school's out forever

friday afternoon was the doctoral hooding ceremony. it began with a parade (grant is looking up at the camera; his advisor is behind him waving):

hazel and lucy:

i made sure they looked up for the important bits, like the hooding of dr. adamson by dr. deconick:

we headed to the college of humanities reception and took many pictures. below is grant with dr. henze, a member of grant's dissertation committee, and sylvia, the department coordinator:

 with dr. mackie, another member of the committee:

 with matt, a student of grant's:

with dan and johnathan, fellow graduates:

and lots of family photos:

saturday was commencement and conferral of degrees. the weather was surprisingly nice with low humidity and a cool breeze, but we were sitting facing the sun:

amazingly, i was able to spot grant in the crowd of graduates:

and i nearly burst with pride. commencement was well done. the keynote speaker was helene gayle and her speech was very good:

dr. adamson & dr. trammell:

with their advisor:

 and more family pictures:

posing by the sculpture po-um (lyric) by mark di suvero:

and posing by the piece monumental barn owl by geoffrey dashwood:

finally, encapsulating the entire weekend, a piece by hazel r. a.:

birthdays & parties

july 1, lucy turned 4. she'd been looking forward to it for ages and i don't think she was displeased:

as she slept, i covered her in pink balloons and waited for her bubbly excitement to overflow:

she didn't disappoint:

the 1st was a sunday and grant had early morning meetings to attend, making him unable to be around for presents. i let lucy open one (a new dress) before church:

and kept the rest back for after, when grant could watch: 

lucy was super excited to receive her very own scooter:

hazel gave her spiderman action figures:

it was hazel's lucky day too:

she received her own present from aunt jewel, along with lucy's. (thanks, jewel! they love them)

oliver thouroughly enjoyed the carnage:

lucy, after she finished opening everything, wanted to test drive her scooter:

don't let the picture deceive you, she really did have fun. as ever, grant and i are safety conscious. lucy was delighted with her spider-man helmet, knee and elbow pads, and finger-less gloves. in fact, she loved the gloves so much, she rarely took them off the first week:

lucy wanted pizza for dinner and i obliged. she also wanted a pink spider-man cake, but i talked her into cookies-n-cream cupcakes with pink frosting and she was happy to switch:

ok. maybe she was mostly excited to have a #4 candle on her cupcake, but they were also super delicious. i even fancied them up by swirling three colors of icing (pink, light pink, and white) using this tutorial. it turned out fine, but i think my frosting wasn't thick enough:

and finally, no birthday is complete without ice cream:

we took it pretty easy for the 4th of july. the library was closed so grant had to stay home with us. we went back to the spider web park:

it was hot:

really, really hot:

but that didn't stop us from getting a nice run in:

the girls rode their contraptions back and forth along the pathway:

lucy was nice enough to share:

we had lots of fun:

but eventually the threat of heat strokes sent us home.

last weekend, grant went to las vegas to visit his sister, so the girls and i had ourselves a party weekend. we went to the movie brave. lucy thought it was too loud:

but otherwise, we all enjoyed it tremendously.

we posed a bit outside the theater:

before heading home to paint:

sunday after church, we picked grant up from the airport and all was well.