UNC Graduation Weekend

Last weekend was the Hooding Ceremony for all of us PhD folks who received our degrees between August 2012 and May 2013.  Additionally, my department had its spring commencement ceremony to recognize us grads from the past academic year.  Since I graduated last December, I participated in both.  The ceremonies were kind of long and my individual part was short, but my short moments were really significant to me.  The road to the PhD is not always an easy one, and sometimes it is more of an exercise of perseverance and tenacity than intelligence.  This weekend was a nice way to officially close the graduate school chapter of my life and celebrate with my family, adviser, and fellow Exercise & Sport Science grads and colleagues.

 Me and my adviser, Dr. B.  We were a team for 6 and a half years!  I am also now noticing that I am not wearing my hat 100% correctly!

Ally turns 4!

Yesterday was Ally's 4th birthday! We celebrated at the park with friends, lunch, and brightly colored cupcakes. Good times had by all!



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Amelia turns one!

Amelia is one year old today. So hard to believe! Happy birthday, sweet baby!









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Really Mobile Amelia

Her new favorite activity: climbing the stairs


















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The gauntlet of candy

Where there are young children (and holiday celebrations), there is candy.  I swear, it has been one steady stream of candy entering our house since last fall.  Here is the approximate progression of the candy-bearing holidays:

Halloween -> Thanksgiving -> Christmas -> Valentine's Day -> Easter

The thing is, since most of these holidays have a "season" that surrounds them, they all kind of blend together after a while.  For example, we had not finished our stash of Halloween candy before the Thanksgiving and Christmas season came upon us.  And when you have a lot of candy in your house, you kind of feel like you need to eat it.  This is all fine and good for us adults who (usually) can practice self control when it comes to desiring to eat sweets.  Not so much for the preschooler population though.  Up until about 6 months ago, Ally really never asked us for sweets because we rarely had them in the house, and also because she generally didn't care about them too much.  These days, it's a question that she asks pretty much every day after dinner.  So now we are trying to figure out ways to disassociate the sweets eating from desert  and dinner time, and that sometimes we have sweets and sometimes we don't.  Maybe now that Easter itself is over, our candy supply will decrease, and then it will become an out-of-sight, out-of-mind sort of thing.

In the meantime, please don't anyone send us candy.  Coffee is always welcome though!

Random Amelia Pictures

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You know your fate is sealed when...

Your 10 month old who has a runny nose sneezes in your face. Hello sinus infection.