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.:

monday night flashback #31: special wednesday edition

my brother was the impetus for grant and me getting together (thanks again for that, jared). see here. it took some time. 

while i was in high school, grant and i had our first first date. we tripled with jared and grant's sister jewel, and grant's parents. it was actually super fun. we went up to salt lake city for dinner (and maybe a movie?) anyway, grant and i talked a lot and hit it off. i'd always thought he was cool. i mean, duh:

cool. and unaware of said coolness, thus magnifying it. plus, he's not hard on the eyes. back to the date: it was great. i had hopes. and . . . nothing. in grant's defense, i was still in high school and i didn't call him either. but the attraction was there!

fast forward to late spring/early summer 2002, jared mentioned to me that he'd told grant to ask me out. i waited excited and breathless for a week or two and . . . again nothing. life moved on. i did silly things with my friends:

grant did manly, tough things with jared:

now and then i joined them on their excursions, usually as the camera wielder. eventually, i was allowed to hang out as one of the gang. we played video games (like halo) and ate ice cream. on one such night, sometime in the fall (maybe winter) of 2002, we decided to get root beer floats at the kfc/a&w in provo or orem. grant (secretly crushing on me) treated us all. as we waited, i daringly grabbed a straw and shot the wrapper at him. wouldn't you know it? i got him right between the eyes. he must have liked it because he finally called to ask me out a few weeks later . . . 

happy (33rd) birthday dearest muffin!! xxx

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.