Happy to see them get their degree! Ree Drummond, Maria Shriver and more stars are immensely proud of their children upon their high school and collegiate graduations.
“We celebrated Paige this weekend. She’s definitely ready for the next stage in life,” Drummond, 53, captioned an Instagram gallery on May 15, posing with her daughter Paige and her husband, Ladd Drummond. “(As for me, I’m ready for a nap.) On an unrelated note, Bryce is a goofball. Congratulations, Paigie.”
The cookbook author — who wed Ladd in 1996 — is a proud mom of four to Alex, Paige, Bryce and Todd. While Ree was ecstatic to watch her little girl graduate from the University of Arkansas earlier this month, she previously admitted that she did not give her kids’ a crash course in cooking before they left home.
“If I were a good mother, I would’ve done that,” The Pioneer Woman star jokingly told Us Weekly in February 2020. “[My oldest] Alex did not like to cook at all. She always loved to eat, but she didn’t have any interest. So I just took my cues from that. Of course, I gave her Pioneer Woman cookware. I just sent her a care package. It was a Pioneer Woman knife and Pioneer Woman cookware and all these fun things.”
After Ree and Ladd sent Paige off to college four years ago, the house was much quieter with just the boys and their family dogs.
“We were eating. They were talking about who was going to play center on the team and the offensive coach was saying this about him. [And] I said, ‘I’m going to Tulsa to get my hair done tomorrow,’ And it was just silence, just crickets,” Ree told Us in 2020. “They gave me an obligatory pause, and then they kept talking about the ball.”
She continued: “I just remember it was that moment where Paige would have been, ‘When are you leaving? What else are you going to do? What are you going to do to your hair? When will you be back? Can I go? Where can we go? Are you going to shop?’ The boys love me. Ladd loves me. But they’re just not on the edge of their seat wondering what I’m doing at every moment like my girls were!”
Maria Shriver, for her part, celebrated her youngest son’s graduation from the University of Michigan earlier this month.
“On this day my youngest child is graduating from college two years late because of Covid. He gets an in person graduation in the Big House,” the Ten Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Went Out into the Real World author, 66, wrote via Instagram on May 7, sharing a snap with son Christopher. “It’s such a gift when you see your child find their Happy Place! Christopher found it at Michigan, the greatest public institution in our country. Here he felt seen. Here he felt loved. Here he felt excepted. Here he was happy. He made lifelong friends and got a great education. No mother could ask for more!”
Shriver was previously married to Arnold Schwarzenegger — with whom she shares children Katherine Schwarzenegger, Christina Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Christopher Schwarzenegger — between 1986 and 2011.
“This group of friends will be together forever. I can feel it. I know it. I hope you too have friends on this day that bolster you, care for you, love you, and give you strength and remind you of how extraordinary you are,” the Illinois native added in her social media upload. “No matter our age we all need people to mirror back to us our strength, our beauty, our divinity. This young man does that for me every day. Congratulations, Christopher — you’re so loved, so respected, so admired. ”
Scroll below to see how the stars have celebrated their children’s graduations: