GRADUATION!

What a wonderful weekend it has been! It has been so fun to celebrate Justin's great accomplishement with family and friends. Here is a slew of great pictues from this week.

The annual MBA Golf Tournament

Justin's team

Flying kites at the park with Daddy

One last little MBA picnic

Mark and Ali

Jason

Angie

This girl loves her sunglasses!

Graduation day breakfast at one of the professor's homes

Brian, Amanda, Dave, Tom

Malya

Geneva, Michelle

Julianne, Ryan, Michelle

the Sanders

Geneva

Ortho Appointment

Hopefully my last orthodontist appointment with Erin....cross your fingers for the Tuesday before we move!

Photo Shoot with the Seelys

Mark and Justin

Justin being.....creative with the long sleeves on his graduation gown

What would the MBA lounge be without the foosball table?

University Commencement

Presdient Uchtdorf and Elder Nelson, graduation speakers

The kids with their cousin Brooklyn 

The graduate brothers, Justin and Jason

Happy families

Proud parents

Proud sister Luann

The cool hood

Marriott School Convocation

Derek, Geneva

Loren

Kara

Sean

Just look at all those happy guys!

Entertaining the kids for the last hour of a 3 hour graduation with a DVD on the laptop (genius idea Dad, thanks!)

Cute Lindsey

Proud in-laws

Proud sisters-in-law

What a busy and wonderful weekend! Can you belive it's over Justin?

Time to pack! Let's get this show on the road!

Saturday at Temple Square

On Saturday we were able to meet our very good friends Dave and Sheri and cute boys in Salt Lake at Temple Square. We really wanted to go up there one more time before we move away and also really wanted to meet up with our good friends, so it worked out perfectly. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful! We took the kids to see the Christus and that was really neat. 

Katelyn kept saying, "Jesus, owie!" She noticed the "owies" in his hands, feet and side. 

We got some neat pictures outside by the temple. The temple and the grounds were stunning as usual.

The kids had a great time playing together! 

We walked through the Church History Museum and the kids had a fun time playing around in the area designed for kids. Then we finished off the visit at Crown Burgers and had a great lunch together. 

We love these guys and are so glad that we squeezed in one last visit with them before we shove off! 

2 weeks until our move! Scary!

Another chapter comes to a close....

**Disclaimer: Please forgive me for the volume of pictures in my next few posts. But this is a busy/exciting time for us and we have so many experiences and people we want to remember. So be forewarned, lots of pictures ahead!

It is that time of year. Graduation is upon us at the end of this week. I'm so proud of Justin for completing a masters degree. It's been intense and very rewarding!

We have been enjoying the closing socials, the "lasts" of everything. It is a very bitter sweet thing for us. The MBA program has been a life changing experience....not only for Justin, but for me too. We've learned so much and have met so many incredible people. 

The MBA closing social was a wonderful evening....great food and friends. Justin received the big globe for the Hawes Scholarship. It's mighty pretty!

Our dinner table full of friends

Sean and Melissa, Charlie and Stephanie

Sam and Gina

Jason and Sara

I really enjoyed the MBA Spouses' Association closing social last week. So many incredible ladies I have had the priviledge to know.

My partner in crime (aka Spiritual Committee Co-chair) Alanna

Kori and Gina

Gina and Mary

Cheryl-Lynn, Andrea and Anika

Linda and Melissa

Mandy, Susie, Sara, Jamie

Cheryl-Lynn, Stephanie, Lisa

Dawnia

Susan

Lacy

Kricket

Briawna

Joani

Summer

And there are so many ladies I didn't get pictures with. They're all so amazing! 

Hard to believe that we're wrapping things up now. How the time flies!

Happy Easter!

Easter is such a wonderful time of the year, a time to think about the Savior. It's spring time and there are lots of fun activities for the kids. On Friday the MBA Spouses' Association put on a big Easter egg hunt for the MBA students' kids. There were lots of kids and eggs! I took Katelyn and Lindsey and Ali, a good friend Alanna's little lady. We had a fun time running around but definitely avoided the big Easter Bunny. The girls thought he was scary!

Today has been a nice Easter Sunday. Unfortunlately Katelyn has been under the weather today. She's been sleeping a lot and couldn't go to church. So we took Easter pictures without her. I was sad she couldn't wear her Easter dress to match Lindsey. But these other two kids are cuties! 

We sure love this boy.....

and this one too!

And this lady is sure pretty....

and this is the kind of dress that is meant to twirl in!

Lindsey and Brandon had a fun time collecting eggs that were hidden in our back yard.

One of the best parts of the day was after the kids had finished their Easter egg hunt and asked about Katelyn. She'd slept the afternoon away. We decided that the kids could fill 12 eggs back up with candy and hide them outside when Katelyn woke up so that she could find some eggs too. They were almost more excited about hiding eggs for Katelyn then they were about finding their own eggs. It really was so sweet. When Katelyn finally woke up, they excitedly took her around the back yard pointing and helping her find the eggs that they had hidden for her. They were so excited that she got to hunt for Easter eggs too.

Hope your Easter has been wonderful!

Birthday/Conference Weekend

Last weekend we were able to get away to my parents' house to enjoy our last General Conference weekend with them. Since Justin and I had birthdays at the end of March and 2 of my sisters, Cindy and Marianne, have birthays in mid-April, we decided to have a big birthday bash to celebrate everyone's birthdays since life for us has been quite busy lately with house stuff and Justin's graduation falls right on the April birthdays. We enjoyed yummy cake and some great presents. Thanks for putting on a great party mom!

Conference was wonderful as usual. We always enjoy the spiritual uplift and the great talks! And it's a nice reason to get together with family. We'll miss that when we move! Lindsey and Katelyn had some excited aunts that wanted to put their hair up in rags after their bath. If you don't know what that is, the pictures will give you an idea....

and the next morning....

And since some of us are moving away in the near future, we decided to take another family picture for my parents' wall. This is one that ended up on our camera. It's a good picture except for the washed out background. We had to go to another location to re-take the pictures and those turned out better. 

It's been nice to have a place to get away on the weekend during the MBA program. We're sure going to miss living close to family!

Drumroll Please....

After months of research, time on the internet tracking homes for sale, researching school districts and boundaries, neighborhoods, shopping areas, commute possibilities, calling bishops and other people we've never met in 7 wards in the Kent/Covington/Auburn area, going on a house hunting trip and making an offer on a house 

that fell through, we have finally found 

OUR HOUSE!

Please meet the next member of the family:

This home is located in Auburn, WA. To be more specific, Lea Hill, which is just south of Kent and fairly accessible to the train, which is how Justin will commute to Seattle. He'll be able to work on his laptop with the Wi-fi connection on the way to and from work, so hopefully the commute won't be too hard for us. 

There are so many great things that we love about this house, the schools and the ward. It is a model home currently and is just beautiful. It is BIG and will take some getting used to, but we're so excited to have some space to spread out and settle down in a home of our own after almost 8 years of marriage. This is the kind of house that we wouldn't normally be able to get into, but because of current market conditions, we really got a great deal on it. We've got lots of room, so if any of you are in the area, we'd love some company!

For more interior pictures of a model similar to this one, click here.

And for those of you who want more, here are a couple of videos that we took while on our house hunting trip. Starring Justin behind the camera, Jenn, and of course our wonderful realtors Jerry and Tom.

Downstairs

Upstairs

It's done! (sigh of relief)