No More Back to School

For almost twenty years, I never realized the importance of "back to school" days in the resetting of my yearly life-cycle. As I am sure many people would agree, it feels even more absolute as a new beginning than New Years Day, and so the absence of the event is making me feel a bit incomplete. I use to LOVE back to school shopping, and I don't mean clothes shopping, although that was nice too. I loved picking out all of my new pencils, notebooks, crayons, and boxes of tissues. When I got home, I would carefully organize each item exactly how I wanted it, whether it be in a pencil pouch, binder, or backpack pocket. I would then repeat this ritual every night until school started. The night before the first day of school was always restless for me. In fact, I had my first migraine on the first day of my junior year of high school because I hadn't slept enough the night before. I do not remember ever hating school like some people do. Even when I complained about it, I loved school.

This year, the only things that let me know it is Back to School time again are the ads in the stores and the influx of students in Provo. I am not making last minute changes to my schedule. I am not buying my books or any other supplies. I am not moving into a new apartment or figuring out babysitting for Matilda. Life is just continuing as it has been for the past several months, which is wonderful because I really do love my life, but Autumn is going to be very different without school.

So, the whole point of this blog post (before I turned nostalgic), is to blog about my graduation from Brigham Young University, which occurred in April. This won't be incredibly detailed, but I do want to post some pictures and tell a little bit about those couple of days.

First Day: Commencement

Commencement, which includes all of the graduates, was long and boring, but luckily I found some of my dance friends to sit with. It was pretty cool walking into a packed Marriott Center during the processional. Here are some pictures:

Very full Marriott Center

Sister-in-law Caitlin, mother-in-law Jill, my mom Judy, Matilda, and Sean (we didn't realize until later that the settings on the camera were weird, but it was also very sunny)

Second Day: Convocation

Convocation was a lot more enjoyable and meaningful for me. It included about a third of my college (Fine Arts and Communications), so it was much shorter than some of the other college convocations. One part that made it especially special for me was that the main speaker was Mary Bee Jensen, founder of the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. Anyone who knows me knows that folk dance is a huge part of my life and my heart since attending BYU, and so it was incredibly inspirational for me to have such an important woman making the closing remarks of my college education. Now for pictures:

Can you find me in the front row of graduates, over to the right? Notice how I'm the only one who looks genuinely interested in what Mary Bee is saying?

My sister, Allison, came with Sam. We miss them a lot.

My parents drove down from Oregon for a few days.

On the morning of convocation, Sean and I found out some exciting news for our little family and we wanted to tell our parents in a creative way that would get a reaction. After Sean counted 1,2,3 to take this next picture, I said "I'm pregnant!" Sean's mom was the only one who believed me at first.

Once everyone believed me, we got a better reaction shot.

Here are just a few more pictures

And to finish things off, here is a profile shot of our newest little girl, due 4 January 2011.