Trip to Utah!

The mountains and weather in Utah were beautiful!

And we had a wonderful time!

Thursday, April 27th Commencement

We got there early...

...but by 10:00 the Marriott Center was full including many of the 6,812 graduates!

It was a wonderful program!

We got to hear from the Reverend Dr. Andrew Teal

and Elder D. Todd Christofferson

but my favorite speaker was President Kevin J. Worthen!

It was his last address as President of BYU and he was very emotional.

He spoke about exclamation points!   He said that some think the exclamation point is the cockroach of punctuation but it's history points to the Latin where it was used to express a message of joy.  That's how I like to think of it!   

My two favorite graduates!

Meeting Caleb at Raising Cane's!

Lots of fun with family in that crazy, crowded, noisy place!

So glad Heidi and Elizabeth were still in Provo!

Emma works at the Provo City Library.  

They had an Open House on Thursday and Emma gave us a tour!

Later we all met for dinner at Los Hermanos, a favorite of Josh and Andrea.  Amazing that on graduation night we got a table in the back of a large room with only one other group at the other end.

We all had a good time and stayed there quite a while!

Friday, April 28th Convocations

Another beautiful day in Provo!

The College of Humanities at 8:00 a.m. where Julia received her B.A. in English with a Minor in Editing!

The College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at 11:00 a.m. where Emma received her B.S. in Family Life: Human Development!

We gathered for a late lunch at Brick Oven!  

Again we were surprised at how quickly we got a table

 and were in an area almost by ourselves.

The nostalgic entrance remembering the days when it was called Heaps of Pizza or Heaps for short.

We had one of our first dates there!

Afterwards we had to say good bye to Elizabeth!

We will see her in person in about 18 months, 

 but will be excited to hear about her amazing experiences!

Grandpa went to a BYU baseball game, 

and then he transferred over to the women's softball game!

Saturday and Sunday, April 29th and 30th

Playing games and introducing No Thanks! which this family quickly mastered!

Graduation cookies!

Julia had an editing job at BYU Studies!

Here is one of the volumes she worked on.

Julia also showed us this magazine she worked on for her senior project.

We were very impressed!

Here are two of the articles she wrote and also did the layout, design, found the photos, etc.

She also worked on other parts of the magazine and she said she learned a lot!

Fun afternoon on Sunday with John and Sara hosting!

The weather was so nice we spent a lot of time outside!

Caleb insisted that he and I take a selfie!

(Other highlights from our trip: Picking up Julia from the airport and driving her to Provo and hearing all about her experiences in the Chicago area, had the yummyest raspberry smoothie at Kneaders, actually being the first to answer a couple of questions when we played OK Boomers with the Joshersons, being in Josh's ward where he spoke during the 2nd hour meeting, and seeing all the lovely things John and Sara are doing in their yard.)

Now that's a trip with a lot of joy!!!!!