The Stotts Family: Flying to graduation...

Last weekend, my (little - but much taller) brother, Conrad, graduated from EMU! We were able to be at graduation and celebrate with him. Mom and Dad made it out for the weekend, too. Such a fun weekend!!

the happy graduate! :)

For those of you who aren't familiar with EMU, it's a Mennonite university located in Harrisonburg, VA - a very beautiful area of the world if you've never seen it! It's also very far from Iowa... about an 18-hr drive from Ames, according to GoogleMaps... soooooo...there's a first time for everything... and this is the first time that the Stotts family (meaning more than just jake and colette) traveled by air! we debated whether we were crazy for doing it - flying with roman (3 1/2), josiah (1 1/2) and benjamin (8-weeks old)... but we decided it was a better choice than driving! (at least at our stage in life!) The trip was a success, meaning that we made it there and back... not without a few stories to tell! Here is a quick re-cap of some of our fun...

hooray! we made it through the security check at Omaha! (i'm pretty sure jake and i should have taken a second set of clothes to put on after each security check...whew!

Relaxing at the airport, waiting to board our flight...

... and now we are flying! We paid for three seats but ended up having an entire row to ourselves since there were four seats in a row... so josiah spent some time on jake's lap and some time next to me. the boys did well going up/down... although once we were down in DC, we realized that josiah's ears had probably popped because he had NO volume control whatsoever! it was kind of entertaining, for a short bit!

Some pool fun!!

Relaxing in the hotel room...

Graduation was held in the front lawn at the campus. A beautiful day to be outside! Roman entertained himself with an etch-a-sketch (a last-minute surprise for him!). Josiah and Jake walked the campus until Josiah fell asleep.