I Graduated!

It's kind of crazy to think that I've spent the majority of my life in a classroom. It's also kind of crazy to think about that era of my life coming to and end. Will I miss the homework, tests, and no sleep? Nope! But will I miss learning every day (even if I might feel forced at times)? Probably yes. But I guess the challenge in life is still continuing to learn day by day even when you're not in a classroom. 

The 17 year journey has been so worth it!

Luckily the weather held out for us on the day of commencement. It was such a cool sight to see thousands of graduates lined up to walk in to the Marriott Center.

A group of my PR friends

Loved this sight

Richard G. Scott spoke at commencement and gave us some pretty profound words of advice as we move on in life. Two of my favorites were to "always smile" and to "always do what is right, and let the consequence follow."

Some of my best PR friends -- Emily, Lauren, and Lauren. They made my time in the program so much fun. Each one of them is so talented. I know they'll have amazing careers and I'll miss not seeing them every day!

Friday's convocation was at the De Jong Concert Hall with only the communications students. It was fun to be able to sit with all of our friends and not in alphabetical order!

The Brimhall Building -- my home for the last three years or so. It's one of the oldest buildings on campus and has so much character. I'll miss it!  

We lucked out with beautiful weather on Friday. Spring in Provo is so pretty with all of the tree blossoms and flowers. Next year Nick and I will switch places and he'll be in the graduation robe!

I was lucky to have most of my family there with me to share the day -- along with my cute mother-in-law too.

Even my aunt and uncle joined us for lunch! La Jolla Groves is definitely one of my new favorite restaurants in Provo. It was so great to be with everyone!

Though exhausting and extremely difficult at times, I wouldn't trade my college education for anything. It's taught me so much about not just my future career, but about myself, too. It's been a great 4 years!

Saying Goodbye

I've come to realize over the past few weeks that having to say goodbye to friends in college is much worse than at high school graduation. I've made so many amazing friends in the PR program and after graduation, they'll all be spread out throughout the country. But while I'm sad to see everyone leave, I'm so excited to see where our careers will take us throughout the years. 

I've loved being a part of the BYU PRSSA Chapter (Public Relations Student Society of America) over the past couple years. We have awesome faculty advisers who have all had great careers of their own before coming here to teach, not to mention really talented students as well. This year our chapter even got the Chapter of the Year award at the PRSSA National Conference -- it's given to only one school out of more than 300 that participate throughout the nation.

We had our year-end banquet last week and I finally got to take some pictures with everyone:

 Some of the graduation seniors

With our lab director, Jeff and his wife. Jeff is the life of the party in our program -- we love him.

Emily and I met in one of our first classes in the program and have been friends ever since -- she's wonderful!

Emily and Michelle -- my fellow Project Hope girls!

 Dr. Plowman, DKP, K-Plow -- one of my favorite professors and in his class where Emily and I worked on our first project together. He's had a great career in politics and as a public affairs officer with the Afghanistan with the U.S. Military. We've learned a lot from him!

We had another fun little year-end party with our PR friends at Spark organized by my lovely friend Lauren. 

 

 

 

 

Lauren is definitely Miss PR and has been so great as our chapter president. We love her! Emily, Lauren, and I have worked on several accounts together and they're definitely two of my best PR friends.

And last but not least, my good friend Patrick. We've been through thick and thin together -- lots of projects and really stressful classes. Besides being the most social media savvy person I know, he leaves after graduation to start a job doing PR for General Motors in Detroit. Can't wait to see where he'll be in 20 years!

 All I can say is I'm really glad I live in the Facebook generation so I can stay in touch with all of my great friends from college - I'll miss them!

Senior Capstone

It's crazy to think that the class I've been preparing for over the past three years has finally come and gone! One of the (many) great things about our PR program is we get the chance to work for real clients throughout many of our classes. For our capstone class this semester, our client was UDOT -- The Utah Department of Transit -- and their new TravelWise program. Our team worked throughout the semester to create a PR campaign that we presented to the UDOT clients last week. I was so happy with how hard our team worked and our clients even chose our team as their favorite. After lots of late nights, early mornings, and a 140-page campaign book, it was definitely worth the hard work.

 Most of our team after the presentation and our whole group at our professor's house afterward

We had a good time with this client and came up with some really fun tactics. Here are some pictures:

 

 

 

We came up with the "Clean Air Polar Bear" for elementary school kids, and I even got to make my first coloring book! 

 Kind of sad to think that my days as PR student are over, but I loved every part of it. In my opinion, it's one of the best majors BYU offers ;)

Flowers!

When it comes to college classes, I definitely saved the best for last. My floral design class has officially come to an end now. We've had an overabundance of flowers in our house (if that's even possible) over the past few months and I'm sad that I won't be getting a new arrangement every other week! So as a tribute to my all-time favorite class, here are some of the arrangements I've done this semester:

 

 

Happy 2 Years!

"O how beautiful it is to be alive—would that I could live a thousand times.” - Beethoven.

Several events have happened lately that has led me think think a lot about the fragility of life and how it can be taken away so suddenly. It's made me think about this quote that Nick shared at our wedding now two years ago -- and life has been nothing but beautiful ever since. Sure, every day in our hectic lives isn't easy, but it makes it so much better when you can go through it with your best friend. We've made so many fun memories this year and can't believe that it just keeps getting better each day. Happy 2 years my love! 

Following our fun tradition, we spent another great weekend at the Grand America. We had seriously been looking forward to it for months! And again, no detail was left unnoticed--these were in our room when we checked in. 

I could probably spend hours observing the different designs throughout the hotel. I mean, even the bathrooms are amazing! Calcutta marble is definitely something I don't live with everyday :)

There's a bit of a story behind the pizza... but it fit in nicely because the BYU game was on! We decided to spend a fun night in and splurge on brunch the next morning instead. 

Zen!

We had a view of the courtyard this time which was so fun to see at night with all of the lights. 

We vowed to save up our eating-out dates for about a month so we could try out the Sunday Brunch. I have to say it was definitely worth it. I was almost sad that I couldn't eat more because I was so full! They had everything from crepes to crab legs and sushi to chocolate fondue... pretty much anything you could ever want. And it was all SO tasty. Nick was in heaven at the crepe station. I think we'll definitely have to save up for that again next year :)

Aaaand.... I'm Back!

Well, after a couple of grueling months, I'm finally back to the blogosphere. Despite our busy schedules, we've had a lot of fun things happening lately and we've been so lucky to have a lot of family in town. 

Between o-chem, microbiology, exercise physiology, and his Kaplan DAT course, Nick's schedule is pretty crazy. He spends many nights -- including weekends -- in the lab till midnight, but even though we don't see each other much I'm certainly grateful for how hard he works! 

I'm keeping myself busy at Orangesoda and my job with the Department of Communications. I also tried my hand at my first freelance writing project this month. 27 pages was definitely a personal accomplishment! Other than that, I'm counting down the days till graduation next month! 

My sister's husband had crazy medical rotations last month, so she came out to visit with her two little girls for a couple weeks. Thanks to the holiday weekend and cancelled classes, I got to stay in Logan with them for almost a week. These two little ones are growing up so fast!

I had to share my new love of fondue dinners with my family...

I convinced Eliza with helping me make my beloved French macaroons by telling her we were going to make PINK cookies - she loves anything pink. Haha. It was quite the process, but she was such a patient helper. 

She was thrilled that they matched her pink shirt when they were finished. But I also discovered that baking macaroons without a silicone mat is hopeless. I forgot to bring my second mat from home and quickly found out that wax paper is not the next best option. At least I got one good batch! 

This picture kills me. I told Eliza she could pick one of the dozens of spare lipsticks out of my makeup drawer to try on, and of course she chose the brightest one. Not only that, but she insisted that she put it on all by herself. She was so proud of it! 

We're definitely more dog hungry than we are baby hungry around our house these days. I think it runs in our genes.  So whenever we get the chance to be around dogs we absolutely love it. Kona has to be one of the most spoiled dogs in the world. Haha. 

 Scottie turns 18! 

I was excited to get to be home on Scott's birthday. He and four friends with birthdays around the same time planned a huge dance party with Marcus Wing as the DJ. Despite the raging blizzard outside, they had about 400 people show up. I was the designated ticket girl and definitely had fun people watching for  a few hours. 

I was also the designated photographer/videographer and was thrilled to find out that my little iPhone video camera did such a great job in a dark dance party -- here's one of the best clips I captured.

Nick turns 26! 

I still think it's hilarious that both of our birthdays fall on the 27th.. and only one month apart! We were so happy to have Nick's sister Jessica and her husband Tyler in town from Florida for a few days. We hadn't seen them since our cruise last year! We made our traditional trip to Tucanos to take advantage of our birthday coupon. Yum! 

Afterwards we took them to my favorite dessert cafe, The Chocolate, for my favorite cookie dessert. Each place has a different name for them these days, but as you can see from the picture, they are delicious! 

Nick's actual birthday was on a Sunday so we had a fun little dessert night with some of our friends from the ward. I had no idea it was possible to fit so many people in our little apartment! We were having so much fun I forgot to take pictures while everyone was actually there (typical), but we had a great time.