Best Father's Day Ever!!

The rain couldn't dampen our spirits today, and thank goodness, Oregon Institute of Technology erected the largest tent I've ever seen.

We were in high spirits waiting for the graduates to come in.

Of course, we had to look up Matthew's name in the program. This was the first graduation held at the new Wilsonville campus of Oregon Institute of Technology, and Matthew was the only one graduating with his particular specialty.

The plus sign next to his name indicates he is a summer graduate. In other words, he still has one class to take before he is officially graduated, but he walked with his class today.

In the image below, he was waiting for his turn to collect his diploma. He was in the second to last row of graduates to walk to the dais.

Next, he shook hands with the president of the university as he collected his diploma cover. They were chuckling at Matthew's cheering section...us!

Does he look like the cat who just swallowed the canary?

When it was all over, we paused briefly outside and then decided to go to dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant.

We didn't have reservations, since we didn't really know how long the ceremony would be. This being Father's Day, the restaurant was booked up, but they managed to squeeze us in anyway. It was so much fun...a jubilant celebration to be sure.

Here's one proud mom with her youngest college graduate.

Here are Erik and Mae...looking so great together.

And Matthew and Valerie. Valerie was wearing her "princess dress" from Goodwill...our favorite store!

And here's Matthew discussing the future with Valerie.

We had a wonderful dinner celebration, and I'm sure we were the noisiest group in the restaurant, but we were happy! 

It has been a wonderful day. One quilt top finished. One kid graduated. You can't do better than that.