Dada's Graduation

What seems like many moons ago now, Grandma & Grandpa O'Neal and our nephew Nate visited Seattle to see Dada in his goofy doctoral garb walk across the stage in Husky Stadium. In typical Seattle fashion, it rained nearly the whole time. Isaac did his part, helping Grandpa hold the umbrella on the walk there:



Grandma was so proud of her baby -- she found his name in the program and beamed:



We were a little afraid of how Isaac would take sitting still for 2-3 hours, but he turned out to be quite a trooper. The key: lots and lots of balloons that people would inadvertently let loose for him to track in the sky, super-loud music in the beginning of the ceremony, and lots of clapping (which naturally means he must stop whatever he's doing and clap along):



In atypical Seattle fashion, the graduation drizzle quickly turned into a veritable monsoon. We decided that this wasn't so much raining on our and Dada's parade (pun fully intended), but that it was a testament to the process of earning a Ph.D. itself that we would stick it out through such adverse circumstances to acheive our goal of seeing Dada on the HuskyTron (as blogged in brief below). We met somewhere a little drier to take pictures of Dada in his ridiculous doctoral garb. Yes, it is purple velvet (think "Dr. Pimp"). Here's a rare shot of myself and Dada:



Dada with Nate:



And Dada with his parents and snoozing offspring: