UT trip pics: graduations, marathons, and Dane Dane Dane!

I feel like we are in that song "The Wanderer" right now. I look at our summer plans, and our current status, and it looks like we are just going to be ping-ponging across the United States for the next two months. We are going to be crossing the country some six or seven times for different trips this summer! Not to mention that small detail of moving to a different state in a couple of weeks . . . oh yeah! I am not the hugest fan of flying with this crazy toddler that we have, but it is so, so worth it to see him loving loving LOVING his extended family we don't get to see all that often. And really, we choose to live far away from our family (or we have to), so we have to choose when we get to visit them and we have to choose which family events we get to make it to. It's a bummer to miss a lot of big family events, but we have been ridiculously blessed to be able to visit our families twice a year while living in North Carolina. And this summer, we're going above and beyond . . . there are lots of events we want to be there for, with Austin coming home from his mission and Lindsay and Travis coming to visit from China, so we're going to just bite the bullet and DO IT even though it kind of feels excessive. It just looks like we're going to be traveling quite a lot the next few months (trying to get our money's worth before Dane turns 2 and we have to pay for his tickets!).

With that said, we are currently in the middle of a trip visiting our families! We spent a week in Ogden at the Leiningers', and are in the middle of a week in Irvine with my family. As usual, we are so glad to be out here. Dane is seriously having a blast. He loves his grandmas and grandpas soooooo much! And he is constantly talking about his aunts and uncles and asking for them when they're not in the room. It makes me so happy to see Dane making these connections with our family who he loves so much. We picked a great week to visit Ogden as well; we were there for Callie's graduation from HS, Kenzie's graduation from elementary school, and the Ogden marathon which Tommy, Troy, and Kurt ran together. It was a perfect week for us to be visiting. It was pretty funny because Tommy's mom and dad came out to visit for Tommy's graduation, and then three days later, we flew out to UT to visit them for all of this stuff. But it's worked out great. And we will see them in a month or so again! (Like I said . . . we're traveling a lot.)

We went to one of Kenzie's softball games, and Dane spent the whole time crying for Kenzie and trying to figure out a way to get out to her on the field. "Kenzie! Kenzie!" It was so cute and pathetic how he was so sad he couldn't get to play with her.

Dane loved Auntie Yaya. She showed him some videos of Zach on her phone and he was convinced they were of him, and he was laughing so hard watching them!

Dane and Zach were put to work in the backyard. They took care of all the sweeping.

The marathon probably deserves a whole post on its own, but I am too lazy right now. But hooray! Tommy and his two brothers ran a marathon together! And they did a FANTASTIC job. Tommy's goal was to run it in 4 hours, and he beat his goal time by 10 minutes--and he beat both of his younger brothers! But man, they were CHAMPS. It was so fun waiting for them at the end; it was the most exciting thing to find them running and cheering for them. And I absolutely LOVE this picture of the three brothers finishing the race--Tommy and Kurt both finished before Troy and came to run the very end with him when he finished, and it was the perfect Kodak moment. What a great picture.

Three marathoners!

Not to be outdone--Kristen, Callie and I ran the 5K associated with the marathon. We are pretty awesome too, just so you know!

 Oh my goodness, Dane LOVED Uncle Troy. He would climb into his lap and snuggle with him for a ridiculously long amount of time (longer than he'll ever do with me!). It was so cute.

Melissa and I took the two boys to feed the ducks on Weber State campus one morning. Such cute boys!

Callie's high school graduation! (Don't worry, we took pictures and then I took the two toddler boys home and didn't force them to sit through a whole graduation. We were all happier that way!)

These two both love Auntie Kenzie.

We also took the two boys swimming together!

We went and had lunch with Grandpa at the hospital while he was working one day too. I'd never actually gone to eat at the hospital with him before! It was great!

Kenzie's elementary school graduation, where she also received an award for being an awesome reader.

The last day we were there, we went to the This Is The Place monument, to see the little baby animals exhibit they had there with the two boys. It was so cute to bring them there and see them petting the animals. I'm really glad we went!

Dane couldn't stop talking about the "baby chicks."

Dane was really nervous about the horses. We tried to get the two boys to ride the horse together when we first got there, and they both started crying. But after we visited all the other animals, Dane said "horse!" and wanted to ride on the horse. And he did! He sat there so patiently and happily let the horse walk around with him. It was just adorable. 

We rode the train around the little town, and the two boys were big fans.

Look at them holding hands! Cute cousins!

They have the cutest little play area there, with little miniature houses for them to run in and out of and a cute little train they can play in. 

I just love watching these two boys together.

We ate on the balcony of the little hotel at the village there.

Pullen Park with Gma and Gpa

The other really big, fun thing we did with Grandma and Grandpa while they were here was going to Pullen Park in Raleigh with them. I don't really know how to describe how AWESOME Pullen Park is without showing someone. It's got playgrounds and grassy areas and a little train and a merry-go-round and paddle boats--we love it so much! The only bummer is that it's a good 20 minutes away from us. But oh, man, Dane has had SUCH a blast the last few times we've gone there. The best thing we discovered this time was that one of their play areas has sand and water--water squirts out and makes puddles for the kids to play in and get dirty in. And Dane was absolutely the happiest I've seen him anywhere. He could not get enough of playing in the water. He was completely soaked, head to toe--more than any other kid there, and he did not want to stop. It was completely adorable and fun to be there with his grandma and grandpa to see him having so much fun.

Just sitting in the puddle. Too bad we didn't have a change of clothes for him!

We ended up just having to take off his overalls to let them dry and just let him walk around in his diaper and t-shirt the rest of the time, haha. We totally looked like hillbillies!

We went on the little train ride, which Dane loved.

So happy as soon as we started moving.

And then we went on the merry-go-round. Tommy has been telling Dane about how he rode on the lion for weeks since we last came, and Dane could not stop thinking about it. He was sooooo excited! And so thrilled to be riding on his lion friend again.

We got some Locopops from the cafe at the park (sooooo good!)

Tommy and his mom, a post-Mother's Day pic! 

Thank you for coming, Leiningers! It was so fun to have you here for just the short weekend! But for some reason I don't think it'll be too long until we see you again... We'll be visiting them very soon. We're excited for our next big trip out to visit our families. It'll be great!

a weekend with grandma and grandpa

So of course, the big event of this weekend with the Leiningers here visiting us was Tommy's graduation. But it was also fun to just hang out with them and let Dane have fun with his Grandma and Grandpa and his auntie Kenzie. True to form, Dane immediately LOVED Grandpa. Every time Greg would drive up, he'd start yelling "Papa! Papa!" And he always wanted Grandpa to hold him. He definitely has a thing for the men in his life. He much prefers his dad to his mom, and he seems to be much more a fan of his grandpas than his grandmas (at least for now, until he realizes all the spoiling he's going to get from his grandmas!) And he loved seeing Kenzie too. So we tried to do some fun things with them while they were visiting, other than just all of the graduation celebrations. 

Before they got here on Friday, Tommy and Dane went outside and colored with some chalk on the sidewalk to welcome them to our apartment!

And the second they all came in, Dane ran for his stack of books and brought them all over to Kenzie one by one and wanted her to read them with him. He wanted to show her every one of his books.

Greg's birthday was a few days before they came out to visit us, so we wanted to celebrate with them! We made a birthday cake for Greg and got some Bluebell ice cream for them to enjoy with us.

Dane loved trying on Grandpa's glasses!

On Saturday, during Dane's nap, Tommy took them over to Maple View Farms to have some homemade ice cream. That's one of our favorite places here in NC, but we haven't been for a while! I think we've taken the Leiningers every time they've visited here.

We showed them how much Dane LOVES swimming at our pool.

A random, cute picture of Dane: We were walking around taking pictures on Duke campus and there was this squirrel sitting in the bushes. Dane was so happy to see it, and kept waving and saying "Hi, squirrel! Hi! Hi! Hi!" and trying to get closer and closer to it. He definitely wanted to pet it. Such a friendly boy!

Tommy's department convocation was right in the middle of Dane's naptime, so I was very smart and just brought the Kindle and showed him clips of the Lion King on silent. That helped him to last almost the entire time through the event! He was so cute just sitting in the chair and watching his little show. 

a few graduation pictures

I will probably do another post with more pictures from this weekend, with all the fun we've had with the Leiningers visiting, but here are a few official graduation pictures from this weekend. So it's official! Tommy is a doctor! You may now call him Dr. Leininger, as he now prefers to be known. Or Dr. MC (Dr. Miracle Child, a family running joke with the Leiningers).

I feel like people talk about doing a PhD like it's this crazy difficult time in your life, something that you have to suffer through in order to get to the good stuff afterwards. But I really feel like these four years here in Durham, and Tommy's four years studying here at Duke, have been anything but difficult. We have lived a charmed life the last four years, being able to take vacation as much as we want (a big trip to visit both our families at Christmas and in the summer, plus smaller trips on our own if we wanted), Tommy being able to work from home and spend lots of time with Dane, and still being able to work hard and get stuff done with his advisor. I know there has been a lot more stress involved on Tommy's side than mine with this PhD (haha), and there have been periods with a lot lot LOT of work (like the last few months leading up to his thesis defense), but I know he agrees with me here that it hasn't been as hard as people make it sound. I know that we are totally lucky in this situation and I am grateful everything we've experienced has gone so smoothly. So we go into this graduation feeling relieved and grateful and happy--and oh so proud of everything Tommy has done!

There are a number of different ceremonies that are included in "graduation" at Duke, so we skipped some and went to others. The one major one that we went to was the PhD hooding ceremony, where all the graduating PhD students were hooded by their advisors (or given the sash/hood thing that signifies a doctorate). It took FOR-E-VER because there were over 200 PhD graduates being hooded. And Tommy's department was the absolute last one to go--Tommy was the fifth from the last student to be hooded! Tommy's advisor was actually out of the country so another member of his committee was the actual one who did the hooding. But we were so excited to watch it once the big moment came. And luckily, Greg has an amazing camera lens that allowed him to zoom in and get some good pictures (you wouldn't even know how far back we were sitting!). 

We ended up skipping the main commencement/convocation ceremony on Sunday morning so that we could go to sacrament meeting and not torture ourselves with Dane at the Duke football stadium for several hours. We went to campus and took some pictures of Tommy with his robes in front of his building and with the chapel in the background.

We then went to the statistics department ceremony and watched Tommy get his actual diploma. There's the big deal! It was really nice that the stats department is so small, because they only had about 15 bachelor's degrees, 5 master's degrees, and 7 PhD degrees to give out. Each student had their advisor say something about him or her when they said their names, which was really neat.

The four students from Tommy's year who graduated this semester: Daniel, Tommy, Maria, and Tim.

Most of the first-year class who started out together. Those who haven't graduated yet will be doing so within the next year. 

So there we go! Happy graduation to Tommy! I will post more pictures when I have some more time.

a few cute things

-Dane has started to do this funny thing where when we read books or he sees pictures and there is something he wants in that picture, he'll grab at it and whine and then look at me with a pitiful pleading look, like, "Why can't I have that?" He started doing this with several books that have pictures of cupcakes, where he'd try to pull the cupcakes off the page and beg for some to eat them. It's since progressed to basically anything he likes, from tractors to dinosaurs to his bed (from some pictures we were looking at together). I don't know where he got this idea but he does it all the time now, and it just cracks me up.

-Sometimes I'll ask Dane for kisses and he'll push me away and grunt, like "Ughhhh!", but he's laughing and totally knows that he's teasing me by denying me kisses. He sounds just like a teenage boy who's been kiss attacked by an annoying aunt. It kills me and makes me just want to do it over and over again so he'll keep grunting at me.

-Dane can run now, like actual running with his feet coming off the ground and bouncing up and down. It's pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen.

-Dane and Daddy have this great bathtime ritual. When we're finishing up with dinner, we'll start asking Dane questions like, "Do you want a ... baloney? Do you want a ... banana? Do you want a ... baboon?" And he knows that we're just teasing him and starts screaming "BATH! BATH! BATH!" So we get him out and he runs into the bathroom and Tommy gives him his bath. They play in the water for a while and do their bath thing while I do the dishes (or just relax). Then when they're done, Tommy gets Dane out and Dane comes out of the bathroom stark naked and runs to find me and jumps up on me, screaming and laughing and getting me all wet and clinging to me with his wet naked body. So I have to run with him and get his towel and get a diaper on him, because I am always afraid he is going to pee on me. But it's become a regular thing, that every night he runs to find me and wants me to hold him after his bath before he does anything else. It's like I'm included in the bathtime fun. So cute.

Helping Daddy with his tools.

-Dane has all of a sudden started saying three-syllable words. He woke up from his nap last week saying, "A-ni-mal!" so clearly and perfectly! He used to say it like "ammal," which was totally fine, but somehow he figured out how to say it correctly in his sleep and now says it all the time. (Although he also now calls his morning oatmeal "animal" so we're working on that.) He also said "Applesauce!" the other day too. It's so crazy amazing to watch this tiny person make these small strides in learning. Last week he couldn't do that and this week he can, and it's so fun to see him and be aware of every single little incremental step he's taking in growing.

-Dane and I had this three-day-long fight over drinking his milk. He wouldn't drink ANYTHING for several days and I was trying every way I could to get him to drink. I finally was getting so mad at him and was frustrated to no end, and I was worried he wasn't getting enough fluids. Then Tommy came and rescued us and realized that Dane's milk had just gone totally sour. So THAT'S why he was refusing to drink anything or put it in his mouth at all. Whoops! And it was totally my fault! I felt extremely silly and sorry for getting so frustrated with him. Too bad he doesn't know the word for "sour" yet! We fixed that problem and he's back to drinking just like normal again. Finally. Oh, the mistakes you make as a parent.

lightening up

We are counting down the days we have left here in Durham, and it is breaking my heart a little bit to look at the calendar and to see that we have mere WEEKS left here. But one of the more enjoyable parts about moving is that we are shedding our unneeded possessions left and right, and I absolutely LOVE de-junking and de-cluttering. Even better, we are having good luck in selling a lot of our stuff and getting actual money for them, instead of just taking them all to the Durham Rescue Mission and donating them. Mostly we've sold some things on Craigslist, but we also sold a few things on Amazon to great success.

• a small bookshelf from Dane's room
• a small armoire/bookshelf
• our TV and TV stand
• Dane's old Exersaucer
• a bunch of Tommy's old textbooks
• our bikes
• Tommy's car!

There is an awesome story to go along with Tommy's car. We bought this car a week or two after we moved here, from some random used car dealership, and it had over 200,000 miles on it but drove really well and worked great. So we paid $2800 for it and just said, "All we need is for this car to last us the four years we are here. Just last us four years!" And it has been an excellent car for while we've been here. We did have to buy new tires for it, and the A/C did die for one summer (but Tommy very cleverly fixed it for $5 by doing something simple to some fluids, obviously I know nothing about cars), but man, it's been a faithful little car. And the very week Tommy defended his thesis, the car started smelling funny when we drove it and it seemed to have lost all of its engine power. We called a few places and figured out it basically needed the clutch to be replaced, which could cost up to $1000, so we decided to cut our losses and sell our friendly little car to Carmax. It lasted us EXACTLY the four years we asked it to, and now we don't have to worry about towing it behind the moving truck and taking it to Texas with us. It is perfect timing and we are feeling really good about it. We're figuring out how to manage with just one car, but we're planning to get ourselves another clunker when we get to Texas for Tommy to use for work while we're there. 

Anyways, we are also participating in a community yard sale in a neighborhood around here, and we are hoping to sell a whole lot more of our smaller stuff there. And we are planning to get rid of basically all the rest of our furniture on Craigslist as our move date gets closer. It is so refreshing and it feels so great to get rid of things that we don't use or need. This is one part of moving I really enjoy! And we've had a lot of time with Tommy being home since he defended, so we've been able to get a lot of stuff done early instead of having to scramble to do everything last-minute. We are lightening up our load and it feels really good!