The best 3 years

Happy anniversary to my best friend.

Its been a great 3 years and I couldn't be happier.

I love you Seth!

BALOOOOO!!

I've been spending all day with this guy:

He was so excited to see us again! Especially Seth!

Claude gave him a kiss...

...And we found out that he thinks he's a wiener dog now.

Not to mention I was so happy to see Hammy this year! He's 14 years old! I don't know how many more times I will get to see him, so I'm trying to spend as much time with him as I can.

I'm so happy to spend Christmas with all of my furry buddies! I got a new lens that lets me get up close to these guys. I'll leave you with this one:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Models

Hannah and Sofia came downstairs wearing Pattie's shoes and I asked them to model them for me. I didn't give them any instructions, and this is what I got:

Adorable! These girls are naturals!

Bubbles

Aunt Margie came over the other day and brought Matti a bubble making machine for his birthday! The kids were having so much fun, so I decided to get some pictures of it. Enjoy!

GRADUATION

Today, I graduated from BYUH with a B.S. in Pre-professional Biology and a minor in Biochemistry.

It was such a great day and I am so lucky to have family that flew all the way out here to support me.

I feel so liberated!

Here are some of the photos from today:

These are my adorable shoes that I got lots of compliments on! They gave me some hard core blisters before the commencement ceremony even started. But at least they were cute right? My shoes were the only thing that you could see with my gown on, so I had to make sure they were cute!

The 4 Biology graduates! We did it!

Walking in... I was the 4th to last person in line.

Finally getting my diploma! I worked SOOOO hard for this thing! (Sorry its a little blurry).

The polynesian lady who read my name actually messed up my middle name, Ku'uipo, which is crazy because its such a simple Hawaiian word.

Everyone got me so many leis! Being Hawaiian is awesome. My mom and grandma brought a TON. I had to push them down just to be able to see!

My in-laws, Pattie and David flew out here to support me too!

Here are Jen and I---so much fun to get our diplomas together!

It was so much fun to walk around and visit with my professors, since they all know me pretty well by now (I've been here all 4 years).

Dr. Kinghorn and I, one of my favorite professors:

Amy and I. We worked so hard to finish BIOL 493!!!

My research mentor, Dr. Gold:

And me with my favorite person/photographer!! He was my personal paparazzi and followed me all around the commencement ceremony. He just kept telling me how proud he was of me. I love him so much.

Going out to lunch at Ted's afterwards. I had to take off about 10 pounds of leis.

I'm FREEEEE!! For now, anyway! I can't wait to go home for Christmas with my family and my sweetheart Seth, go to Disneyland, shop at Anthropologie, and see my baby fatty! This semester was really hard on me so I am more than ready to relax and enjoy the holidays.

WAHOOOOOO! Life is great.

Hi, remember me?

I'm baaaaack! Well, sort of.

Ok I would say that now most of the craziness has blown over (I call last week "The Perfect Storm").

I actually have time to blog right now, but its been so long and so many things have happened that I don't even remember where I left off.

So the last week was insane...I've probably pulled all-nighters every other night trying to get all of my big assignments done and study for exams, and let me tell you....I AM TIRED. But I'm sure all of you are too, trying to finish up the semester, right?

Some of my accomplishments over the last few weeks include:

-Going to the Kona temple on the Big Island.

-Finishing my 493 research paper and poster.

-Presented research in front of faculty and bio students (I was more nervous about this one that any of you can imagine)

-all of my unit III/IV exams

-all of my homework assignments (There were so many!)

-Found a new place to live

-Booked flights home

-Got a lot of my Christmas shopping done

-Got invited to BYUH President's luncheon with Sister Julie B. Beck

-Finally wrote that awful Abraham paper!

Wow it really feels so good to say that I've done all of that! Now all that is left is moving out of our apartment (and into a new one) and finals... which is still a lot to do, but knowing that I'm graduating next Friday kind of makes me not care anymore. I swear once I grab my diploma I'm just going to start crying and tell everyone how tired I am and how excited I am to move on. Biology/Biochemistry kicked my butt. Please don't make fun of me if that happens.

Anyway, I'm so excited to go home and see family/friends/baby bulldog! And I'm excited for the next month or so! The fam comes out next week and I'm excited. This month is going to be so awesome.

I'm so excited to see you, San Diego!!!! :) Countdown: 9 days!

Ok, now I'm going to move on to post about the big island and other things, b/c I have so many pictures!

Graduation

I'm graduating!

...In two weeks! Just thought I would get that excitement out of the way.

And life couldn't be better.

We're back from the Big Island--what a fun trip! I have absolutely no time this week to blog. I have my research presentation on Friday, a Biochem exam, a religion paper, a kinetics assignment and my research final paper/poster to work on. So I will post soon!

Have a great week! Isn't it awesome that its December all ready?