My Husband Rocks

So, May has been a bit of a whirlwind. Jim was ready to take his comprehensive exams and that was a time consuming and stressful experience. He's been gone studying until very late most weeknights and weekends as well. The exams consisted of two major written sections and an oral discussion section. I can't explain it adequately, but the tension was palpable. He has said it the oral section was the most miserable 3.5 hours of his life but in the end, success was won! Jim has now earned ABD status (all but dissertation).

There is actually some debate as to whether he's ABD now or if it will be official once he does his dissertation proposal, but as far as I'm concerned it's real. Part 1 of 2 is done. Wooohooo!!

After that chaotic day we hopped in the car and drove to Newport for the marathon. Jim was registered to run the half. This was the first year they had a half marathon in conjunction with the Newport marathon and it was quite well organized. Jim hoped to run the full but didn't get registered before it was full. With the chaos of the month it turned out to be a good thing, as he didn't have the time to train for the full thing.

We stayed the night in a little hotel and in the morning Aeryn and I waited and watched for Jim to finish. I'm not sure the inventors of the Find My Friends app knew how much I would appreciate being able to keep tabs on Jim's race progress.

Look at those muscles! Dang!

He came in and finished pretty close to when we expected him, and he was clearly feeling good about things. He finished second in his division.

Tate was a good sport, as always. This baby is so very mellow and generally happy. Aeryn loved hanging out with him and being his buddy.

Several friends were also running this day and we met up and spent a while together after everyone had finished. Aeryn was "meditating" with some of the other kids.

Our friends Laurie, Katie, Heather, and Marci were there. We have the best friends ever. How will we ever leave Eugene????? Fortunately, we don't have to think about that for a while.

After hanging out at the race events for a while, we headed to the beach. I mean, who can spend a gorgeous, sunny weekend day at the coast and not go play in the water? By sunny, I clearly mean gray and cloudy, but it was warm and glorious with very little wind. A rare day at the Oregon coast after all.

The kids had a total blast in the cool water. I feel like I post pictures like this a lot and subsequently end up saying "the beach is fun!" way too often.

My boys are seriously my favorite. I've got to say that it's been really fun to have the Hubs be his normal not-completely-stressed-out

Aeryn didn't get deterred by a lack of spare clothes and still ended up wet to her waist. Surprisingly, she made it the full two hours home without one complaint about being cold or wet. She was the smart one and wore sunscreen while I neglected that detail and now one of us is comfortable and flesh-toned while the other is quite the opposite.