Graduation 2009

Today was graduation - finally! It wasn't the most sunny April day, but at least we were downtown and not in Park City, where it was sleeting when I left this morning.
Commencement was held at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. It was cool to have a graduation there - what a special experience. Unlike the last graduation I attended where there were close to 7,000 graduates, my 2009 class had only 300+ graduates, and about fifty graduates in Interior Design, which made for a slightly more intimate program. It was a nice program, albeit a little too lengthy. (at about 70 minutes all the babies became fussy and there was noticeably more movement and chatter in the crowd, me included!)


I got to choose my seat mates and luckily Chelsey and Whitney chose me back. I would have felt completely jipped to sit by anyone else. Love those girls. It only took us a whole year to finally make friends and become a clique, tee hee. It was great to see all the girls in the program one last time - and it will be fun to keep track of them through their developing careers.

Uncle Chris came to see me. He's so great. As I walked up on stage there he was - front row. The surprise doubled my already big smile.


Ben's parents Jed and Kathy came also. I didn't think it would be a huge deal if people couldn't make it but it felt great to have them there supporting me. They are so good to me.
(Mom & Dean are on an east coast college trip and Dad is in Augusta this week)

I had Ben take the whole afternoon off to spend with me - I'm so needy! The program ended fairly early in the afternoon and but it was just too late to return to work - so we opted for an early celebration dinner. We arrived at the Melting Pot just as it was opening and ate for 2 1/2 hours! So much food! It really is a dining experience and luckily we were in no rush. That food is so rich I think going once a year will do it for me. Why is that? It's 11:30 at night and I'm still feeling overly full.

It was a wonderful day and I was so glad to have friends and family there to make great memories of it all. Last but not least, I had to include a picture from my BYU graduation in 2005 - pictured below are the girls I met freshman year in the dorms (minus Heid), fondly known as the David John D-vas. I had to pull this picture from facebook - I was curious to see it again. What changes four years make! Days like these make really fond memories especially when family and friends are included. This picture brings back at least a thousand words.

(pictured left to right: Alicia, me, Beth, Blythe, Katie, Taryn, Niki)