Sunday, June 30, 2013

We have another Doctor in the House!

Nick received his PharmD degree in Salt Lake City on June 8.  We drove up there from Cedar City on that Saturday morning.  Mike and I, his mom,  Eric.  We met at Nick and Kaylee's house and they fixed brunch for us.  The graduation ceremony was at Kingsbury Hall on the campus of the  University of Utah.
http://kingsburyhall.utah.edu/venues/kingsbury Hall.  Here is what it looks like.

It was a very nice program, but my camera did not work well in the auditorium.  I even tested it while we were waiting!!  Nick really got a kick out of dressing up like "Wizards," as he referred to the robes and regalia.  He even made a wizard's wand for the graduation speaker, just in case he should feel  a need to cast a spell or something. ha.  Silly boy.

We took a few photos out on the lawn afterward that DID turn out OK, so I'll post those eventually.

Mike and I picked up Berenice's friend, Kay Johnson Nelson from Hawaii who was in the state for her step grand-daughter's wedding.  She'd been to the temple wedding, so I met her downtown and we (just Kay and I) walked around in the visitor's center and the conference center, then I put her on the Trax train to go meet up with her family in Sandy for a wedding reception in Orem or something like that.  It was a logistically challenging day for me.  The whole weekend was.  Eric went somewhere else after, too.  I walked to Gateway from the Main Street trax stop.  I figured it would be just as fast to walk as it would be to wait for the next train.  I was pretty close.  I can't remember if we met for dinner at 5 or at 4 pm. but I was only a couple of minutes late.

Mike's sister, Gayela, joined us for dinner, too.  Eric headed to Provo to see a play with some friends, Nick and Kaylee went to their home and Mike and I headed to a hotel.  We had a free one-night stay from last year's hotel mess ups when Katie and Casey came for Nick and Kaylee's wedding, so that came in handy.  We went to church with Nick and Kaylee at their ward on Sunday morning, then headed south to pick up Berenice and Kay.  Then we stopped in Provo and picked up Eric (I think...)

Monday, it was back to work for me.  One of the five whole days I showed up for work in the month of June!  Eric played tour guide for his grandma and Kay and drove them around part of the Grand  Circle of National Parks for the day.  Kay stayed in Cedar/St. George for the next two days, then went back to Hawaii.  We have stayed at her house in Kealakikua in the past.  She is a very gracious hostess.  It was nice to see her again.  She'd never been to Cedar City before.  Some mutual friends (Dee and Ruth Snarr) who live in St. George now (and used to live in Kay's stake in HI) came to take her to St. George for one day, too.  Kay certainly saw lot of the state on this trip!  We never even took one picture of her (with my camera) while she was here.  I guess she'll just have to be my "Imaginary Friend." ha.
 This was my test photo while we were waiting. I zoomed in on the stage area.  Not too bad.

 And this is what it turned in to!  Yikes.  I actually ended up with a fairly decent video (for me.)  But I tried posting videos to my blog once.  Three days later....   yeah.  They take too long to load.

 Nick was anxious to get out of the hot, hot wizards robes and hoods and hat and ribbons and stuff.

 Someone elses' camera must have the picture that was taken of all us under the tree with Nick.  Maybe it's on his blog.
 This is a serious case of "Hat Hair."

 Or, is THIS the serious case of "hat hair"?  You be the judge. ha
 I became the holder of many things while waiting.  For what, I can't remember.  We were just trying to figure out who was going where for what and how.  Like I said:  Logistically difficult for me.  So I just held things.


Nice outside view of the theater/hall/auditorium.  It was a perfect day!!
Congratulations,
 NICHOLAS JAMES LIEBHARDT, PHARMD
ROSEMAN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES
JUNE 8, 2013

(That's what the plaque said on the front of the mortar and pestal I gave him for his graduation gift. )

Friday, June 7, 2013

April/May/June 2013

It is amazing how quickly time flies by!

In April, we not only got snow (see previous post),  but we also celebrated Seth's birthday.  Mike made his lovely German chocolate cake. 
Mmmm, chocolate. ;-)

Katie's birthday was the same day, but she was not here :-(

The end of May we took a trip to Provo/American Fork/Springville to decorate graves.  We also visited with living relatives and some friends.  Below is an acquaintance of  Berenice's from years gone by.  Tom somebody.  I didn't catch his name, but they had a nice little visit in American Fork.  You can see Mike and Gayela standing by the cars in the background, waiting.




We took Caroline along with us for the ride.  She had fun. Can you tell from the photo? ;-)

 Other family came to meet us at the park.  Nick and Kaylee below.
 We stopped in at another relative's to go over some old photos.  This is Ann, a cousin of John's.
In June we made a quick trip to SOCAL to play with Damian and Tandy's family AND to attend his graduation from Navy Medical Residency.  It was so cold down in Balboa Park!  We froze. But not as badly as we froze at Braeden's All Star Game on Wednesday night.
That little 8 year old is quite the slugger and it was so fun to see him in action.  They happened to lose that game, but the score ended up being 25 to 24!  They had been way behind and really rallied there at the end.  But the ball park!!  YOWZA!  It's June in Southern California and we needed hot cocoa, jackets, blankets, hoods.  And we still came home fairly frozen.




We got in late on Tuesday night.  Wednesday we spent some time at the pool, Mike, Eric and I.  Tandy had a bazillion errands to run, and her final piano lesson to teach. 

Thursday morning was the graduation in Balboa Park in San Diego.  It started fairly early, we had to deal with traffic on freeways, parking, etc.  But first we had to have CAR KEYS!  Yikes.  Damian had to be there early for a run-though and took Eric and Lexi to help save seats (which ended up being very unnecessary), and the keys for Tandy's van -- the only set of working keys-- ended up in Damian's pocket and we didn't know it until he was practically there.  Argh.  So we 6 piled into our 5 seatbelt little car and took off!  Good thing they started late.  Very late.  We'd seen the entire program all printed out. Script, actually.  Word for word.  And they started late and ended early.  Pretty nice, eh?  We thought so. 
Great seats.  Great Navy band.  Good speech. Good-looking Navy Lieutenant.
 We could see him from where we were sitting.  He's sitting on the front row, looking toward camera.
 Our seats were right in front of the band.  We felt like we were at a concert rather than a graduation.
 And the organ pavillion at Balboa Park was quite spectacular.

 Bundle up in those blankies!  Damian and I both believed that it would be roasting and hot and sunny for HOURS in the San Diego sun.  Not.  Tandy called it.  She didn't think the morning marine layer would have been burned off by then, and she was right.  I thought we were bringing the blankets to sit on for padding. 
 It was so breezy that these state flags surrounding the pavillion kept blowing down.  That kept soldiers hopping..  Damian is in the line up, just to the right of the navy blue flag in center.  Don't even know what state it is.  Do you?


Ella kept busy taking some great photos.  Maybe we'll see some of them on Tandy's blog.  I stood up to take a photo of Damian walking across the stage to receive his diploma and my camera battery was dead.  Blurg.  But Tandy's wasn't, and neither was Ella's.

We ate out after and then headed home to Cedar.  A thousand miles in less than three days. My b___t's tired.  And we do it again tomorrow!!!

For Nick's graduation in Salt Lake City on the 8th.  PharmD.  Yay for Nick and Damian, our newest graduations.