Graduation Trip (part 1)

Once again our travels have caused us to fall behind on blog-posting, but we will try to get you all caught up before we head out again.

Since we posted last, we have had several major events, the first of which was a trip to Illinois for graduation at Illinois State University. Dr. Aunt Marcy was graduating with her Ph.D., and since she has been such a good friend and sat through so many of our graduations, there was no way we were missing hers.

We left at 12 a.m. Friday morning and drove through the wee hours of the morning in order to keep Jackson on his schedule. We got into Bloomington a little after 8 a.m. and stopped off to see Marcy and Claire briefly at their office (CTLT) before heading over to meet Jackie's new friend Katie Mary Margaret Aitken. She is the daughter of our friends Nikki and Brian, who both looked surprisingly good for new parents.

Katie is adorable, and we fell in love with her immediately. She was born one day before her safe date, and when you put her up next to Jackson she seems so tiny! Here are they are together in their matching green outfits.

That afternoon, Nana and Pawpaw Spangler came up and we all got checked into the hotel. We are bad parents for not getting a single picture of that because we were too exhausted. The grandparents took Jackie off our hands for a few hours while we took a nap, went out to dinner, and attended graduation. Maybe they will get a CD of the pictures they took and share them with us.

Since it was Mothers' Day weekend, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out at Central Station before going off to graduation. It was so nice to have a meal without having to juggle a baby at the same time :)

From there it was off to Redbird Arena to battle the madhouse that is an ISU graduation. Marcy's fan club took up two whole rows, and we had a great time catching up with the members of her family that we knew and meeting a few more. We knew several of the Ph.D graduates and cheered for all of them as they got their hoods. Here is Marcy being hooded.

And here is a better one of her with her mom and her adviser. Doesn't her mom look so proud?

Rachel also got to see two of her favorite students graduate. She knows you aren't supposed to have favorites, but these guys were friends in undergrad that overlapped into her grad school PRIDE advisees. She was so happy to get her picture taken with them.

Some people headed out to party after the ceremony, but we were too wiped out from the drive and wanted to get some sleep before we had another full day on Saturday.