Today was a long and busy day and I have a SUPER early day tomorrow so this post will have to be short. Today was special for reasons in addition to it being MLB opening day. Now I'm not a huge baseball fan in that I won't tend to sit down and watch a game from beginning to end on TV but I used to enjoy going to a few games per year when I was living in Cincinnati near the team that has been my favorite since childhood. Plus, there are very few places where opening day is as big of a deal as it is in Cincinnati, home of the first professional baseball team. And even though MLB screwed me up by moving opening day forward from Monday, I still managed to figure it out in time to see that the Reds came from behind in the 9th to win.
But the real special events of the day revolved around our program seeing the successful dissertation defense of our second ever PhD graduate, Jen...and she is in good company :) ...(prior to today, the first and only graduate from our PhD program had been me).
It was also the final time that one of my mentors was serving on a PhD committee before he retires. Dr. Zhang is the most brilliant statistician and one of the most effective teachers I've ever encountered. He had served on my dissertation committee and it was such an honor to get to be on a committee WITH him before he retired. Since today was possibly the last time I'll see him (he is from China originally and will be spending most of his retirement years there), before he left I had a moment to speak to him privately and thank him for the role he had played in my education. He shared some kind words with me about how much he enjoyed working with me that really meant alot. He will be missed greatly.
Meanwhile, the girls were adorable as ever while they spent their day around the house waiting for daddy to come home from his long day. When I came through the door I got excited "Daddy!!" and huge tackle hugs...the best part of my day ANY day.
Juneau's cracking me up lately with this adult crossing her legs while she's sitting around. 
Today is actually the first opportunity I have had to take a picture of a rainbow out over the ocean... 
It's hard to see in this picture but the helicopter is still there. They are having trouble figuring out how to get it out of the shallow water without damaging the reef too much. They aren't sure how to get a big enough boat close enough without damaging the reef and they haven't committed to using a big enough helicopter to pull it out as the water filled wreckage will reportedly be a very heavy lift. The sad news today was that they released the details of the Marine who was killed and he was a 22 year old husband who had been married just over a year and had returned a few months ago from deployment. Life is indeed precious...
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