Graduation!

So it has been a little since we last posted something for the blog. Mainly it has been a very busy few weeks for us but, fortunately, we are almost ready to settle down for awhile in one location.

Last week was the culmination of two full, exciting, challenging and busy years for us. It really is incredible to think that we moved out from Reston and began a new journey into the unknown. It has been more than great, both personally and professionally, to embark on this journey and now it has come full circle. During these great two years we had the chance to meet some incredible people and see close friends more regularly from Miami. We also had the opportunity to live in a beautiful city, besides the weather it truly is an amazing city, which we will always have very found memories. However, we are both really excited to embark on a new journey and begin a new chapter in our lives.

For graduation my family came into town with the whole crew, even the two little ones had a chance to see me graduate, which was awesome. The weekend was packed with activities starting with a mock class session with one of our rock star professors who literally wrote the book on competitive strategy. The session went over some really interesting thoughts but one main takeaway was that great strategists really understand when to say no. Afterwards we had a chance to take some pics with the family and get ready for the graduation.

Right before the ceremony the administration held a great reception overlooking the water where I had to the chance to meet up with David and Sean from Miami who were in the part time program. Luckily they finished their classes around the same time as me and were walking during the same ceremony.

Couch, Bres and I

The actual graduation speakers went by surprisingly very quickly. The commencement speaker was a Kellogg grad and the youngest chair person in the history of the NAACP. The thing that stands out the most though were twofold, one was the amount of people whose names were called (close to 1000) and the way that the announcers said all of the names. They had amazingly flawless accents that ranged from Spanish to Chinese. Truly remarkable.

Dean Blount Speaking 

On Saturday we had the chance to go to a special Family Enterprise speaking event which was great. The prof. is one of my all time favorites and one of the few classes where potential students will fly from around the world to sit in on and listen to before coming to the program. I was very glad that my family had the chance to listen to him and meet him. Afterwards, the crew went to a boat trip around Lake Michigan which was entertaining and provided us with some awesome views of the skyline. The boat was the Tall Ship Windy which even included a pirate telling us about pirates on the great  lakes (there really were pirates) and more about the interesting history of the city. Definitely recommend it as a fun and entertaining activity to do with little ones.

Lastly, throughout the weekend we had the chance to try some amazing food from a wide variety of our favorite places in the city. From the awesome local sandwich shop Bat 17, to two of our all-time favorite meals (Q Restaurant and Ceres Table) in the city. One thing that surprised my father was the great service (super fast and friendly) and great perceived value for the food. Similar meals in DC would cost double and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves (especially Big V with the ice cream and hot dogs).

Big V enjoying an ice cream sandwich