graduation from Western Carolina University.

He's certainly made us proud! From a high school senior who didn't have a clue about what he wanted to do, Peter has turned into a phenomenal student with a drive to succeed academically and perform brilliantly for his professors. He's done great work in the College of Business as his work study and graduated magna cum laude with a double major in Business Law and Management.

Philip and Kara drove over from Chattanooga too -- that was wonderful! Philip's cheerful, funny conversation helps keep everybody in a happy spot while we visit, and I loved spending more time with Kara. It was a high point of my weekend.

We ate at Soul Infusion, a bistro and tea place in Sylva.

We ate outside because we had the puppies along.

Peter has been part of WCU's Honor's College, so he graduated with that group first at the ceremony. He was fourth to walk in. Philip captured it all on video (thank goodness!). Ramsey Arena was gorgeous -- I enjoyed the strong feel of ceremony and joy there. I met his favorite professor who told me, "You have a great son!"

Both my boys stopped at the same store and bought me the same bouquet of flowers for Mother's Day -- without meaning to! So sweet :) Oh how lovely to have one's children grown and to have them be kind, thoughtful, noble people. I'm proud of both my boys.

The flowers did survive the trip home and look lovely all together in a vase!

We came back to Ridgehaven for the night. Adam grilled us steaks and after dinner we roasted marshmallows and enjoyed s'mores around a lovely fire. Peter's friend Shani came. She's sweet and funny. I said something ridiculous that made Peter scrunch up his nose.

Philip has the established reputation for making the BEST roasted marshmallows in the family. Has a well-honed method over the coals.

However, he is aggressively challenged by his little brother.

This time, I'm inclined to side with Peter's marshmallow (the second one). It is his big weekend, after all, right?

We left Sunday morning but had difficulty getting into the groove of a LONG, 8-hour drive. So we stopped in Brevard with Philip and Kara for a bit. We sipped coffee at Quotations:

And stopped in at O.P. Taylor's toy store, of course. I think Julia and Philip were reliving a bit of childhood:

The obligatory photo with the nutcrackers:

We're back home now, with noses back to grindstones. It was a lovely weekend with almost all of my kids (we missed you, Anna!!), and reminded me that no matter where we go, or what we do, these folks are my peeps!!