Quick Successions: New Mexico Edition

 It was my turn to help with activity night at church so I brought my graduation robes and so forth and let the little girls take turns all dressed up. Here of the pillow announcing Mother's Day.  As it turns out, there is an actual graduation song.     I went to convocation and read the names again.    Then, Mother's Day actually arrived. Here is my custom drawn picture.

 We decorated for Easter in April. Low key, but cute. Hannah helped make some of them. She even did this painting of the eggs.   And the ceramic ornament in the little house. After Easter I went to Toronto for AERA.   After AERA Easter came. We went to the annual Easter egg hunt.  And colored our own eggs.  And went to church. At the end of the month, we visited my parents in Utah, traveling by plane. It was sunny one of the days and cloudy and rainy the rest, but the visit was nice.  And that was April.

We are at mid-semester now. The weather has improved. It really helps that out here in the southwest, winter only lasts about 2 months.  During spring break, we went to campus and fed the ducks. And enjoyed the sunshine. I usually do some home improvements over the break, but this year I did not. We did decorate for easter though, including making a new decoration with foam. It looked nice on the piano. This little dog came home with us around Christmas. We are enjoying it. Very photogenic too! (The dog).

The joke is that January is the longest month of the year. I thought it went quickly. Classes started and winter cold set in. We went to the eye doctor and Hannah waited for the doctor so long, she grew a beard.  Ultimately she decided on glasses that would make her look like Supergirl. I think she really pulled it off. All month I was on pins and needles about the government shutdown trying to decide if it was safe to fly to a conference. Luckily for me, the poor TSA workers and federal folks were able to get back to work. However, the planes I took (4 in all) were mostly empty and I got a row to myself. There was also a polar vortex that didn't help air travel looks appealing. I got there late at night and the room they had left was a large hotel suite. I took it. My colleague Michael Dunn and I divided our presentation up. We both did well. I also found a few good folks from Kansas. Then, I left Indy. When I wasn't worki

As the semester wound down, we went to Alamogordo, New Mexico and visited White Sands National Monument. We went with my college roommates and their families and had a picnic between sledding sessions. It was 65 degrees, but the gypsum was cold. https://www.newmexico.org/places-to-go/regions-cities/southeast/white-sands-national-monument/ They grow lots of pistachios in this part of the world and here is the largest of them. We stopped for some yummy pistachio ice cream and bought some nuts to take home for holiday baking.