USAFA Grad Week, Round Two: The Parade

*The next few posts will be about my new brother-in-law Jordan's graduation from the Air Force Academy. I talked about all the different events when I posted about Matt's Grad Week, so I'll reference those posts as I go along.
Click here to read about Matt's USAFA Class of 2009 Graduation Week.*

The last time Matt and I had visited the Air Force Academy was in January of 2010 for President Uchtdorf's fireside. That was also Nicole's first time visiting Jordan at USAFA. By the end of that weekend and after a late-night sister talk, I was fairly confident that their relationship would take off and we would all be returning again for Jordan's graduation in May of 2012. Happily, I was right! Which means I'd basically been counting down to the Class of 2012 Grad Week for 2.5 years. So invested for someone that's not even a part of it, eh?

In all seriousness, I was so looking forward to going back to Colorado Springs with Matt and Jake (after all, it's where Matt and I fell in love!). We were so excited for Jordan and Nicole, and we were so excited for us! We couldn't wait to see our favorite people, go to our favorite places, do our favorite things and, in a sense, relive one of our favorite weeks ever. Sadly, the stomach flu hit Jake and I rather violently on the morning of our scheduled departure so we got to Colorado two days late. This was a major bummer because it took away most of the people- and sight-seeing, but we were at least lucky that we were still able to make it to all of Jordan's graduation events.

The first of these events was the graduation parade held on Tuesday morning. Go here to read all about this tradition and Matt's graduation parade, and scroll down to see pictures of Jordan's grad parade.

The little boys met the falcon before watching the parade.

Jordan was a squad commander, so he led his squadron's seniors as they marched away from the cadet wing.

The Academy is pretty great at building up the excitement with all the events leading up to graduation. Coley and Jordan were so happy to kick everything off!

Jakey was pretty happy, too.

The addition of cousin Krysta on this trip was basically the best.