If You Ever...: Hilary's Graduation

So as I mentioned in my previous post about our new tattoos, my baby sister Hilary graduated from college on Saturday. Of course we all expected nothing less from her (or any Briggs girl) but it is still nice to celebrate such an accomplishment, especially since she is the last to do so. Although we will still have several more graduations to attend...my PhD, my mom's PhD, Hilary's graduation from Vet School, and eventually Leslie's Master's Degree. However, it was a nice to celebrate Hilary's initial accomplishment.

Hilary graduated from St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, IN. St. Joe is a very small Catholic college, to which we were always teasing Hilary for choosing. Mostly because it's Catholic and of all the sisters Hilary was the one who had the least exposure to religion in her life. I had the most, but as we grew and moved and the family fell apart (hahaha) we moved farther and farther away from "our" religion. So the irony of the fact that Hilary was the one to go to a Catholic school was just funny for us.

When Hilary was little she posed for EVERY picture looking like she was Richard Nixon. We don't know where she got this, but seriously, if you look at pictures when we were kids you always see the double peace signs extended wide. In times of silliness we like to either impersonate her, or make her throw up the deuces for nostalgia's sake. So of course, on her graduation day we needed to see them:

As St. Joe is a Catholic school, they had the "privilege" of having the Bishop of Lafayette attend their ceremony. He did the invocation as well as the keynote this year. Really the only interesting thing was his looooong luxurious cape that mom and I instantly decided would be one of the only benefits of being a Bishop. Dale cracked a joke about small boys and capes, but I'll save you all from feeling like you might be smited by God by sparing you the details. However, do take a look at his bad mama-jamma cape:

Like the rest of the nation, St. Joe was FREAKING OUT about swine flu. They had signs all over the place about washing hands, avoiding the pig flu, and bottles of sanitizer. They even set up a sanitizing station at the edge of the stage so students could sanitize before crossing the stage to get their diploma. They also had the option of not shaking hands as well. I didn't see anyone take this option:

However, we were pretty sure the lady in front of us had swine flu, since she spent the whole time coughing into her wadded up paper towel. I had to get a shot for proof in case I became violently ill:

I then decided to capture some random moments of my family at graduation. Lucky for me they did not fail me and posed in their most natural states...

This is often what Leslie looks like. Yes, she often even looks blurry:

This is what Clint looks like a most formal events...especially while attending with his in-laws:

This is typical of my father and step-mother. My step-mom is goofy like us, and my dad is usually giving a "what the hell" expression:

Again, typical parentals. My mom being goofy and Dale trying to stifle giggles:

By the way, the weather man totally screwed us. We woke up thinking it would be a nice day in the neighborhood only to see gray skies and have the weather man that Rensselaer would only be hitting a high of 59 degrees. This ruined both Leslie and my plan to wear cute sundresses. Instead we wore dress pants and sweaters. Of course we got to Rensselaer and it was like 75 and sunny and we were annoyed. Then we went into the graduation area which turned out to be the sweaty ass fieldhouse. It was, as my aunt loves to say, "hotter than the blue blazes!"So hot in fact, that I had to peel off my trouser socks and take off my shoes while we were sitting. Classy, I know:

Dale was fanning himself and my mother and me like crazy. We pretty much were about to faint...thank god we had Bishop capes and other weird people to distract us: