The finale

You could probably call graduation the finale of my education. The weekend of graduation was full of celebrating the end of my educational career (ha) plus an early Christmas with my family. On our way to Winston we were fortunate to catch dinner with some of our NC friends in Raleigh - definitely a nice way to start the weekend.

Graduation took place on Thursday. We celebrated with a light lunch at Natty Green's afterward, followed by dinner at 4th Street Filling Station in Winston. It was all fantastic and I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to celebrate throughout the day with family and friends.

The Saturday after graduation we had our family Christmas celebration.

Per tradition, we started out with a "Christmas Eve" dinner at Honey's where shenanigans occurred.

And then we celebrated "Christmas Day" with brunch at my parents' house.

As usual, my parents and family were extremely generous with gifts. For me, the showstopper of the bunch is the Roomba!!! (Yes, I am super excited about a vacuum) And it is awesome people - freakin awesome. I cannot express to you how much I'm loving that thing - it is handling our dog hair problem like a champ. The dogs' opinions are a little mixed. Gracie doesn't seem to even notice it exist. The one exception is when it wakens her from a nap at which point she relocates to another room. Shadow on the other hand is handling it like her usual self - she currently finds it somewhat alarming (and thus deserving of a few good barks) but once she gets used to it she'll be fine!

It was a packed few days but so worth it!