Full-time Mommy

Since graduation a couple weeks ago, I'm officially a full-time mommy! Wow! And let me tell you- it's just as glamorous as it sounds. Haha! Ok, so it's not glamorous, but it's definitely been fun!
Sierra has been growing into quite the deluxe model baby. She sits and plays with her toys and can pull up on anything she can reach. She LOVES her walker, in which she can now fly across the tile to follow Mama around the kitchen, chase dogs, or even drive the water bowl across the dining room. I'll catch that with the video camera one of these days!

Until then, here are Giggling Baby and Zoe the Floor Buddy:





Last Friday, we sneaked through San Antonio to meet our newest "cousin" Wesley Sidle. Yay! When Wesley was born 2 weeks ago he was the same weight as Sierra (7 lbs, 1 oz) and just an inch longer. It was really incredible- I really could not remember Sierra being so tiny! It was a lot of fun to see them beside one another as evidence of how fast they really do change in just 6 months!! (Pardon my hands- Sierra was very intrigued by that hair Wesley had!)





Also keeping us busy has been our backyard renovation project. So far, we have a new fence (quite fancy, I might add), new grass (adios, dirt farm), and a bunch of new plants (native flowering plants to bring in butterflies and hummingbirds). There's still some more landscaping to do, and possibly some work to the patio. Pictures will be coming soon!

Catching up!

We've been busy! So this post is a whirlwind tour of our last few weeks:

Part 1: Dallas!
After a weekend camping and a weekend in Austin, we loaded up the car for the third weekend in a row! My brother Travis and his lovely fiance Ashley were having their engagement party at their swanky pad in Dallas, and this couldn't be missed! Our traveling circus (Travis, Chrissy, Sierra, and Zoe) crashed at Uncle Austin's place in McKinney and it was dog heaven! Saturday morning we took Zoe, Captain (Austin's English Mastiff) and Brady (Austin's roommate's lab mix) to the K9 Kerplunk in Plano for their annual dog-only swimming event. A total zoo, but everyone had fun and Z was completely worn out. Yay!

Then we showered up and the human portion of our circus headed into Dallas for the big party! Travis and Ashley are an adorable couple and we're SO excited for them! They had a great party too!

Part 2: Graduating Grad School
The following week, back in H-town, was equally as wild as Chrissy finished her last week of graduate school!! It was a fun time- full of maddening fights with Word trying to print the final dissertation and The Great Signature Hunt. That pesky registrar put up a good fight, but there was no way (after 7 years) that an accounting error would stand between me and that doctoral hood. Finally, it was all complete: I delivered a final copy of the dissertation and all 15 signatures to the graduate school on Friday at noon. Yay 11th hour!
5 years of research, reduced to a measly 120 pages.....

Graduation ceremonies were actually the next day and wow was that a wonderful feeling! There were 50 students receiving their PhDs in our ceremony held at the Rice University campus.

Getting hooded:

Yahoo!!!

Shaking hands with UT Regent Robert Stillwell: (Check out the hood!)

After the ceremonies, we headed back to our house for a wonderful graduation party hosted by my mom. I felt so incredibly lucky to have so much love and support from my family and friends- thank you!!! :) More pictures here, including those from T's "studio", if you're interested:



Part 3: Mother's Day
Despite our very strong desire to stay in our pjs all day, it was our day to celebrate our mothers- who undoubtedly felt the exact same way many, many days when we were kids. It's no surprise that I have a whole new appreciation for what Mommies do for us this year. THANK YOU!!! Thank you for caring for us, teaching us, supporting us, and not killing us!! Haha! :) We met Gigi, Granddoug, Uncle Travis and Aunt Ashley for brunch at Pappas Steakhouse (yum!), then headed to Katy for time with Mamaw, GrandPapa, and Uncle Austin. Somehow, we managed to buy a fridge and make it to church also. Wheww! 
Papa and Sierra found a little time to relax and read a book (Cat in the Hat) before bed time:

Part 4: The most important part!
Who am I kidding? You read this blog for the baby pictures... haha! So here you go- your patience for making it all the way through this absurdly long post is rewarded.

Look Mama- Izzy can give me a bath!!

Ooooh Zoe!!! 

Ok- you can clean my mouth, but I get to pull your face fur... (We may have the world's most baby-tolerant dog).

N

Sierra is becoming more mobile- we don't have any real crawling yet, but she excels at spinning in circles and moving in reverse. Which is how she ends up under the coffee table. I'm not sure what this means, other than it's time to baby-proof this house.

 I mean no disrespect to the other Mommies out there, but yes, we do have the world's cutest baby. (Ernie was my fav as a kiddo!)

Congrats on making it to the end!! I have a backlog of videos that I haven't been able to edit and post due to lack of space on my hard drive. As soon as I get that issue sorted out, I promise to post more of Sierra-in-action. Stay Tuned!