We've been looking forward to Curtis' graduation for a long time now. It was held on Sunday June 8, 2014 at Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre. It was a really stunning and beautiful building where they hold all of the prestigious music concerts in Rochester. Curtis' parents were able to come out and Heather Howell (a very sweet lady in our ward), offered to watch Kaden all morning so we could attend without him distracting us, and actually enjoy it.
Curtis walking to get his diploma
Curtis is getting his master's hood on the right
This was such a tender moment between Curtis and his mom. She was just so overwhelmingly proud of him.
It was so fun to have Marv and Dana join us for Curtis' graduation to celebrate together
Shubham Sharma was one of our dear friends here in Rochester. We cherished the times he came to dinner at our house, taught us how to cook really good Indian food, hung out with us and played with Kaden. We were invited to his wedding in May in India and were so sad we couldn't afford to go. (Thus is the life of living on student loans as a family…) He is a friend that will certainly be missed.
The Bertassos. The only LDS family in the MBA program besides us. Our neighbors 4 doors down. The people we borrowed sugar, and eggs from. The people that watched Kaden at the last minute, drop of a hat. Jessica cut our hair, listened to my problems, had Bachelor nights with me and the other Elmwood Terrace Girls. I took their kids' pictures. Decker was in my Sunbeam class. Kaden loved to play with Decker and Tueller and loved Jess. (He was always saying, "Jess. Pretty.") They were our friends, at times our sanity, and the kind of friends that became like family. Saying goodbye to them was by far the hardest of all of the MBA friends. They made our experience in Rochester one that I will cherish. They are off to Tennesee. We will really miss them!
The Simon Fellows: Dominic Rasini, Matt Peckham, Obiamaka Eke, Nicole Camarre, Curtis, Charles Johnson, and Jeremy Ho (not pictured, Bernard Mascarenas). (I couldn't fit the whole shot in one picture, so you get Curtis and Nicole twice. Ha!)
An MS student Curtis had never met, Obiamaka Eke, Benson Waweru, Curtis
Mauricio Leyva was one of the first people we met here at Simon before Curtis even enrolled. He was at Scholarship Weekend and he was a really fun and a good friend to Curtis.
Yang Chen was in one of Curtis' groups and he helped her a lot with learning how to use Excel and her job search.
Ana Gonzales, Curtis, Ankit Agrawal, Roma Sawhney, and Gagandeep Khangura. Curtis was on a few teams with Ana, Roma and Gagan. There were three Indians and Curtis in one of the groups and Curtis called the team, "Quarter White." It's safe to say that Curtis was one of the few white, Americans in his class. It was a very diverse business class, which was really fun because we learned a lot about different cultures and met a lot of people from all over the globe.
Kaden joined us for the after-graduation reception and ate probably 20 cookies in a row. They were right at his level and he just kept grabbing them when we were talking to people. That was literally his lunch that day since he fell asleep on the way home and then went right down for a nap. Ha ha. Blue ribbon for awesome parenting!
I was literally pulling the cookie out of Kaden's mouth to get one picture where he wasn't eating a cookie, ha ha!
It was such an emotional/bittersweet day for us as we enjoyed celebrating Curtis' accomplishments of receiving his MBA (and graduated in the top 20% of his class), but also realized that this was really it, we were done in Rochester and an important chapter of our lives was about to close. We have made some really wonderful friends in Rochester that have been like family to us. I have learned more in the time in Rochester about myself, about each other, our goals for our family, as a couple, etc… than I felt like we had previously learned in the other years of our marriage. Rochester has been a challenging place for us to be, but a blessing nonetheless. I will miss it so much!
