And.... GRADUATED!

It is so hard to believe that I have officially graduated from BYU. It has been one of the most wonderful parts of my life to be a student here.

I always wanted to go to Brigham Young University. Growing up in Florida and Texas I only had a handful of friends who had the same beliefs as me. I had several Christian friends, but growing up Mormon in the South, you kind of stick out just a little bit.

Getting accepted to come here was a dream come true. My first year here I made a TON of wonderful friends, had the time of my life, and felt like I had finally found a place where I fit in and could be myself with people my own age. This is also the place where I found my testimony of the Savior.

This was taken with everyone that started BYU Fall 2013.

I've mentioned on here before (in my pre-mission blog posts) that when I got here I was struggling to figure out where my faith was and who Jesus Christ was to me. My faith was teeny tiny, and BYU was the place that made it possible for me to really explore and learn about Jesus Christ and about His gospel. I had a wonderful bishop, great friends, fantastic professors, and the perfect environment for learning and feeling God's love. I loved that the bell tower played "Come Come Ye Saints every day" reminding me that "All is well, all is well." I loved going to the devotionals every Tuesday that seemed to be inspired because the topic always pertained perfectly to the struggles I was facing that week. I loved starting every class with a prayer and that every topic, from religion to photography to science, was tied into the gospel of Jesus Christ. (For instance, in my photography class, we had a class about the importance of light in photography, and my teacher discussed the importance of the Light of Christ in our lives...I also took a leadership class that spent an entire section discussing Christlike leadership...how cool is that??)

Instead of having a religious life and everything else separate, I learned that faith goes perfectly with every aspect of my life. I didn't live my life and then only go to church on Sunday, my life became intertwined with my faith. I realized that I could pray about ANYTHING, and God would answer.

I may get a little defensive when people talk negatively about BYU, but that's just because my time spent here has been a life changing experience. I know that it isn't perfect and the people here definitely aren't (I'm not.) but I think this place was perfect for me.

I wasn't supposed to graduate until December, but last August when Ryan and I found out I was pregnant we bounced back and forth different ideas for how to help me finish sooner rather than later. We figured I would just take my last few classes in December and we would go back and forth with taking care of the baby, but in November I made a list of every class I needed in order to graduate in April. Having only taken 12-15 credits a semester during my previous six semesters made it seem impossible to finish in only one more semester, but Ryan has a lot more faith in me than I do, and encouraged me to try to finish by April. So, I signed up for 20 credits of classes (one of them online), dropped down to only working 10 hours a week instead of 20, and applied to graduate in April 2018.

You may be thinking that we are crazy, maybe we are.... but somehow this last semester was the best semester I've ever had. I think it just goes to show that God cares about His children, and cares about what is important to them. To me, getting an education and graduating was really important to me. It is  also important to me to be available to my baby when she gets here, which would be more difficult for me if I was still going to school. In any other circumstance, 20 credits of classes actually would have been impossible for me to accomplish, but this last semester I felt more calm than I ever have. I loved the classes I took, the professors who taught me, the information I gained, and I am actually sad to be done taking these classes.

Anyways, I just think that BYU is the most wonderful school on the planet, and I am SO grateful that God blessed me with the opportunity to get my education here and that He has made it possible for the church to have this school that combines secular and spiritual education into one.

I am grateful for the support and encouragement that my husband and my family have given me that have made it possible for me to get to this point. I am also incredibly grateful that they came from all over (Texas and Southern Utah) to watch me waddle across the stage to receive my (fake) diploma and shake hands with important people in a large unflattering graduation gown. It's been a wonderful week and I'm glad my baby waited to come so that I could experience it. :)

Now, I have two weeks to worry about getting everything ready for her arrival. And I am excited to tell her that she got to walk across the stage with me. :)

Some of my BYU statistics:

• # of Semesters: 7
• # of Apartments: 5 (Young Hall, New Heritage Building 10, Glenwood room 56 and room 72, and the apartment we live in now.) 
• Did I meet my husband at BYU like I thought I would?: Nope (In fact, he is one of those very anti-BYU people I mentioned. He would never apply to BYU if his life depended on it, he also claimed that he would never date or marry someone that went to BYU, look where that got him. ;) I met him in Olympia, Washington.)
• Times Hiking the Y: 1 (at Midnight)
• Majors declared: 4 (Pre-Graphic Design, Pre-Photography, Human Development, I finally settled on Family Studies)
• # of Roommates: 13 (or 14 if the alien in my uterus counts) 
• # of Football games I went to: 2 1/2 (I also went to 1 basketball game, 1 volleyball game, and 1 soccer game.) 
• # of papers I wrote: 56
• # of student jobs: 5 (Research Assistant for an engineering group, One day AV tech for a conference held at BYU, food prep/cashier/ice cream scooper at the Cougar Cafe, Mail girl in the ASB, and Teaching Assistant for Dr. Jeff Hill's Family Processes class.) 
• On a scale of 1 to 10 how much do I like BYU?: 11

The last thing I want to share about BYU (when I write my next blog post I'll go back to updating about the pregnancy and maybe even a birth) is what Elder Holland had to say at the Commencement ceremony. It was a very uplifting speech. (I knew it would be though... the only reason I went to Commencement was because he would be the keynote speaker, otherwise I would have stayed home. Large, pregnant women don't belong in VERY crowded buildings with thousands and thousands and thousands of people.) 

My favorite part was some advice that he shared with us graduates: 

"Go out there and light a candle. Be a ray of light. Be your best self, and let your character shine. Cherish the gospel of Jesus Christ and live it. The world needs you and surely your Father in Heaven needs you if His blessed purposes for His children are to prevail. You have entered to learn, now go forth to serve and strengthen."

(So far there are only highlights from his speech, but I'm hoping they will eventually upload the whole thing... but here is the link to the highlights. My other favorite part is in the last minute of the highlights. Go watch it!)

That's it! I'm excited to take what I learned in my years at BYU and to use it to bless the lives of my family and the people around me. :) I don't believe in "the best two years" or four years in this case. These have been wonderful wonderful years, but I'm determined to have wonderful years every year for the rest of my life. Thanks for reading my love letter to BYU. :) 

Is this not the most pregnant picture you have ever seen?

** Photo Credit to my sister Emily who walked all over campus to take pictures of me in my cap and gown in all of my favorite BYU spots. 

DONE!

Today is a historic day. I took my very last final of my undergrad! (I would say ever, because as of right now, it is NOT in my plans to get a Master's degree... but if I say I'm done for GOOD then I can see God just laughing up in Heaven at me because He thinks I should get a graduate degree... so there you go.) It's a really wonderful feeling to know that I don't have any homework, papers, tests, assignments, ANYTHING left to do! Except, now it is time for every unpleasant thing I have been putting off thinking about until after school is over to be thought about.

For instance, the sink is full of dirty dishes. Sigh. And having finals to study for and papers to write has been a really great excuse for not doing them. Now, I'm sitting at home with nothing on my to do list... so it's probably time to do the dishes.

Another example, for the last 8 months I've been making dinner maybe once a week (if Ryan is lucky). But today when he left he mentioned eating dinner and I asked him "I suppose that means you want me to make dinner, huh?" and he said "yes." No excuses now. :(

Also, when people ask me if I'm ready for the baby to come, I tell them I don't have time to think about it. I had to finish school first, then I could worry about that. So, I suppose that now is probably the time for me to start worrying about that big life change that is coming up. And making sure I'm ready for her arrival.

However, since today is my first day of freedom, I'm going to continue to put off worrying about those things. Instead, for this blog post I'm going to tell you about  my past week. Because it was a good one. :)

I turned 23 on Tuesday. :) And Ryan spoiled me, like the wonderful husband that he is. :)

I was a little grumpy to begin the day. I prayed and prayed that it wouldn't snow like the weather forecast was saying it would. However, somebody more faithful than me must have been praying harder FOR the snow, because snow it did. (And not ONLY did it snow. it was supposed to snow all night and be done by 10 am, when I woke up there wasn't any snow so I prayed a thank you prayer for not letting it snow and literally 10 minutes later it started snowing buckets!... -_-)

Luckily, Ryan bought me cinnamon toast eggo waffles (delicious!) for my birthday breakfast. And then he filled my car up with nerd ropes, which I love. So, my little shoulder Negative Nelly and Positive Pollyanna were fighting to see who would win my emotions. (Would I succumb to the grumpiness the snow was causing me ON MY BIRTHDAY IN APRIL? or would I choose to laugh because my husband got me 24 nerd ropes and scattered them all over my car?) They tussled back and forth. My emotions are a little wacky these days so I was torn between crying and laughing.

Walking to my first class of the day, I was a little sad and gloomy. I tried to be mad at God. I told Him that I wanted to be mad at Him for making it snow on my birthday, (I was also late to class, so I was feeling a little stressed) and He didn't make the snow stop but He did sort of turn back time because even though I was 5 minutes late to class, I got there just in time. He also had the bell tower start playing a hymn that reminded me of how much God loves me. (The bell tower hasn't played a song at 9:30 once this entire semester, but God knew I needed it that day.) So, anyways long story short, even though God made it snow on my birthday, and didn't make it stop despite my many prayers, He did let me know in other small ways that He was aware of me and loves me. Which was a nice little birthday present.

Ryan came and took me out to lunch during my break between classes at the BYU Creamery. Then I went to more classes, got ice cream with my brother and sister, and went home. Ryan and I watched a chick flick, Hitch, and then went out to dinner and then came home. He was going to take me to the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival, but because of the snow that morning (which, by the way was gone by this point), it was pretty chilly outside, so we decided to go on Thursday instead.

The Tulip Festival was really fun, Ryan makes everything fun though. :)

I'm not pleased with how much it costs, ($20 a person just seems like too much!) The Tulips were beautiful but there weren't nearly as many as I was expecting. (Is it unrealistic to expect Holland's fields of tulips here in Utah? haha) It was still lots of fun though, we got to feed some fish, see a couple antique tulips, look over a crazy tall waterfall, and wander through an exhibit of incredible statues of Christ and different scenes from His life. (That exhibit should be free because I think everyone should go see it!) We finished off by stopping at a concession booth for the most horrible frozen lemonades ever. I'm pretty sure it was straight sugar. We both lost our desire for sugar anytime soon (which is really saying something! We both LOVE sweets!) ((If you go to the Tulip Festival do not be tempted by the concession stand. It's not worth it! by that point you're almost to the end, just get real food instead!))

The rest of the week I just finished my finals. I took two tests on Friday, one test on Saturday and my last test today.

On Friday, I was really excited to come home and not do anything, but I got a migraine while at the grocery store on my way home, and I don't know if this is normal for other people, but when I get a migraine, before the actual headache comes my vision goes funny for about half an hour. I don't get migraines very often (in fact, just that morning I was thinking how nice it was that I hadn't had a headache in a couple months! There goes God with His sense of humor again!) I promised Ryan that I wouldn't ever drive while my vision is weird before a migraine, so I had to wander blindly through the grocery store picking up everything I needed and then took a nap in the parking lot until my vision came back to normal. Then I drove home and wandered around the house with all the lights off like a weirdo and took a nap until Ryan got home. I did at one point get up to make dinner for him. (I don't know why he wants dinner tonight! I already made dinner TWICE in the last week! ;) ) but for some reason, pregnancy just makes me abnormal because I ended up throwing it all up. I only cried a little bit. Not too much. It's just unfortunate that I was able to go 13 years without ever throwing up, but here I am 8 months pregnant and throwing up again. (It's been a few months so I shouldn't really complain, but who likes throwing up???) Anyways, that's probably tmi, but I was bummed about it, so I'm just going to tell the world that pregnancy is not kind to the human body, (physically or emotionally) so I'm thinking we should vote to have men and women take turns. Is anyone with me?

Enough of that, besides my birthday, finishing classes and finals, and throwing up, not much else is new. I'm 36 1/2 weeks along in my pregnancy, so it's getting really close. Don't ask me if I'm ready yet. I probably won't be until she's a teenager (who knows if I'll be ready by then either!)

I'm feeling huge these days.

Also, another fun fact that I wanted to share with the world that means absolutely nothing to you, is that I added up all the papers I've written since getting home from my mission (in August 2016), and I counted 52. So, feel free to let me know how awesome I am if you get the chance.

That's all I have for today. Tomorrow I'm going to wander around campus and have my sister take pictures of me in my cap and gown. I'll post those at some future point in time.

Until then, enjoy the pictures from this last week, and enjoy my totally unimportant thoughts about life and school and pregnancy. This blog is mostly for posterity, so if you read these every time I post them and wonder why you put yourself through them every time, feel free to stop reading my blog posts, it won't hurt my feelings. For those of you who for some reason enjoy reading them, thank you! :)

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Also, here are a few other photos that have nothing to do with what I talked about, but because it's been two weeks since I last wrote a blog post, I need to put them somewhere.

I made these beautiful cinnamon twists for breakfast the other day, and I was so proud of them that I had to take a really good quality photo of them. 

It snowed the week before my birthday and I was mourning the sad little tulips that were being crushed by the horrible snow. 

These pictures are from an adventure that Ryan and I went on a few Sundays ago. We found a charred stick and I was trying to find a spot to draw on the ground when Ryan decided to just draw on my face. This is the aftermath. 

And last, I tried to sell all of these textbooks back to BYU today, but they only took half of them. I lugged them forever and a half to get to the bookstore, and only one person offered to help carry them (one of my past roommates), she is way more gentlemanly than ALL of the guys at BYU. 

This Chapter of my Life is Going to be Called: Papers and Dirty Dishes

There are only 8 days of class left (not including the weekends). After that I have a few days of final exams. Unfortunately, I have a lot left to get done in order to successfully finish up the semester.

The other day I counted and had 10 papers left. I think I'm down to 8 now. Luckily, I actually enjoy the classes I am taking and the topics I am writing about. Instead of having boring assignments with math and science or boring statistics my papers are about fascinating things. I think I mentioned in my last blog post about the paper I am writing about how prayer and forgiveness impact marriage. Some of my other topics are: how does social media use affect body image (the answer is: negatively, in case you were wondering. Unfortunately, I am terrible at following the advice I am giving in my paper.), a ten page paper on what I have learned from other religions that I can apply to my life to strengthen my faith, a paper about my experience going to a church service of another faith, how my attachment style has affected my relationship with my husband, and an analysis on a piece of artwork. The rest are little two page reflection papers about what I learned in my classes.

Also, just to complain a little bit, I have an oral presentation that I have to give next week. I signed up to go next Friday (a week from today), so that I could see how other people present their topics and then figure out what I want to do. There was some sort of mix up though, because my teacher emailed me a few minutes ago and told me that I still hadn't signed up for a time to present and that the only available spots were on Monday (3 days from now). So, I guess somehow my sign up didn't save and I have to present on the first day of presentations... Which probably means I should go ahead and start figuring out my presentation today.... sigh. On the bright side, this will force me to get one big project out of the way in 3 days instead of in a week when I should be working on all of those papers.

I rewarded myself for handling that situation so well by making myself a frosted lemonade (Like the Chick-Fil-A ones.)

I was telling someone the other day that for the next three weeks, I'm just accepting that the house is going to fall apart and that dinner is not going to be made. I have all of my papers and homework and school things to finish up, and Ryan is taking Anatomy (I've never taken it, but every time I say those 4 words, the person I am talking to says "ooooh, that's rough!" So, that's how you should respond as well). So, that means that neither of us can relax for the next few weeks.

Our laundry situation isn't so bad... last night I made Ryan put ALL of his jeans in the washer so that I would HAVE to get that load done or else he wouldn't have pants to wear to school today. Then I would feel super duper bad. I'm so glad that my plan didn't backfire. Now we just have to fold it...

Anyways, you  probably aren't interested in our housework situation or schoolwork. I also have a pregnancy update. I am not 34 weeks along. My little app tells me that she is about 18 inches long and probably close to 5 lbs. It also says that if she were born now she would probably survive. But I'm really hoping that she waits until her due date. I would really like to graduate this semester. I have not waddled around campus for the last 3 months for nothing! I don't really have any crazy updates. I still hate walking up hills, I feel very heavy, I can't reach anything on the floor of the car if I'm sitting down. My legs, hips, and ribs ache. I'm pretty sure my baby alternates between tap dancing on or hugging my bladder all day. Also, like I mentioned last time, my lungs are pretty much useless, but even more so now than before. It's unfortunate because with the weather warming up, I'd really like to go hiking and be outside, but I can't walk very far before my legs feel like they need to be chopped off, my lungs give up on me, or my bladder feels like it might explode. 

I've been creating a list in my head as I walk up hills on campus of things I can't wait to do again after the baby comes. I'm sure you want to see what is on my list, so I am generously going to share it with you.

Things I can't wait to do again:

- lay on my stomach.

- lay on my back.

- eat a sandwich with lunch meat (who would have thought that would be on my list? It seems like not being allowed to eat something makes you want it so much more.)

- walk in public without people looking at my stomach.

- to not feel the need to stay away from people so they won't touch my belly. (Why is it so irresistible to people???)

- for my belly button to go back where it's supposed to be.

- for my appetite to come back again.

- to be able to put shoes on without feeling like I just ran 10 miles.

- to be able to sneak through crowds again without touching people. 

- to be able to go to the bathroom and not feel like I have to go again once I get out of the bathroom. 

- to sit in a hot tub.

- to fit into more than the same 5 shirts.

- to do the dishes without having to turn sideways.

I'm sure there are more, but this is what I can think of so far. :) 

Anyways, there aren't any major changes in our life, our sink is full, the laundry is clean but not folded, I'm still pregnant, I'm a little grumpy, school is still going but almost over. On the bright side, the trees are starting to turn green again and I keep finding flowers in new places which makes me happy. Spring is so much nicer than winter.