Graduation!

The Senior party for college was so much more fun than high school! Nathan had a blast. BYU did a really good job of putting it on.

The first part included free food from the Cougar Eat including hamburgers, pizza, ice cream, and so forth. There were also booths from various organizations on campus. Nathan tried to throw rings on the bottles and he got pretty close a few times.

The Bean Museum brought some of their creatures too. They let this huge tortoise walk around. Nathan could have ridden it if they let him. They also had a snake and a spider that Nathan enjoyed seeing.

But his favorite part was the free bowling. It was pretty dark with lots of flashy lights, so our camera didn’t pick it up very well. He talked about bowling for days afterwards through. He almost had the best score too with a couple of strikes.

Here Nathan helped Daddy make chocolate chip cookies.

The first time Sean made chocolate chip cookies for me was on Valentine’s Day and I hadn’t seen him for a while. It was a very fun surprise and the cookies were very good.

Nathan has also enjoyed having his friend Emree come over to play all semester while her mother finishes student teaching. Their birthdays are a week apart from each other so they have a lot of fun playing together.

Nathan also started playing with Dan a week ago. Here he is showing him his trucks. This is one of his favorite activities and Dan really enjoys it too.

Nathan has also started being really helpful. Without being asked, he picked up half of his train set by himself yesterday. He also will run and get me if Dan starts crying. He also saw that I was going to change Dan’s diaper, so he ran and got me a diaper wipe without being asked. It really nice and kind of fun. I hope he keeps it up!

With the weather becoming nicer, we have also enjoyed going to the duck pond quite a bit. It is one of Nathan’s favorite places. BYU has done a really good job with making that area really nice. There is a creek with waterfalls on a walkway by the duck pond too.

My freshman roommate Cara put together a good-bye get together with our freshman friend group before she left for Seattle. It was really great to be able to see everyone before they leave for various corners of the world. Alyssa and Alli are both getting married. Nora has two more years left at college because she served a mission in Hungary. Rachel is working for the Marriott.

And graduation was this week! I can’t believe I am actually all done now! It is nice to not have school work, but I think I will miss BYU when we leave.

I dressed Dan up and he walked with me. L. Tom Perry spoke at my commencement about keeping your life balanced.

I am very grateful to Sean for helping me to graduate. There is no way I would have been able to finish with the two beautiful children we have without his awesome support and help.

Gail Miller spoke at my convocation. She told her life story and how she ended up where she is today. She talked about how money is a tool, not a goal and how you should put things that are really important as your goals.

I love the tulips that BYU plants during graduation!

After convocation, the Marriott school hosted a Dean’s reception with some small sandwiches, fruit, and cream puffs.

The line to take pictures by this cougar was fairly long. While we were waiting, Nathan popped the flower petals that had fallen of the leis people had been wearing and ran up and down the grassy hill.

The weather was perfect for graduation. It was a beautiful day.

Sean was very generous and combined with some of the graduation money I received, bought me a mini iPad for graduation! I am so excited! There are so many things I will use it for!

After graduation we headed up to Salt Lake to celebrate! We were going to go to the Cheesecake Factory, but it ended up being too late, so we ate at Chick Fil A instead and just got a piece of blueberry white chocolate cheese cake for dessert later. It was a lot of fun to get out of Provo.

After we took pictures we took Nathan to the Paleontology museum on campus to see the Dinosaurs. I think he enjoyed it a lot more this time because he knows what dinosaurs are.