the big one

As you may remember, I graduated a couple of weeks ago. Remember this lovely announcement I designed myself? I know I don't say it enough, but I was pretty proud of my work.


My mom was able to fly in for the weekend so we started with commencement on Thursday, April 21. Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave the commencement address. I think they said there were something like 6,000 graduates. That's the majority of the people you see. The ones that all look alike? Yeah, that's us. Believe it or not, my mom actually found me from across the giant Marriott Center. This is the picture from where she, VeNicia, VoNique, and Jared were sitting. If you look above that bottom door in the corner, that's me.


Oops, sorry Jared...


The next day was convocation. I graduated with a BA in English Language so I was in the College of Humanities. There were 500 graduates from the college I think. With such a large number, it seems like we should just get to calling the names right away, right? Nope. Let's throw in three speakers and a musical number before the already 45 minutes of name-calling. Great idea.






Woohoo! That cover is actually empty; they mail the diploma to you later. In my case, much later, since I am in fact not actually graduated...oops. I won't be finished with everything until August but I just walked in April anyway. More exciting, right? Not so exciting to go back to class three days later.








My friend Lauren and I met when we were freshman dorm roommates almost seven years ago. Since then, we've both served missions and are now graduating at the same time! It makes me feel better to know that it took someone else just as long to get to the end.


Jaime's secret desire is to have a BYU diploma of her own. She'll admit it someday.


At this point in the story, we had a lovely open house at my friend Chrissi Harris' lovely house. I forgot to take pictures. Shoot. But lots of friends and family came to say hi and eat some fab food that my mom and I prepared.

Afterwards, I came home to these:

My friends and roommates know me so well. I just really like fresh flowers.

The next day, my mom, Jaime, and I went up to West Haven to spend Easter with Jaime's family. It seems only natural that my real family meet my surrogate family. While we were up there, I also decided to take some pictures of Jaime's nieces and nephews. I LOVE my nieces and nephews and I miss them so much. Not being able to see them is probably one of the biggest problems I have with living in Utah. Fortunately, I have found in Jaime's family some substitute nieces and nephews. They're not mine, but I like to pretend like they are. I love them just as much. They probably think I'm their aunt anyway. That's all a lot of them have ever known. She has four sisters who all have at least four kids, but I just have pictures of a few of them here.

This guy is Jack, also known as Andre the Giant. He's a big boy.


Miss Haizyn loves to cheese. She said cheese for about 10 minutes straight while I was taking pictures. This one is not shy.






We colored eggs, and they showed them off for me.

Maizic.


Jaiger.


Rachel. Makes me laugh. Every time.


Taigon.


Jaime's not my niece, but she made a pretty sweet egg, too.




Haizyn.


Oh, but wait. Haizyn's not done yet.






I really think she would've kept saying cheese as long as I would've kept taking pictures.

Sunday was the Zogmaister Family Egg Hunt in Jaime's parents' backyard.












That night, my mom and I headed down to Bountiful to have Easter dinner with her family.

JD and Barry.


Barry and Rita. They have a pretty interesting and impressive story. They told us the whole thing, but in short: they met in an airport, he didn't get her name, so he put an ad in her hometown newspaper asking for help finding this woman he met in the Seattle airport. Well, he found her. And they've been married for close to twenty years!


Me, Mom, Aimee, VoNique.


VeNicia, Jared, Paul, Spencer.


It was a super fun weekend and I loved having my mom here! I just wish this really were the end of my college career. Three more months...