A really good weekend

This week was my wedding anniversary/birthday week. When we were planning our wedding, I wanted to get married on my birthday itself -- it seemed like an efficient use of special occasions, and only required Chris to remember one date. :-D But July 24, 2005 was a Sunday, and my pastor just didn't want to perform the ceremony on a Sunday, so we did it the day before instead.

Because of Chris's ever-changing work schedule, we don't really get to enjoy holidays and birthdays and things on the days themselves very often; but this year, his already scheduled days off just happened to be our anniversary and my birthday! My mom took the kids for our "weekend," and we got to spend a whole 48 hours alone together. We went out to dinner, went to see a movie that wasn 't animated, and just hung around the house together enjoying the peace and quiet. It was glorious. And, this is a terrible thing to admit to, but the house got messier over our weekend than it has been since we moved in! I really wasn't concerned about cleaning up, I just wanted to enjoy my special days, but I did at least get the kitchen clean before the kids came back on Saturday.

It was so much fun to just chill with my favorite person for two days and not have to worry about anything or anybody but ourselves, just for a little while. We'll have to try and do this again next year!

The Graduate

Here he is, ladies & gentlemen!

It was a long day, but I'm glad we went. Chris's dad didn't make it (grrrr!), but his mom was there, and she was completely thrilled, so it was all worthwhile.

The Commencement That Almost Wasn't

For the past year and a half, Chris has been taking online classes through Ottawa University in order to finish his bachelor's degree in Police Science. And tonight, he walks. :-)

It is really a very special thing that he gets to be a part of this commencement; his last classes don't even end for another month, and his degree doesn't actually confer until May somethingth. If it was up to the two of us, we wouldn't have bothered with the ceremony at all -- it's held in Phoenix, and with the driving, and the kids, and work and everything, we would be happy to just receive the degree in the mail and be done with it. But we knew that the fact that Chris is graduating means a LOT to his parents and, especially since his dad was diagnosed with colon cancer, we felt that it was important to try and make it happen. We were expecting commencements to happen in May/June and December, like they do for the state universities around here, but OU's commencements in April and September, and this year's September ceremony coincides very closely with the arrival of our new baby, so it was not a reasonable option. It really looked like commencement was going to be a no-go after all, but then Chris explained our dilemma to his advisor-type-person. This woman, someone that Chris has only ever communicated with via e-mails and phone calls, jumped in and got special permisson for him to walk this April. Very, very cool. *

So this afternoon, thanks to a person we've never met, Chris is going to get to walk across the stage in cap and gown, and make his parents' day (assuming they both show up... which is another blog post entirely).

Now the only problem is why, oh why, did I not realize that I was going to have to keep a toddler happy and busy during the ceremony and what, oh what am I going to bring along to keep him occupied?!?!?!

* The whole Ottawa University experience was really positive -- if you are in the market for an online university, I would definitely recommend looking at them!