May Already

The past week has been a little crazy at our place, but good has come from it.

First of all, Phil has finally turned in his doctoral dissertation!! He was up late working every night for a week, and finally printed that 190-page document on Friday afternoon. After running around campus, his committee finally has a copy. He is still looking at May 29th as his oral defense and he will FINALLY be done with graduate school! I can't even begin to describe how proud I am of this man. Not only has he been an amazing husband to me and father to Jillian, but he has worked his tail off for 6 years. He has had many set backs and his defense has been rescheduled more time than I care to count. Those 190 pages are proof of what he has work for. Once he passes his defense, he will finally achieve his dream of earning a PhD.

I tried to stay up with him whenever he would work late in case Jillian needed something. Friday night was the first night in months that we've gone to bed before 11 p.m. We may not have gotten to sleep in, but just going to bed earlier felt great! We ran up to Tulsa to visit family early Saturday morning and I can see a difference in Phil. He's much more relaxed, present in conversation, and he's not checking his phone as often as he usually does :)

With this step done, we can move forward with our lives and plan our future here in the city. We'll be able to look at homes we're interested in. We can start saving money when he starts his full time job in June. We can finally know what it's like to have both of us out of school. We can find our new normal. (I won't lie, the prospect of a house and finally getting to do Jillian's nursery has me super excited!)

To the next step in life!

Secondly, Jillian went to the zoo for the first time this past week! We went with Mrs. Ashley and Addison. Both girls looked super cute and the moms had fun too :) However, there was a small incident where I came across as a little over-protective a little lot crazy. You see, it was pretty warm that day and we were doing our best keeping the girls cool and out of the sun. At one point, I checked on Jillian and her head was slumped over. The way she was sitting made my heart skip a beat so I looked at her closely. Her eyes were open, but she was clearly getting warm. The more we walked towards one of the few air conditioned buildings, the more I started to panic. She started whimpering and I tried carrying her. That only seemed to make her hotter. By the time we got to the building, she had fallen asleep, but I was frazzled like a mad woman. I'm sure I came across really horrible and I hope Ashley forgives my anxiety! In the end, Jillian was just fine and both girls had a good day. I had a slight sunburn, but nothing too bad. I guess I should have reapplied my own sunscreen!

{Dressed, Fed, and ready to roll!} 

{Hanging out while we wait for our friends} 

{Two of the sweetest girls in the world!}

{Obviously it's hard to get them to look in the same direction at the same time. We're working on it ;)} 

{Right before she got too hot. Clearly I was just being over-dramatic}

Third, we saw The Avengers last night and it was awesome! (We saw it in 3D because all the other shows were sold out. We thought it premiered last weekend, but we were wrong!) It's about 2 1/2 hours long, which I was not expecting. However, it didn't seem to drag and it was quite entertaining. It was funnier in parts than I thought it would be. Phil really enjoyed it! It was his pick after all ;)

Fourth, part of my absence was due to my desire to bring my routine back to it's former level. After being sick, then all this writing stuff for Phil, my routine just went down the drain. Now I have my place clean again and I'm going to start counting calories and exercising starting tomorrow.

Hope all is well with y'all!!