My birthday

One day after Sara turned 8 months old, I turned 36.  Years.

I have such great kids.  They made it a really special birthday for me.

Mary made me a multi-media picture of us, complete with string, hole punches, and staples.  Adorable!  (That girl is turning into a crafting/art project maniac.)  And she put it in a special envelope!  I love that David and Mary can do art projects completely on their own!  (It makes them way more meaningful.)

David wrote me a chant about me being great and awesome and loved.  He attached a page of 3-D pictures he had drawn.  Very cool.  Love that kid.

David posed for the picture of my "big gift"--a Bose speaker I can stream NPR (and other necessary things like The Nutcracker) onto from my phone.

(You notice my sweet dream baby in the back ground?)

I got lots of birthday cuddles with my kids.  The following is a series of pictures entitled "The Strand of Hair."

To celebrate my birthday, I got not one, but TWO, super fancy cakes.

We shared the cakes with my niece and nephews.  What a great birthday!

And the very best part was my three amazing children.  I love each of them more deeply every day.

Campus

Greg's diploma is framed.

Sadly, that's all the formality he's getting for his PhD.  There was no commencement in August.  So we planned to go back to Wisconsin for graduation in May (and swing up to Door County).  But with his deployment, he'll be on the other side of the world in May.  So then we decided we would go to graduation in December, which is the Sunday before Christmas.  But now he has Evasion and Conduct After Capture training in San Antonio next week.  Darn.  Greg doesn't get to walk and be hooded.  (And I don't get to see my friends.)  But he has a diploma!  And spot on the wall in his office!  (Not that he'll be in his office for much of the next year...)

It would have been nice to go back to campus.

But we did go to campus for a final family outing right before we moved.  It was very hot and humid that day in Madison.  Today in Ohio there is snow on the ground and school was cancelled.  It was an entirely different season back when we moved.  It's been months...over four months.  That's like a third of a year.  Why do I feel like we're still brand new?

Anyway, here is a walk down memory lane ... pictures from campus that I would swear were taken just a few weeks ago ... but it was the end of July ... back when Sara wasn't quite seven months old and David just  barely eight and Mary's sixth birthday was ages away still.

Time marches on.