the latest hill happenings

Well I feel like I do when I haven't written in my journal for a while.  I have so much to catch up on, I don't even know where to start!  So hopefully this blog doesn't get TOO long.  I'll just give a quick run-down of the last few months.

April was Easter, finals, graduation! and a quick trip to Washington.  Joe and I made Easter dinner and invited some friends over to share it with.  We even made sugar cookies and decorated them with the HUGE will-last-us-the-rest-of-our-lives container of Easter sprinkles my mom gave us.  They turned out pretty well. 

We also tried to make twice baked potatoes but... we accidentally covered them in foil and well....



The skins completely fell apart.  It turns out that twice-baked potatoes in a casserole dish are just as yummy ( :  Note to self... DO NOT cover in foil.

After the festivities of Easter we jumped right into studying hard for finals.  Joe only had 3 finals, but they were ALL scheduled really late in the week, poor guy.  It was a tough round of finals for me, but we both survived them and must have done pretty well because they let Joe graduate and I ended up with a 4.0 for the semester.  Graduation was super exciting.  My mom and Joe's parents and grandparents came down for it.  There was a scary moment as the graduates were walking in when an older lady right next to us fell backwards, down the stairs.  Everyone around her gasped, and suddenly she was surrounded with at least 20 men claiming to be doctors and a mom offering a diaper for her bleeding head.  So scary, but how lucky that it happened in the health and life sciences graduation, of all graduations.  Miraculously, the woman ended up getting up and with a lot of help, walking out.  It was a neat experience to see the whole crowd collaborate to help so quickly and do anything they could for her.

Unfortunately, it was either rainy or really ridiculously sunny for graduation, so the only pictures we have are of all of us squinting.  We're planning on getting Joe in the graduation gear and faking a few pictures when the weather is nice.  I'll post a few when we get them.

This is a super far away and kinda blurry shot I got of Joe actually receiving his diploma... he graduated Magna Cum Laude (top 5% of the class)!

After graduation we headed home on a super quick weekend trip to be with my little brother Braden as he went through the temple for the first time.  He's been called to the Mexico City East mission and is leaving in July.  It was a great experience to be there with so much of my family in the celestial room and feel the spirit there.  I can't wait for the day that I can be with ALL my family there.
 

We also got to see one of my little sister's softball games and my brother's soccer game.  My sister has become quite a pitcher.  They're both pretty darn good!  Sometimes I wonder why my siblings got all the athletic talent in the family...

After a fun weekend at home I started school right back up again on Tuesday.  I'm just taking a few general classes that I've been putting off for quite some time.  They're not too bad, although my Humanities class requires kind of a ridiculous amount of reading.  Like 70-80 pages every other day.  My mantra is...it will be over in a month, it will be over in a month.

While I started up school, Joe put all his time into preparing for his physical therapy clinic's "Run to Walk" 5K and fun run.  As the race director, he's spent the last 4 months or so working on putting this charity 5K together to generate some funds to help the families pay for the expensive treatment costs.  This is the second year that his clinic has put on the 5K, so they're still learning exactly how to do it.  But Joe did a GREAT job and everyone had lots of fun!  This year they had over 400 runners, and more than 50 volunteers who showed up faithfully at 6am to get it all put together.  Each of the kids from the clinic gathered all their friends and family to come run and support them.  The kids are sooo cute and were worth all the time and effort we put into the event.  We feel so blessed to be a part of such an amazing organization.  Here are a few pics:

The check-in table, with our hot chocolate!

Joe with his buddy Bryce.

The race begins!  Joe is on the right with the starting gun up in the air.  Notice how all the serious runners out in front are starting their watches ( :

With another boy (Britton) from the clinic.

A few of the volunteers from a scout troop cheering on the runners.

The clinic director's daughter, Colby, dancing to the after-party concert.  She was all smiles!

Now that Run to Walk is over, Joe has much more time on his hands and he's starting to actually enjoy being graduated.  He spends his extra time making me dinner, tidying up, planning date nights, studying for the GRE and looking for a job.  What a great husband! ( :

We had a lot of fun this week for date night.  We wanted to try out all of our camping gear before any big camping trips, so we set it all up in our living room!  Joe even made tin foil dinners to heat up in our "fire" (oven...).  We laid in the tent and watched LOST (the big finale is THIS WEEK!!) and played games.  We even made homemade ice cream with our sweet ice cream maker we got from my parents for Christmas.  It was amazing.  SO much better than anything you can buy in the store.  All in all it was a fun date!

As you can see in the tent picture above, Joe is quite talented with the camera timer.  We even got this sweet action shot of us at the park the other day:

Well that's the latest in a nutshell.  So much for the quick run-down.  I'll try to be a better blogger I promise.  As you can see, life has just kept us busy!  Hope you all are doing well.  Until next time,

darci