Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Happiest Place On Earth, Especially After Graduation

The kids, Cami and I talked about what we wanted to do to reward ourselves for all the sacrifices we had to make in going back to school. The unanimous decision was to go to California. We bought a week at the Newport Coastal Villas and planned to hit the road right after my graduation ceremony. We drove to Primm, NV the first night and stayed at Whiskey Pete's. The next morning we drove to San Diego and spent the day at Sea World. I was a bit disappointing in it as many of the attractions were closed and a lot of the shows seemed a lot less amazing than I had remembered.
That night we drove from San Diego to Newport Beach and checked into our room. It was awesome! We talked my younger brother Steve in to coming with us and he had his own room. The kids slept on the hide-a-bed and Cami and I had an awesome master suite.

We spent three days at Disneyland (which is more than enough) and goofed around the rest of the time at the pool or the beach. It was a great trip and a fantastic way to reward ourselves for all the hard work we had done.




The farewell dinner made with some of the best Tri-tip I have ever eaten, garlic rosemary bread which we made from rosemary we picked outside our door, pistachio pudding salad and a regular green salad. It was indeed a sumptuous fare.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Graduation

The day we have anticipated since starting the Nurse Anesthesia program back in August of 2009 finally arrived December 9th, 2011.  Each member of our graduating class had made so many sacrifices and overcome so much adversity to make it to graduation. Normally I am not a big fan of the "pomp and circumstance" that surrounds graduations but I enjoyed this ceremony. It was nice because we graduated in December and got to have our own private ceremony with only the 13 graduates and our families. It was incredible to finally "arrive" as they say and to celebrate that with those who had supported me so well throughout the entire experience. And in order to uphold tradition following great accomplishments, my family and I left from the graduation to DISNEYLAND. See next post for details.