Hana's Spring Graduation

Sunday, June 10th was commencement day for OSU, which is about two weeks ago now! [slowwww] The Spring commencement is the largest in the year, and quite large on absolute terms. This Spring the University awarded close to 8,000 degrees, and the graduates were addressed by former president Bill Clinton.

On Saturday, the day before the big dance, The Fisher College of Business held a special ceremony for MBA graduates, including students who will officially graduate at the end of Summer quarter. They had a little over 200 MBA graduates, who came from 19 different countries, and were about evenly split between full-timers and part-timers. The most important student to our family, Hannu was one of the part-time MBAs included in the Saturday ceremony. It was a very special day for us. I could not blog about it until now because we got busy preparing for a trip to California, to visit my brother's family and Disney Land. We left for CA on Wed, June 13th and returned this past Monday. The trip was a lot of fun and will be the subject of another blog entry--to appear soon!

Saturday morning, Hannu had to get to campus early, and we followed to Mershon Auditorium. After the faculty got on stage, the students filed in and were kept standing for a little while. We were seated diametrically opposite to Hannu's corner! I took this picture on the right, after tiptoe-ing like a cartoon character, all the way across the auditorium, only to discover when I got there that Moody was right behind me! lol We stole the shot before Hannu was alerted by the flash.

Moody caught Mom by surprise. Green honor cord represents "six-sigma" green belt.

Up front in the event program, they listed various award recipients, based on GPA and special certificates, etc. Students who were not done taking classes, however, were ineligible for GPA-based awards, which wrote off Hana and similarly qualified students. But they kinda saved the best for last, with the Outstanding Students Award. The recipients are chosen by the faculty, their names are announced for the first time, live at the ceremony, and they walk across the stage to receive their plaque. There were a handful of recipients from each group.

Hannu called on stage to receive her Award. I was whistling, cheering, hugging the kids, and trying to take the picture. A moment to fill a heart for a lifetime.

A well-deserved recognition of two years of hard work

Just hooded!

A family pic to commemorate the event. Tala was ticked off about something important like which side she should be on!

It was a beautiful day to walk around on campus. This is a view of the Oval, with the bell tower of Orton Hall in the background. If you click on the pic, you can also see views of Mirror Lake and the amphitheater.

Keep moving forward...

إسمك هناء والهناء في طريقك...
!

Moody turns 7

Happy Birthday!

Ahmed S. Dregia. Born: 2 June 2000, Columbus, Ohio.

Yesterday , Mr. Ahmed turned seven. He is at an age where he really appreciates things, so he was delighted the whole weekend. He made a list of friends and most of them were able to come. All and all, we had over a dozen kids, ages 18 months to 8 years old! With predicted temperatures in the 90's, we had planned water games. Unfortunately, we had some rain which meant a messy delay of about one hour, but things ultimately got back on schedule. The amazing thing is, with a dozen little darting maniacs, we did not have to break up a single fight! The trick was water guns, which allowed them to squirt out their aggressions and have a blast doing it.

Yeppi, Tala!

Today was Tala's graduation ceremony/commencement. She graduated from pre-school, going to kindergarten next year. Oh, sweet Lalla! She is not a baby anymore... I love the way she is growing, but I miss her being the baby she was. She is one smart cutie pie. She reads words; she writes; she ARGUES using logic; she's very linguistically articulated. For her age, she is way out there off the chart. And I am one very lucky, happy, proud Mama.

I was not there at the graduation, just like I was not there at Moody's graduation last year. Why the heck do they make it on Friday morning when they know most parents work! I keep saying, "I missed my kids' first graduation!"

Next weekend is my graduation ceremony. Tala enters the formal education realm as I exit it.
!