Am I Finally Grown Up?

May 29 was a full day! Westminster threw a brunch for all the graduates and their families/friends. My parents and dear brother Jordan came to join us for bad french toast and cold eggs. Since my dad and brother really haven't seen the campus, we walked around and showed them our soon to be alma mater. Oh and FYI I made a really sweet graduation announcement and party invitation but can't find them to show you :(

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." - Aristotle

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly

find out how far one can go." - T.S. Elliot

"I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but

mostly because I shall never have to do it again." - Mark Twain

Giovale Library. Many long and

arduous hours spent here...

"Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready

to pay the price to make them come true." - Leon J. Suenes

Happy to be done!

"I know that attitude shapes our lives; if you want to change,

change your attitude. In the end, success is simple. Climb

the mountain - achieve your dreams." - Darren Hardy

The School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

I lived here, lol.

After the brunch and tour, we went back home and got ready for that afternoon's graduation ceremony. It was held at the E-Center. We got all dressed up and grabbed our caps and gowns, and made the mad dash over there! All the graduates hid behind the stage and we filled out little cards with the phonetic pronunciation of our names. Then we all got in lines and the bagpipes (again!!!) started and we filed out. There were about 800 graduates, I believe, including all the graduate students. Then we sat down. The actual ceremony was...pretty boring. Not going to lie. It was SO long. But walking across the stage was exciting :) We sat with all my nursing friends, and whenever one of our class walked, we screamed for them. All the BS nursing students also screamed for the MSN students, who were our clinical instructors and lab instructors.

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!" - Goethe

We took pictures outside and then went home and got ready for our graduation party. So many people came! It was awesome! Thank you all for your gifts and well-wishes! We had a backyard barbecue (and had issues with the propane, sorry everyone). But overall, it went very well.

"Believe that with your feelings and your work

you are taking part in the greatest; the more

strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality

and the world go forth from it." - Rainer Maria Rilke

At this point, we still had no idea what the future held for us. I was planning on taking the NCLEX soon to become licensed as a nurse and then working at Huntsman Cancer Hospital. If Jordan got accepted, then we would move! But everything was still up in the air.

"To unpathed waters, undreamed shores." - Shakespeare

We did it! We finally graduated with our Bachelors in Science. Jordan graduated in Chemistry and Neuroscience and I graduated in Nursing. Yay us!

"And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in

a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin

Pinning Ceremony

On May 28, the Westminster School of Nursing and Health Sciences had the annual Pinning Ceremony for that year's graduating class. It was an amazing event held in St. Marks Cathedral in downtown Salt Lake City. The family members congregated in the chapel and in a cultural hall of sorts. The students sat in the very front facing the audience. This was really it. I had finally made it! I was so emotional. To think that I probably wouldn't see very many of my friends and acquaintances again after this event made me sad. But I realized that we were moving on, and we had all achieved our dreams - we are nurses! Several of our professors and classmates spoke. There were some good inside jokes passed around, including the fact that Gail Nelson is now "passing the banana" on to one of us to become a nursing professor (Gail hates the smell of bananas and banned them from her classrooms). After the speaking, our names were called and we were pinned by one of our professors. I was pinned by Sherri Tesseyman, an amazing woman who teaches Advanced Med-Surg Nursing and Intro to Nursing. Then we all stood and read the Pledge of Nursing:

I solemnly pledge to practice my profession faithfully

and conscientiously. I will do all within my power to

maintain and elevate the standards of my profession

and to continue to pursue my educational endeavors

throughout my nursing career. Using the knowledge

I have gained, I shall continue to upgrade the quality

of care of my clients. It is with honor that I shall

devote myself to the nursing profession.

We then walked out the way we had walked in, with

bagpipes accompanying us (!!!) I was SO happy!!

"Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive

devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work; for

what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared

with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one

of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of fine arts." - Unknown

Afterwards, there was a reception in the cultural hall. These are my very close nursing buddies. From left to right, Des Faull, Channa Goodman, Amy Cummings, me, Natalie Sanaty-Nya.

"To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do,

in spite of all we go through, is to be a nurse." - Rawsi Williams

"Nursing is viewed as a caring practice whose science is guided by moral art

and ethics of care and responsibility." - Patricia Benner

Celebrations!!

So last Thursday, Jordan and I had tickets to go see Cirque du Soleil: Alegria! I was SOOOO excited! I absolutely love Cirque du Soleil and Alegria is one of my favorite songs in the whole entire wide world (anyone who knows me well knows this :) You can listen to it here :) :) :) :) Alegria means joy or happiness in Spanish. So, obviously, I was psyched for this show! Jordan - who is the best husband ever - bought the tickets as a surprise a few months ago!

We drove up to the E-Center and decided that we didn't want to pay the $10 for parking (gross!) so we parked illegally at the Cracker Barrel. After running to the front doors, we excitedly handed our tickets to the ticket attendant. The scanner beeped awkwardly as he scanned them and he looked at us and said, "You have come on the wrong day." WHAT?!?!???? We looked down and the tickets were for the day before - Wednesday! Oh my gosh, I was freaking out. We went to the ticket booth and showed the lady our tickets and explained the situation. She went in the back to talk to her manager. We waited nervously and then they both came back. The manager said, "Normally we wouldn't do this, but you guys can actually get in tonight (WHEW!!). Be really careful though in the future and look at your dates!" We were so grateful, because frankly, those tickets weren't cheap and we wanted to see the show! So the lady gave us AMAZING seats on the right corner of the stage, 5 rows from the front! It was incredible. The show was amazing. There were trampoline artists, dancers, clowns, contortionists, acrobats, and many other talented people from all over the world. Compared to the other Cirque du Soleil show I've been to, Saltimbanco, this one was ok. The main reason I wanted to see it was to listen to the song live :)

Oh, and Jordan and I had a bet to see when the song would play. He bet it would play at the beginning and I bet at the very end. If he won, he would submit me to tickle torture and if I won, I wouldn't have to do that. I won :) After the show ended, we ran as fast as we could to our car, and it wasn't towed! Yay! We aren't going to go through that experience again though, we would much rather know our car is safe and pay $10 than have to pay for towing.

Yesterday, my brother Jordan graduated from Maple Mountain High School at the UVU Events Center. It was a great graduation and we were so happy to celebrate! I feel so old - I can't believe my brother is graduating and my youngest brother is going to get his licence in a few months! Or that hubby Jordan and I are graduating this week! It is a week of happy celebrations. After his graduation, my family and Omi and Buppi went to Tucanos to celebrate. Tucanos is my brother's favorite restaurant, because it is all you can eat meat. Delicious!

Done.

We seriously never imagined this day would come! WE ARE DONE WITH SCHOOL!!! Getting our bachelors degrees has been such a rush and time has flown by so quickly. I makes me a little sad, but mostly happy. Jordan is SO happy he is done with Physical Chemistry and that he NEVER has to take another one of those exams again. We really have had so much free time since school got out yesterday that we don't know what to do! Yesterday I had my last final early in the morning. Jordan spent the morning playing games and watching movies. I came home and we got ready for the day, ate lunch, cleaned up the house a little, went to the temple grounds and walked around, played the piano, read books, took a nap, talked about stuff besides school, went to dinner, took another walk, and watched another movie!! :) It was so great!

I now know what I'm going to be doing with my free time. I'm going to be playing the piano again! I haven't seriously played since my freshman year of college, simply because of the time my classes took away from it. But I'm going to be learning a new piece called Wedding Day at Troldlhaugen by Edvard Grieg that is simply amazing! I'm really excited to get back into playing again - not just church hymns. There are only so many times you can play through the hymn book. After Grieg, I'm going to get a book of Chopin pieces and learn some of those because Chopin is such a master! I'm so so so excited.

I am going to officially be an Nurse Apprentice on May 7th and will be making almost double what I am now. Plus, I'm not going to be limited to 12 hours each week of working. I can pick up empty shifts whenever! So I'm going to be working about 16-24 hours each week. May is going to be amazing. My dear friend Amy Sampson is getting married on May 8th at St. Marks Cathedral and then she and her husband are moving to Connecticut. I sincerely hope that the weather in May is warmer/better than it was in April! Funny story - so on Jordan's phone, he has the weather for both Salt Lake City and Richmond. He got so excited one night after it snowed because it said the weather the next day was going to be about 80 degrees and sunny. Well the next day, it snowed again. He looked at his phone and realized that he was looking at Richmond's weather the previous night. We want to live in Richmond - mainly because of the weather! The rainy weather here in Salt Lake City has been beautiful though. It has made everything so lush and gorgeous. It looks a little like Oregon on Westminster's campus because of all the greenery!

Here is to a great May!! :)