We Did It!

I know, I know. Two blog entries in less than a week. I am really out doing myself now! Erica, you should be proud of me. Normally pulling off one entry a month is quite the accomplishment but so much is going on in our lives right now that I feel another entry is justified.

Jake just graduated from BYU last friday with his Bachelor's degree. As I sat there in the audience watching him walk across the stage I could not help but beam with pride as tears filled my eyes. I try to blame all of the emotion on my pregnancy but, let's be honest, I would probably have tears running down my face if I was completely hormonally balanced. I just can't help myself. I thought about everything it took to get to that moment and it brings back a rush of memories. I remember the long nights of staying up with Jake, right after we got married, discussing if the move to California was really the right thing for us. I remember going with Jake for the first time to the campus at LACC and sitting under a palm tree waiting for him as he was taking a placement test to start school. I remember the excitement that I felt when we got the letter from BYU that he had been accepted and received a scholarship for his good grades. And finally reflecting about the late nights that he stayed up, long after Tylie and I had gone to bed, studying because he wasn't able to get his homework done that day because he was playing with Tylie and trying to maintain being a dad and a husband. I can't help but pat myself on the back for the great choice that I made the day that Jake proposed on the beach 5 years ago. He has guided our family with such determination that when I question, he moves forward without hesitance. I used to look at people that didn't have to go through the "school" experience when they got married and I was jealous. I was jealous because I thought that it would be so much easier is Jake already had his degree when we got married and we could get on with life. What an idiot I was then. I would not trade these experiences for the world. This was our way of "getting on with life." We learned how to lean on eachother, how to trust eachother, and how to work together to make even the craziest situations work out. Somehow we threw a daughter in the mix two years ago and things continue to flow as they should. I have to chuckle at myself because as I write this, it sounds like I am bidding the school life goodbye and moving to the next stage. Hahaha! I have only just begun. I have a feeling that the bachelor's degree with look like a game of "chutes and ladders" compared to law school. I know that law school will be difficult and we will struggle far worse then we have already had to. All I can say is "Bring it on!" But by the way I was in his graduation last week, those poor soles in law school graduation three years from now better bring their life jackets and paddles. I will flood the place out!