Dr. Mom

It's been a few weeks ago now, but I had the best Mother's Day ever this year.  First of all, I AM a mother this time!  Woo!  I guess last Mother's Day I was expecting, so I was sort of a mom then too, and at least it didn't have to be a sad Mother's Day last year either.  Before that it was hard not to feel blue when this holiday rolled around.

But anyways, there was a lot more to my first Mother's Day than just the being a mom part.  The second thing that made this Mother's Day extra awesome was that my mom AND Kevin's mom were both in town with us.  Kevin's mom spent about a week beforehand with us too, which was great--she watched Abby for me a lot while I worked on my paper, slept, ran errands, and basically had a grand old time.  And Kevin and I got to go out on dates a few times in the evening while she was here too, AND we even went up to Chicago to attend the temple.  And then my parents came for a few days too, getting in Saturday night and staying until Tues night.


They weren't just here for Mother's Day, though--they were here to attend my graduation ceremony!  Yay!!!  I actually have technically been graduated since November when I depositied my dissertation, but I decided to do the whole walking shabang since we still live in Urbana and everything, and why not?

And what's even more awesome is that my own dear Daddy hooded me.  I didn't know this before, but any Ph.D. can hood you, not just your advisor or other University person.  So I asked my dad to do it, and he agreed!  It was really a neat experience.  My dad said he never walked in his own Ph.D. graduation, so this was the first time he had worn a doctorate hood too.  Pretty neat!

And to top it all off, Kevin made my favorite pumpkin waffles to celebrate both occasions.  (He also gave me some beautiful flowers.)  What a great day!  The only down side was that we could only stay for Sacrament Meeting because we had to leave to go to the graduation, and they decided to give the mothers their gifts (chocolate bars, I think) later in Relief Society, so we missed that.  So naturally I had to go buy us each a chocolate bar the next day.

It's funny that I became a doctor and a mom at basically the same time (I turned in my dissertation to my committee just a few days before Abby was born.)  I guess it was appropriate to celebrate both on the same day too!  But I have to say that of course the mom part is much more meaningful to me, much much more rewarding and joyous.  And my baby is a heck of a lot cuter than my diploma.  ;)