"Free at Last!"

We are finally done with test taking and applications, at least for a while. Thank you for all the help with my personal statement and allowing me time to study while you were out here. The test was just over a week ago, Saturday June 13. If you thought the testing center was hard core, they have nothing on these tests. It felt like you were going into one of the highest security sites that the government has. (Actually, I'd have to talk to my brother-in-laws to confirm that one.) You get a locker and put everything including water and hats, etc. in it. Then you give them two forms of ID, and they take three digital fingerprints from each hand. You sign your name on the way in, they take your picture and look at your ID's again. They film you the whole time, and you need to bring your ID's, sign your John Hancock, and fingerprint each time you go in or out (there's a 15 minute break, it almost doesn't seem worth the hassle.) It went a lot better than I was expecting... even when I was finished and waiting for my score I thought I did terrible. But, the work paid off. Thanks to the help seen and unseen.

Here's a few pictures of our victory party. These are actually from Monday. We "celebrated" by hiking the Y to make the final edits on my personal statement from a more inspiring location than the library. As you can tell Michelle had the camera for this activity, she's still a little camera shy.Michelle and I just had our birthdays the week before the test, so we decided to postpone celebrating them until Saturday afternoon after the test. Apparently Michelle had something planned long before that Saturday. When I got home had lunch and we went bowling with our good friends and team mates (for a frisbee league) Christopher and Bethany Barnes. After bowling we said bye to the Barnes's, I got blindfolded, and driven all over Provo, including doing circles in a parking lot to get me mixed up. In the end we ended up...

...at the Barnes's home for our dual birthday celebration. They made this amazing chicken dinner and then we broke open a pinata (the guitar, which one of Michelle's students kindly donated to the cause.) It was filled with plastic teeth and candy! We went swimming for a bit then cam back up for chocolate cake and a movie... the instant classic, X-Men uno.

One weekend later, now that applications were in, we really partied. Reagan hosted (and Miles organized) a "Prom" at Reagan's parents' house. It was a "choose your own theme" prom. After having trouble finding matching outfits, we decided to just forget dressing up and go in our normal clothes.
Well, Michelle had to borrow a pair of my jeans. It was fun, though we were the only married couple there, which made us feel more like chaperones. But that didn't last too long.
While there we caught up with Reagan and Sarah. He just ran the Wasatch Front team race. His team won it... it goes from Logan to Heber, and then to Park City. It took them about 12 hours, not bad.

This last week also marks our six months of being married and 2 years from our first date. That's where this one came from... Frontier Night I think it was called. It seems like we really like the themed parties.
It's been a great two years and an even better 6 months. We've had a great time getting to know each other's families. They both are very entertaining and supportive... especially the past few months as we were getting ready for applications and admissions tests.
Thanks for everything.

Oh yeah, at the "Prom" we talked to our photographer from our wedding. He's getting us the rest of our pictures from our wedding today. So we will probably just post them once we get them.


So here's a few left overs from last post. I hope they're not too disturbing. We decided that for posterity's sake that we'd take pictures of some of the transition states on the way to being clean shaven. They're ridiculous enough to make Michelle atleast a little cautious about how I take care of ingrown hairs.

This one's inspired by Shakespeare. This is Mom's favorite.

This one's inspired by firefighters across the nation.

And lest you forgot what Bolts and Goat looked like, or your scroller isn't working...