Paoli: Giovanni's Graduation--April 24th and 25th

I'm trying to play catch-up a little since some cool things happened before we started this blog, so I'll start with Gio's graduation. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a BS in Molecular Biology and I couldn't be more proud of him! Way to go Gio! Many thanks to Patricia, Gio's mom, for encouraging him (with love and money!) all along the way.

These are all the 2008 graduates at Commencement on April 24th. I had never been to a BYU graduation ceremony before and one of my friends took advantage of my innocence by remarking, "Man, it's gonna take so long to read all their names!" I flipped out. Then she explained she was joking and that all of the different collages have their own ceremony the next day where they read the names. Whew, close one!

Elder Bendar spoke at Commencement about Learning to Love Learning and how that was the most important thing that the graduates would take with them from their time at BYU. It was a very moving speech.

After Commencement, we ran into Gio's good friend Chris Morales. He grew up with Chris in Glendale, California and their families were very close. It was fun to see him. I think he was there taking pictures for his job. He writes for the newspaper in Salt Lake.

We also ran into our friends Brent and Cassie Rowse. Cassie is actually the one that graduated, but for some reason we only have a picture with Brent. That picture is below.

We had a bit of a photoshoot after that, so I'll just post a few of those pictures next.

The next day was when Gio actually walked across the stage and got his "diploma." It's actually a fake and they send the real one to you in the mail after final exam scores are in to make sure you actually did graduate! Here's a few pictures of that day.