Hooding

I can't believe it's taken me this long to get to posting about this.  Probably because I've already totally overwhelmed people with pictures on Facebook!  I actually don't have many good pictures because my brother is currently holding them hostage on his camera...

The last week of school was both busy, and totally laid back at the same time.  We had a couple of parties, and we did things like clean out our lockers and get a whole bunch of signatures saying we could graduate.  Honestly I think it's almost harder to get out of dental school than it is to get in.

Graduation was May 12th, and my whole family flew out to Omaha the Thursday night before, including my awesome grandmother.  It was fun to show them around, and meet everyone else's families.  We had a hooding ceremony at the Jocelyn Art Museum on Friday (May 11th) in which my dad was my guest hooder.

Right before the ceremony.  All ready in our lilac robes and caps.  We tried to get a picture with all the Utah RDEP students, but we were missing two of the Daves.  

During the ceremony.  I felt like it was an episode of Harry Potter with all the different tasseled hats, robes, and hoods  the profs had on.

 This was a fun little ceremony for just the Dental school and our families, and we had a reception afterward at the school.  Some pictures afterwards.

Dave, Stephen, and I after the ceremony.

Me with Dr. Stout.  He was one of my favorite profs, and he actually wrote a letter that helped get me into my residency.  Also, I thought this was funny because everybody kept mocking me for my super sweet heels!  To be fair, they did end up giving me a massive blister after all the walking around that night.

Unfortunately I'll have to hunt down pictures of the actual ceremony.  Someone in the class had arranged a class picture, but I've only found one picture where I was actually visible.

Fun times rolling

More fun stuff that happened.  (I apologize, I'm totally doing this for me, so if you get bored, just look at the pictures!)  Really I was trying to soak up just as much fun with my Omaha people as possible before I had to leave them all!

I went to tons of movies, which was so much fun, and even better because a couple of them were free, and some of them were even midnight movies!

A big group of us went to see The Avengers at midnight.  There were about fourteen of us, and I really only knew like three people.  My friend Jessica was a total stud, and put together her own Captain America costume!  I actually went to a couple of stores in search of a good Iron Man shirt, which does not exist.  I contemplated wearing my Batman t-shirt (despite him being in a totally better playing field than Avengers),  but instead just gave up.  Let's be honest, I don't do costumes unless I go all-out!

Next.  We have a good buddy who works for the radio stations in Omaha.  They were doing some sweet promotion where we got free tickets to Dark Shadows!  Not only did we get free tickets, we got to see it a week before it was released to the public.

Of course that meant Will and I were going to dress up!  You can't tell, but I'm wearing my awesome vampire boots.  I busted out my teeth, and Will let me color his hair black!  See what I mean about going all out for costumes?  Also, I think this picture is hilarious because usually it's me drinking the Diet Coke.

I know it came out a while ago, but we most certainly went to the midnight movie for Hunger Games.  I went with my friends Dave, Zach, and Laura.  Funny story, the next day I get a call from Zach saying that he wanted to go see Hunger Games again.  Knowing me, it took next to no persuasion to get me to convince me to go!  So there you have it, I saw Hunger Games not once, but twice, and both of them at midnight!  Actually, that's one of things I miss about Omaha.  Cedar doesn't exactly support midnight movies.  Or any movies after 10.

After Graduation, a bunch of the dental students decided to stick around Omaha for a week in order to attend a fellow dental student's wedding.  That meant that I was spending a lot of time packing and cleaning my house, but I also had a lot of free time to spend with people.

Dave and I decided we needed to go visit the zoo one more time!  We had a lovely time taking pictures, and checking out the beautiful new aquarium.  It's been closed for a couple of months for renovations, and it has been my favorite exhibit besides the jungle.




I spent the entire week between graduation and the wedding packing my belongings, including my kitchen stuff and food.  Poor Dave had nothing in his house but a lawn chair and a blow-up mattress, so we went out to eat a lot.

 

Here we are at Taco Tuesday at the lovely Guacamaya.  Yum!  This was one of our favorite haunts since we could get tacos for a dollar!  After this we met up with some friends at a Jays game down at the new Ameritrade center.  It was the first time I had ever been there, and it was a lot of fun to enjoy the beautiful weather and watch some baseball and fireworks!
We also spent a day hanging out at my friend Chase's house.  Since moving he seemed to take on several home improvement projects, and we volunteered our services.  He bought his home from a family, and the house came with this really rickety old swing set.  We took that poor old thing apart, chopped it up, built a fire pit, and burned it!

 

Actually the whole point was to build the fire pit, but the swing set made for good firewood.  After we built the pit, Chase threw us a big going-away BBQ.  It was ah-MAH-zing!  Funny story, though.  Apparently the neighbors called the cops when they saw the "ten foot flames."  Yeah, you can tell from the pictures that they weren't!  Also, when the cop showed up and realized there was no alcohol at our party, he let it go.  So there you have it, I had my own party and got the cops called on it.  Check that off the bucket list!

Miss you

Today I branched out and actually attended the single's ward here in Cedar City.  Usually if I'm just here for a week, I'll just go with my parents.  I ended up going because my friend Dan, who I met in Omaha, is living here in Cedar.  I haven't seen him in a year, so I was excited to catch up, and it was also nice to see a familiar face.  However, oddly enough, it made me miss Omaha even more.  I don't know if you know this about me, but I suck at learning new names, and an entire ward-full of new people is just a bit overwhelming!

Needless to say, I was missing my cute little Omaha ward full of graduate students and Village Greeners (did I mention that I'm older than most of the people here?).  It's interesting to look back at my first day in the Winter Quarter's ward and realize I wasn't all that excited to be there.  Luckily being the new face eventually wore off, and I generated some really amazing friendships.  I actually just looked online and, good news, there is a young single adult branch that meets in the same town where I'll be living in Maui!  Hopefully I'll be able to make some new friends who might be patient enough to teach me to surf.

Pre-Graduation Events

I decided with all the exciting things that have happened lately, I probably better catch up!
After passing Clinical Boards, I pretty much spent the rest of school finishing up with patients and completing all my requirements.  I also finished up my time working at the prison, which was more exciting than usual since a fight broke out between two prisoners one night we were there.  Dental School could probably most easily be described like High School, except I don't remember being so close with people in High School.  We really had a lot of fun as a class, and I'm amazed at how well we worked together and had each other's backs.

Class picture before our hooding ceremony.
Out of all the pictures, I think this is the only one where you can actually see me!
I'm hiding up in the upper left-hand corner.

Along with finishing up school, I had plenty of time to spend with friends.  My friend Chase moved out to Omaha this last winter since he was stationed at the Offut Air Force base.  He offered to take me up flying, and we finally planned it the first Saturday of May.  We drove out to the base with another friend of ours, Ben.  Once we got up in the air Chase let us take a turn at flying, and he decided to show off a bit with some fancy moves like a stall, and some touch and go's.

Ben being a stud

Chase with his plane.  And Ben doing... something...

A view from inside.  I took the back seat first, then traded off when we landed in Plattsmith.
Chase on the left, and Ben on the right. 

Sadly enough, my stomach didn't tolerate Ben's erratic attempts at flying well.  We had a ward party that night involving Brats, sauerkraut, and sautéed onions which I had to pass on...  However, flying was a total blast!

Also, this is what else I did the last couple of months.  I went from half blonde, to all dark, back to almost entirely blonde again.  All in the space of just a few months.  For some reason I find this fun... don't ask.

Okay, I'm bored.  More updates and pictures later.

Migration weekend

Lot's of stuff has happened since I last blogged.  Most recently I relocated from Nebraska to Utah this past weekend.  Now I'm chillin' at my parents house for the next couple of weeks till I move over to Hawaii.  I moved into the spare room in the parent's basement, and I've had fun fitting an entire house into a single room.  I kinda like it, but since it's the basement I get friendly visitors like big black crickets.  Yep, there was one crawling on my pillow this morning!  I kinda freaked out, but at least it wasn't a spider!  Anyway, right now I'm actually sitting watching my mom vacuum out the pool using her scuba gear!

Most of our family is dive certified, but I think she's pretty scrappy to just bust out her dive tank for random household chores!  (She'll probs be upset if she knew I took that picture!)  It's interesting, I'm feeling pretty useless right now since I don't have a Utah dental license yet, and I won't start work in Hawaii until July 1st.  I think I actually miss the college lifestyle, not to mention my cute little place in Village Green.  Too bad it's sold, and the people have already moved in!  Well either way, I'm getting excited to move to Maui!

Cheers!

You know that place where everybody knows your name?  (Forgive me, I'm being nostalgic since I'm moving so soon.)  Okay, I mentioned that I had sold my place.  Today I was out shopping with Will, then I was going to meet with my purchasers when we got back.  Well they showed up a bit early, so Will dropped me off so I could run in and meet them.  About ten minutes later I'm busy printing something off for them when Will wanders into the house with my groceries, and promptly starts putting them away.  I'm not sure what the future owners of my house thought of this, but I thought it was pretty funny!  Also, it made me extremely sad to realize that I'm saying goodbye to my cute little neighborhood where everybody knows my name (and knows where my groceries go).

This year I actually attended the dental school's Senior Banquet since I'm actually a senior.  I took zero pictures, but luckily lots of other people took them.

Me with the RDEP wives.  I'm holding the Burt's baby Scott, which I think will be funny to look back at!   I need to stop stealing babies...  

The banquet is held in a ballroom with a live band, and we have a catered dinner with all our classmates, faculty, and significant others.  Also, we do things like awards, and random videos created by seniors.  The videos generally make fun of dental school, but they probably aren't that funny to people outside the school...  I had a total blast, especially since this was yet another excuse to dress up!

Because we're the dental school, and we're awesome, we pretty much kept the celebration going all week long!  We had a huge BBQ at a park last Wednesday.  Yeah, no one can party in the middle of the week like dental students!  We had tons of delicious food, cake, a couple of kegs, and plenty of Diet Coke.  Also, people brought all their dogs to this event.  I had some serious puppy envy!

Group at the dental BBQ.

I sent this picture to my parents and totally freaked them out.
I may have implied that this was my puppy...

Nearing the end

I feel like I've kinda abandoned this blog...  That's mostly because I have another blog dedicated to selling my house, and because I've been surprisingly busy lately.  A lot has happened!  Last entry I sold my couches in preparation for my move back to Utah.  It was maybe a bit hasty because now I have almost no furniture in my living room.  However, it makes it feel huge, and I have lots of random camp-outs on my living room floor.  I actually kinda like it.  Speaking of which, I'm almost certain I've sold my house.  We sign the contract tomorrow afternoon, which I'm very excited about, but also really sad.  I'm going to miss my little home...

In other news, last Tuesday was my last day of dental school.  That's right, LAST DAY!!!  Honestly, after taking clinical Boards mid-April, the rest of school was pretty much a down-hill slide.  It was surprisingly anti-climatic.

Since I haven't caught things up in a while, here's the story of Clinical Boards, or WREBS.  Basically this is the mother of all tests that we build up to throughout dental school.  You have to find three very specific patients who are willing to show up and go through this experience with you.  Often this involves bribery of some form, including the promise of free dental work.  I thought it was funny that this year our test happened to land on Friday the 13th which was also the day when massive storms (including tornados) were being predicted!  Luckily there were no tornados involved, but there was a huge thunderstorm.  Seriously, that's something I'm going to miss about living in Nebraska - thunderstorms, not tornados.

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They had originally told us it would take a month to get our scores back, but two days later I found out I passed all the sections of my boards!!  That means Utah will now give me a license to practice dentistry (once I actually get that diploma)!  Speaking of which, graduation is coming up next week.

So there you have it.  Those are the major events that have happened in my life in the last month or so.