Graduating Class of 2008

This is a little long, so if you don't want to read it, skip to the slide show of Mark's graduation day.

What a weekend! After many (I think the number is 12) years of going to school Mark finally graduated on Friday! He graduated from UVU (Utah Valley University) formerly known as UVSC. I'm sure he'll be embarrassed if he actually reads this, but it is an amazing accomplishment for many reasons. After I graduated from BYU (2002) Mark decided to go back to school since he knew we'd be starting a family soon. He wanted to get a degree so he could 'move up' in the business world. I was very proud of him when he decided, on his own, to go back. So he started doing 2 or 3 classes a semester at UVSC. He'd already done a few semesters at BYU before the mission and a few at UVSC after, but then took a few years off. He had a long way to go and I had no idea when he would actually graduate. I think he felt the same way.

It got a lot harder when each kid came along. When Calista was about a year old (2006), Mark decided he would never get done with school before he got burned out with taking only 3 classes a semester and summers off. He decided to go to school full time. So for the last 3 or 4 semesters (can't really remember) Mark has been working full time and going to school full time. Thankfully a lot of classes could be done online, but he was usually gone and didn't get to see the kids Tues.-Thurs. every week. On top of all that Mark has traveled across the globe to different countries for his job in the last 2.5 years. He's been to China 6 times (Shanghai, Beijing, Huzhou), Mexico, Guatemala, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany. And at the end of the day he still had the energy to play with his kids.

I'm very proud of Mark for seeing this all the way through and graduating. It hasn't been easy and there were times I wanted him to just stop. But he knew he needed to get a degree if he wanted to get where he wanted to go and I'm proud of him for it. He works hard for his family and we are so excited to have him home at 5 pm every night now.

Graduation day was a great day. Mark's parents came and stayed with us Thursday night as graduation was at 8 am Friday morning. We actually made it early...too early. Téa kept asking when it was going to start. Thankfully there were just over 100 graduates walking that morning for the Woodbury School of Business so we weren't there more than an hour. I remember my graduation at BYU for the Business school and there were probably 1000. Ugh. Anyway, we met with family for lunch at Chili's which turned out great. We had a good sized group of 14 people and it was fun to have family together. I wanted to still get together with everyone that night so those who couldn't do lunch could still come so we had a 'picnic' that night at a park near Mark's brother's house. It was a little chilly but if you stood in the sun it wasn't too bad. Thirteen of the cousins were there and had a blast. Mark's parents and three siblings and their families were there as well. We brought pizzas and I surprised Mark with a cake. It was great to celebrate the graduation, but mostly it was really fun to have so much of Mark's family together. So, congrats Mark. You did it! Below is a slide show of the day we had. The kids were exhausted Friday night.