Today was an exciting day for Jill as three years of work culminated into a grueling multi-hour defense. The morning started with a public presentation where Jill spoke broadly about her dissertation to a varied audience of professors, students, administrators and me. Afterward, she met privately with her committee for a few hours to complete her oral defense.



In the end, Jill was able to successfully defend her thesis and was pleasantly surprised when all of her committee members began addressing her as Dr. Cochran.

What better image to have on Father’s Day than this photo of our manchild growing up and taking care of himself.

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It seems like it was just yesterday that he couldn’t even brush his teeth without creating a colossal mess. Oh wait. That was yesterday.

This weekend, Tiffani was in San Antonio for one of her various water board meetings. Because she ended up going alone, she invited us along with Brig and company to join her for an afternoon on the Riverwalk. Since it had been years since Jill and I have been, we jumped on the chance to head down and have some fun.

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In addition to swimming in the 5th story pool at Tiffani’s hotel, we also ate dinner at the Rainforest Café on the river where Asher was absolutely terrified of the ten-foot animatronic boa constrictor that popped out of the ceiling and came within inches of his face! We finally calmed him down when we explained that the loud noises and strobing lights during their simulated rainstorms was just part of one of our techno dance parties. There’s something inherently backward about that.

You know that Jill is getting desperate to get anyone and everyone to proofread her paper when I pull out Asher’s book bucket and there among the Dr. Suess and coloring books are pages and pages of her dissertation.



What would be great is if one of Asher’s colorings made it into the final version.

I swear that I have no idea where Asher learned these types of table manners. Besides, at most I only have one leg up on the table, but this is ridiculous.

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Anyways, Asher and I were just goofing around this evening and decided to take a few more photos.

In light of the increasing temperatures across Texas, Jill and I have found ourselves seeking out any opportunity to cool down with a nice swim. So when our friends, Aaron and Katrina, invited us over to their place for some barbecue and swimming, we couldn’t say no. Asher really enjoyed himself, especially once we started tossing him back and forth across the pool.

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As expected, Asher was sad when it was time to get out of the pool, though he cheered right up when we told him that we were going to go visit Pollux, Aaron and Katrina’s puppy.

Tonight we had some of the greatest storms that I’ve ever seen. It’s not so much that we got a lot of rain, (although the lawn was grateful for it) but more that we had so many lightning strikes that it was hard to keep track of them all.



By the end of the evening, I managed to snap this shot and only lose power at the house once.