It’s official, Erica is a college graduate. Wow, the last four years went fast!

We had a great time with visitors and in Austin. Ed’s brother Jim came a week early and spent time in Dallas visiting historical sites and museums, reading and sailing. He  drove Ed’s car down to Austin last Thursday so he could go floating on the Guadalupe River with Erica and her friends. His sister Colleen was supposed to arrive in Dallas that night, but her plane was delayed so late that she switched her flight to take her directly to Austin Friday morning. Ed and I drove my car down and got there just in time to pick her up and get everybody together to go to the graduation ceremony.

The ceremony was nice, typical processionals, speeches, marches across the stage, pictures after, etc. The speaker was Berkeley Breathed, the Bloom County and Opus cartoonist. He was funny.

We had a wonderful graduation dinner at the Belmont, with Ed, Jim, Colleen, Erica’s mother and stepfather, her maternal grandmother, her sister Rachelle and Rachelle’s two little girls, our friends Mike and Carla who now live in Austin (they are the ones that used to have the house in Galveston), and two of Erica’s friends.

The next day Ed, Jim, Colleen, Erica, Rachelle and I had lunch at Curra’s, our favorite Mexican place in Austin, and then did the shopping for Erica’s graduation party. The party was to be at 6:30pm on a boat on Lake Travis. Unfortunately, as the afternoon wore on, the skies got darker and darker. Eventually it began to pour. We decided to head out to the lake anyway. Traffic slowed and we realized there was standing water on the highway. Cars were pulling off the road. In the middle of the torrential rain, thunder and lightning, Ed announced that he was guaranteeing we would have a sunset. My reaction was “Oh, come on!”. I wasn’t sure they would even let us out on the lake. By the time we got there, it was lightening up a bit. And what do you know, we did see the sunset.

The kids (and adults) had fun, although most people elected not to swim because the rain had cooled things down.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast at Austin Java, then split up to do errands and drive home. Colleen and I drove my car up first to get the house ready for visitors, Erica and Rachelle and the two girls came in her car, and Ed and Jim followed behind after tying up all the loose ends from the party. We had a nice lobster risotto here. Everybody (except Erica) has left now, so we have a quiet house once again. It was nice having a houseful though.