Well, I am finally done. Or, as the cake said, "Phinally Done." Graduation from 'Ph.D. school' was last Sunday, and with several family guests (Dan's parents as well as Mo and Ben and his kids) and beautiful weather, it made for a great weekend. It had been about 5 months since I defended, and it wasn't like I was doing a whole lot of Plant Biology in the meantime, but it was nice to have that 'closure' (that makes it sound like someone died or something...). In contrast to previous years, where my advisor had been known to book family vacations on his students' graduation day, he was in town, and we had a good time at the ceremony. We probably had too much fun making snide comments about peoples' caps being on backwards and overly analyzing the address given by ...someone, about ...something, which started out with a quiz asking us if we remembered what was said at our undergrad graduation, and following this up with the impression that what he had to say would be remembered by us for years to come. I don't remember the guy's name much less what his point was, although he did talk about land grants a lot. Lewis Smede, the author of "Sex for Christians" was the speaker at our Calvin graduation, but I can't say I remember a whole lot about that either, unfortunately. Anyway, aside from my advisor making comments about how it wasn't legal to have a student graduate if they were more than 6 inches taller than the advisor, and his overly enthusiastic turning of the corners as we processed in (he was mocking the University Marshall a few steps ahead of us--very mature...), we behaved ourselves relatively well. I had a stash of cough drops in my billowing sleeves to stave off a cough that sounded like a donkey braying. When Roger saw me take a few out as we were getting ready, he took his cue from me and stuffed his hanger and other stuff he had brought into his sleeve as well so he wouldn't have to leave them all behind and try to find them later. He cracks me up.
Anyway, that's about all there is to say about graduation. I must say I was hoping for some nice shots of Isaiah smiling with me in my cap and gown and hood, but unfortunately he was tired or hungry or cranky or probably all of the above when we got out of the ceremony and wanted nothing to do with picture-taking or smiling. We are hoping to get some more pictures in front of our house one of these days before I take the rentals back, but we'll see if that actually happens.

Aside from graduation and extra houseguests (who were all wonderful), life is somewhat back to normal for us now. 'Normal' being currently defined as one of us being sick at any given point in time. Dan and I have been playing tagteam with a cough the last month or so. He had it, then gave it to me, and I had it during graduation, then he picked it up after that, and now I have it again. We're a little puzzled as to why Isaiah hasn't gotten it at all yet, but are not complaining in the least. I'm hoping that two rounds of it per person will suffice. Isaiah, while lacking the cough symptoms, has been ever more vigorously walking around, running around, diving headfirst into sofas, bathroom walls, etc., so has an assortment of colorful bruises on his forehead. The one where he dove into the sofa was particularly gruesome. No blood, though, so we avoided an ER visit. He's getting a lot better at walking, but still has a little trouble when he has actual shoes on (when he's outside). Otherwise, he still eats half of my meals and is skinny as a rail, while I have half of my meals (duh) and am still working on keeping excess weight off. It's just not right.

We'll be taking our first plane trip to Michigan in a few weeks. By 'we', I mean Isaiah and I, and I am just slightly nervous about this, knowing his desire to move around and be active. We're considering it a 'test run' for our trip later in the summer when we go to Phoenix to see my grandparents and Mom, although honestly, the worth in a 'dry run' for a plane trip with a toddler is kind of like a 'dry run' for a tetanus shot--the former doesn't necessarily hurt any less, it may not teach you anything at all, and you still have to get the latter. Anyway, while we're gone, Dan will enjoy bachelorhood for a week and a half, and hopefully cram in some experiments so that he can progress soon to his dissertation-writing.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks. Some are self-explanatory. Others are not, so you have my permission to make up your own photo captions for those.