Graduate!

She beat me. My youngest sister by 8 years got her Master's Degree before me. Sigh. I am only one class (design project) away though. I'm. Just. Having. A. Hard. Time. Getting. Started.

But, I am very proud of her! And the graduation was so great!

Well it wasn't really great, cause all graduations pretty much stink; they are long, drawn out, and you are only there for about 10 seconds of excited-ness for your student. And despite that, when I'm finished I will want my family to sit there for me too. Prepare people.

Jessie (slightly out of focus, but this was the best I could get)

Ah, much better.

Mom, Jessie, and Dad

Matt, Jessie, and me

Poppa Lance, Jessie, and Lance  (and notice Jessie's flip flops)

Jessie and Erin

(you can see the full-size picture here)

2012 in Review - Part 1

So since I was so bad at posting pictures this year or blogging or doing anything besides dressing and feeding my children (and other small things like launching two satellites), here is a Review of 2012 as seen through my pictures. So like, don't be mad if something is missing cause I must not have been there to document it. :-P

January
Here is what Zoey looked like at 8 months:

We took Evan ice skating for the first time (too bad in this picture you can't see his brand new Bauer's):

February:
Here I am with my friend Becca's Baby Amelia (born on Christmas Eve of 2011):

March
Cindy's baby shower (Tia Marie would be born on March 28th).

Visiting grandparents, and what is possibly the greatest picture of Zoey ever:

The kids first trip to Consol Arena to watch a Pittsburgh Penguins game

Oh, and Emma moved in with us temporarily while Jessie and Lance looked for a house. She was quite comfortable here.

We also started work on redoing the master bedroom, you can see how much help Evan was with the spackling (needs to be a little bit smoother there kid).

April

Zoey's 1st Easter, in which Mark takes some great pictures that we will use for her birthday invitation. We also had steamed crabs. What a great Easter.

Also in March, Evan met the Chick-Fil-A at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab fishing tournament. You know, instead of ACTUALLY attempting to catch any fish. Maybe next year.

On that day I also got to take my parents and Jessie to see the RBSP spacecraft as they were still being built (but only weeks away from shipping to the Cape in Florida).

At a cookout later I got to finally meet these cutie pie twins (plus Spencer and Zoey got in there too):

Finally, a trip to Hershey Park got Evan doing the thing he was obsessed with, driving a car. See? We weren't scared at all.

Phew, that was only four months worth. Stay tuned for more.

Merry Christmas

I have so many pictures from Christmas, and it was very busy and flew by quickly. Not to mention we had a few of us fighting colds and such so it wasn't really the 'rest and relax cause we are off of work' that we all imagine in our heads.

But there was this.

This is the Christmas tree at  +Jessie's house where we were on Christmas Eve.

At one point during the evening, I was sitting in the chair with Evan looking at the tree. I noticed one of the ornaments was a cloth unicorn that my mother made many years ago, with sparkly string purple mane and tail, and a gold threaded horn and bridle. I was explaining to him that Grammie made that many years ago when I was young.

"When you were little girl?" he said.

"Yup, and now I'm grown up" I replied.

"And now you're a mommy" he said.

And now I am. Of two really wonderful children.

Not the greatest picture, I'll have to get a better one at some point.