We took her, her daughter, Aidan, her husband, Jason, and his dad, Timmy, to the ceremony at Seahawk Stadium in Seattle on June 15th. It's normally held at the UW stadium, but that's under construction now.
Here she is getting out of our big truck, affectionately known as Mo' Booty, and getting ready to go.
She gave Aidan a special sash.
Trout is the one in orange. Timmy is the one with the camera. Jason is the one playing BOB (beast of burden).
Ramona leads the way.
Then we have a slight pause while who knows what happened? Did someone need to be plugged in at the car charging station?
The stadium is big.
But nicely decorated for the occasion. The friends and family are all in place. We were lucky. We were on the shady side of the stadium.
Those with the alphabet soup after their names start filing in.
The actual graduates start to enter from both sides. Those getting advanced degrees go first.
They just kept coming. Naturally, Arts & Sciences was the largest college.
The chairs kept filling up.
Then more important people came in. But what I want you to notice is the engineering graduates in their gold hard hats. No mortar boards for them!
The colors came in and we sang the national anthem.
Having never walked in a graduation except high school myself, I wondered why people decorated their hats, wore leis, and otherwise tried to call attention to themselves. With this mob, I figured it out. You will never see your graduate if you don't. For the longest time we didn't see Ramona, but luckily she was on the aisle, so we finally found her. The candy necklaces helped. I didn't notice the girl behind with the Texas map until I edited these pictures. There were a lot of grads, male and female, who bared a lot due to the sun and heat.
You're going to see lots of pictures of Ramona ... fidgeting ... like everyone else. I think it was Lee, her brother, who said I should make a flip book. I kept this picture because of the shoes on the girl passing by.
Now we begin. She's in Sweden now, so maybe she won't see this. She and her friend chat some, but the guy in the glasses to our left of her friend keeps his head down in almost all of these pictures. I bet a cell phone is involved.
I think she found us.
Her time to walk is getting close.
And here she goes.
A big wave for us and from us back to her.
I hope this means she'll be going to grad school at some point.
And up on the stage. I didn't catch her coming down the ramps.
And back to her seat with the coveted purple in hand.
And there you have it. We didn't hang out until the absolute end, but rather met her back at the truck. Then it was on to Trout's old haunt, Jalisco, for dinner. She had to leave early for other well-deserved partying.
Now she's on the island of Gotland, Sweden for a 5-week archeology field school digging up a Viking port.
Many congratulations to Ramona for a job well done!
