Liam's Graduation Day

Congratulations Liam! :)

As you can probably guess, today was Liam's graduation ceremony! We had to be in Taunton by 9am, so we left home nice and early, and then had breakfast in Starbucks when we got into the town. Praline mocha (one of the new seasonal drinks)...

and a mushroom and cheese croissant for me.

After Liam had picked up his graduation gown, we decided to take photos ourselves at a nearby park, rather than pay for the really expensive professional photos. We were really lucky as during and after the ceremony it rained a lot, but beforehand it stayed dry.

The graduate himself...

With his lovely wife (!)...

I wish Liam was looking at the camera in this one!

With his parents...

And one of all four of us - thanks to a random passerby!

The actual ceremony was held in one of the churches in town. Afterwards there was meant to be a procession through town with a stop for "hat throwing" outside another church. However, as it was raining they changed the plans to do the hat throwing inside immediately after the ceremony. It was so dark in there, this was the best photo I could manage - Liam is pretty much central to the photo, at the far end of the row...

After the ceremony, we all quickly walked in the rain to the cricket grounds (where the first photo in this post was taken) to get our free glass of fizz, and then Liam, his parents and I went out for lunch at Pitcher & Piano. We all chose to have the meal deal (£6 for main course + soft drink/£7.50 for main course + beer/wine) but the portion sizes were a bit disappointingly small. I had a falafel wrap which wasn't too bad, but my in-laws' lamb hotpots were teeny tiny!

Tasty, but we were all still hungry after we'd eaten! We made up for the slightly disappointing lunch by making a second trip to Starbucks on the way back to the car (well, except for my father-in-law who went to a hot dog stand instead!!) - they had buy one get one free on the Christmas drinks from 2-5pm, bargain! I was very excited by the "red cup", and the gingerbread latte inside was delicious too!

Mmm, a good end to a great day! It was really fun to see Liam graduate, I'm so proud of him achieving his degree despite having to change universities, the birth of Toby during his second year etc, he's done so well. Today also brought back memories of my graduation day three years ago, although that day ended with us having lots of cocktails instead of coffee, fun times!!

Have you ever been to a graduation ceremony or similar? I remember my own graduation ceremony, which was held at Winchester Cathedral, was quite a formal event, and after the ceremony was finished there was nothing else planned so I didn't really get to catch up with many people. We had a lovely lunch with my parents before, and Liam and I enjoyed dinner & cocktails afterwards, but it would have been nice to have seen a few more people. That was what was nice with Liam's ceremony today - despite having to walk in the rain, it was nice for him to chat to all his uni friends for quite a while at the cricket grounds. Have you got many plans for the weekend? Bonfire night? I think we will just try to see some fireworks from our window as all the events around here start quite late so it would be difficult to keep Toby awake. Hopefully in a few years time we will be able to go - I have some fun memories of bonfire nights when I was a child!