Monterey Bay Aquarium

On Saturday, we went down to the Aquarium with my parents and Aunt Marilyn and Uncle David since they're members of the museum. Pieter hadn't been since he was 10 and visiting from Georgia. We watched them feed the otters, penguins, and the fish in the Kelp Forest. For lunch, we finally got our clam chowder in sourdough bread bowl! We've been meaning to do that since we've been married. My favorite part of the museum though were the jellies! I won't subject you to all 50+ pictures that I took, but enjoy!

Weekend Trip to Pittsburgh

After graduation, we flew out to Pittsburgh for a weekend to scope it out and find and apartment! We took the red-eye out on Saturday. Pretty much the summary of this trip is that people in Pittsburgh are SO friendly.  We got invited to dinner by 2 couples at church! We were taken on a tour of Pittsburgh by my parent's old landlord's son Randy. For 2 hours we got driven around all over the city with a narration and helpful tips (on Mother's day no less!). Super nice for a guy we'd never even met! We also explored the city and found where my parents used to live.

 (Bad picture of my parents' old house in Pittsburgh, but the people were moving in and I had already passed my quota of number of times you can drive by without being creepy)

The next few days we met with our advisors and on the last day finally found an apartment! Yeah, we were really sweating it, wondering if we would ever find a place. Apartments in Pittsburgh are competative! Case in point: we looked at and loved this one apt and were about to head down to the office to sign for it, but as we were walking out with the agent, the person who'd seen it 5 minutes before us snagged it! Talk about disappointment, but everything worked out in the end!

Get this- we're living in a church! It's an old church from the 1920's that they've converted into 6 apartments, high church ceilings, windows, and a big church basement for laundry too! I love that everything in Pittsburgh is unique and old with character! We'll be living by the Pittsburgh zoo in Morningside so I guess when I get frustrated I really can run off to the zoo, hehe!

Enjoy some Pittsburgh pictures:

 (okay, so maybe this isn't my school, but it's across the street!)

Cathedral of Learning on campus. That's how much my school thinks of education,plus it's like Hogwarts inside, no joke

The trip back home was a little less exciting...our connecting plane in Minneapolis(it's nearly impossible to get a direct flight to Pittsburgh, lame) broke down and we had to spent 3+ hours chilling in the airport, but now we have Delta vouchers so I guess I can't complain too much!.

Moving=we have a lot of crap

After 2 years we left Wymount! A major thank you to my parents for sticking around to help us pack!

 It's amazing how much junk (treasure?) you accumulate in that amount of time...this is only the stuff that came to CA, we have a full storage unit back in UT!

Graduation!

 Yes! We did it! 

On Good Friday, we both graduated from BYU! I got my BS in Physiology and Developmental Biology with a minor in Molecular Biology and Pieter got his BA in Political Science with a minor in Editing.

On Thursday was the big commencement with everyone and Elder Scott spoke (I love him!) Pieter and I walked in with my college that night and then Thursday, we actually walked and got our diplomas with Pieter's college! We were really blessed to have so much of our family come and support us. My parents, Laura, Aly(and all of her family) and Amy (and Sean) came to see us walk and then Pieter's parents flew in and his brother, Frank(and his family) came so we felt really loved and supported by everyone!
We couldn't have done it without these people.

 And these people... :)

  We threw a luncheon our families before convocation as a thank you to all of them for everything. I had a lot of fun planning it (may or may not have been during classes when I got burnt out, but I still got an A!). We had Turkey Harvest Croissants, Strawberry and Spinach Salad with a poppyseed dressing, pita chips and Mint Brownies. My Aunt Ella and Uncle Kent came and ate with us too

Thanks BYU! Now on to bigger and better challenges!