gRaDuaTioN tRip...

After four years of Canada, lots of amazing friends, two baby girls, amazing Canadian adventures, school, school & more school...we have made it through and Mark has officially graduated!! We had such an amazing trip going back to Halifax for graduation. It was so fun to go with Mark's parents and show them around our hometown and have them there to see Mark graduate. We were all more than proud. AND...it was sooo good to see all our friends again for one last Halifax horah!! I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am of Mark. I really had to hold back the tears throughout all the graduation stuff, because I was just so dang proud of him. He has worked sooo hard and put in so many hours and done so well...& I know it was all for the benefit of our little family. It is such a great feeling knowing that we have BOTH made it through!! When you are staring those four years down from the starting line, these seem sooo long and the finish line seems sooo far away. And then, all of the sudden you are about to put your foot across the line and be done for GOOD, and it almost seems surreal and trying to pinch yourself to make sure it's not one of those wonderful dreams where you wake up and you're stomach drops because you realize that you're still three years away...ya know that kind!! But it is real and you are really proud...proud of all of us really...cause we did it together!! And all I can say is....YIPPEE, YAHOO, and YEHAW!! So nice job Markus...you kicked butt and I hope you know how grateful I am for all of your hardwork!! And now we're off to the next phase and I know you're going to kick butt again!

On our trip we also had the chance to see a lot of Halifax that we hadn't experienced over our last four years. Ya know, you kinda live a different life when you have two little kids. For some reason...you don't make it out late at night, you don't ever see the inside of a pub (for dang good pub food & awesome atmosphere) & you don't get to go to nice oceanside restaurants and get yummy seafood!! But this trip...we were kid-less, so we had many late nights, saw lots of awesome pubs (the Shoe Shop was oh, so my favorite) & had some dang good seafood sitting out on the waterfront. Can't ask for more than that. We also took a wonderful, and much needed trip to the temple...another thing we didn't get to do very often with kids. It was beautiful and the perfect thing to do when we had so much to be grateful for!! I honestly fell in love with Halifax in a way that I never could before!! Oh...and hello...it was the nicest weather i have ever seen in a Halifax May...absolutely perfect!! So here's some pics to sum up the trip....