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Yesterday my sister completed her undergraduate career at the University of Virginia. Kate and I made it down for the day, and while we missed the major commencement exercises, we were there to see her receive her diploma at her departmental ceremony.

Anybody who knows me knows that I hold my sister in very high regard. I hold my brother in high regard too but he’ll have to wait for his own post. Erin has grown up to a be a strong, independent, very spiritual, and generally well-rounded person that everybody in my family admires. Her natural intelligence and strong work ethic made her a wonderful student, and will make her successful in future endeavors. And her commitment to social justice and the Church have already shown fruits in her choices for those first few next steps.

I’m so pleased that Erin will have some time to spend with her family before the next stage in her life – a volunteer position at Nazareth Farm in West Virginia. Nazareth Farm is “devoted to developing relationships and eliminating sub-standard housing through home repair in rural West Virginia”. So we get Erin all to ourselves (as much as is possible) while she is home in the Fall.

Notice I specified the Fall. Erin will be plenty busy this summer as she BIKES ACROSS THE COUNTRY. As if that weren’t enough, the program she is involved with will stop periodically and build homes for those in need. I’ll have more about this later in another post, but it sounds like a once in a lifetime experience, and so much fun.

So congratulations, Sis! We are so proud of you and love you so much!

Kate and I have not seen Episode III yet, and probably will not have a chance to do so until the last weekend in May. I’ve heard from numerous sources that Episode III is light years (no pun intended) better than Episodes I and II, so we will want to see it eventually. However, we have found the perfect way to put our expectations in check and diminish our hope that the movie will be good.

Watch Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

We did that last night. It was a menace, all right. That movie is flat-out TERRIBLE. I didn’t remember it being quite so bad in the theatre. I think I was blinded by the Star Wars excitement that every geek experiences when these movies are released. There were a number of reasons this movie was bad. Shall I enumerate? Well, seeing as this is MY BLOG, I think I shall.

• Jar Jar Binks. Enough said.
• Terrible acting (apologies to the kid who played Anakin – maybe it was the directing that just made him look terrible).
• Writing horrific enough to make normally fantastic actors look bad. Only Ewan McGregor escaped unscathed. A true credit to his acting ability.
• Crazy accents for alien cultures. Must the imbecilic bad guys be made to sound distinctly Asian? No, that’s not quite right. They don’t sound Asian as much as they sound like someone doing a bad and ruthlessly stereotypical impression of an Asian-American.

We’re going to watch Episode II some time next week. I wonder how my impressions of that movie will change with a second viewing. Yeah. I’m hard up for stuff to blog about.

It has been 10 days since I posted, and I feel like an enormous deadbeat. For not posting. On my blog. Actually, that’s kind of sad in a way.

Kate and I spent yesterday at the National Zoo. Our anniversary was on Wednesday, and being the overacheiver that she is, Kate blogged about it. However, due to various scheduling mishaps and other miscellaneous annoyances, we didn’t get to celebrate until yesterday.

I’ve always been a big fan of the zoo, and when Kate expressed interest in going, I was all about it. So we sucked up an early morning on a Saturday and rode in to DC, bright and early. Let me tell you, if you’re going to visit the zoo, bright and early is the way to do it. We arrived just before eight in the morning, and there were so few people there we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. And the animals were active! They’re not kidding when they say that the animals at the zoo are more active during the morning and evening.

We even got to see this little fellow. He’s a capybara. He’s in the rodent family, so he looks kind of like an enormous rat. Yuck.

I got tons of pictures, but won’t post them all here, because I’m sure there are plenty of giraffe, elephant, cheetah, tiger, etc pictures on the Web. So we combined the morning at the zoo with an Outback dinner out, and called our 3rd anniversary celebrated! That’s 3 down, and lots more to go!

In other news, our chicks are growing way fast, and soon will be flying off into the wild blue yonder. Which is good, because with all the rain and the extra added weight of the larger birds, it seems as though their nest is hanging precariously in the tree. Hopefully they learn to fly before they’re forced to!

We’re at 19 weeks, and we went in for a sonogram today. We have decided that we do want to know the sex of the baby, and this was our opportunity to find out.

The people at Washington Radiology Associates were really great, and we got to see all sorts of different angles of the baby. Hands, feet, legs, arms, even a face! Most importantly, everything looked like it was where it was supposed to be and baby looked healthy! I know, I know, you all want to know what sex the baby is. Well I’m not telling! However, we are taking guesses (family – you’re not allowed to spill the beans!), so leave them in the comments. Kate will be conducting the big reveal on her blog at a future date. Possibly tonight. Maybe tomorrow. We haven’t decided how long we want to torture you.

Ken pointed out that I hadn’t mentioned National Teacher’s Day. Apparently because I didn’t mention anything here, I am a rotten husband, will be a terrible father, and am generally a child and teacher-hating fiend. I mean, come on. Even Google recognized the teachers with one of their cool specialized logos. (Side Note: I’m a huge fan of the special logos)

Yes, my wife is a teacher. Yes, she is underappreciated. So I present to you below links for several teachers that I know. Go drop them comments and tell them how much you appreciate them:

Kate
Lou Ann
Shannon

Christine – since there’s no official “Youth Minister’s Day” and she too must work with crazy kids.