Graduation Ceremony

Brigham is soon going to be done with his Bachelor's degree in August and the ceremony for his achievements was on May 9th. Brigham didn't want to attend his graduation but his good wife insisted that he would be grateful he went and took pride in his success. Also, it would be a good example for his children as they one day look at the pictures. There were times during the six hours we were there, that I may have regretted my demand of attending, but over all it was so worth it! I felt so happy for Brigham and his accomplishments and I was grateful that we were there celebrating.

These are the graduates filing in. John Huntsman Jr. spoke at the commencement ceremony and he gave an excellent speech Brigham truly enjoyed.

Lydia did really well for the first ceremony that everyone attended, but by Brigham's individual department of Humanities commencement she was ready to get out of there! Luckily, she was manageable. After she had eaten through her cheerios, pretzels, and graham crackers she ran around, tore a whole in her tights, and made her mom very tired with her whiny demands for freedom.

Overall she was very good for a one-year-old sitting through five hours of ceremony. This shows two of Brigham's greatest achievements, his degree and his daughter. What a good man and daddy!

Brigham with his Mom and daughter. It was good to have lots of support from family.

Of course, most people know that we, in general, dislike the University of Utah. While they provided a decent and convenient education, BYU is like a BILLION times better :) So we sat in the Y section and got our pictures taken next to the big Y to show our true loyalties. It was hard seeing so much red and black; it hurt my eyes. But an education is an education.

This is Brigham with his dad and brother, Jake. Jake swore after it was all over that he would never go to another college graduation again. Haha, I know how you feel Jake, but it's good to honor our family!

Our cute little family next to the "Y". Congrats Brigham/Daddy, we love you!

I bought Lydia a new toy that would hopefully entertain her a little longer during the graduation and this little graduation owl was cute and fit the occasion.  She really enjoyed it :)

Congrats on all your hard work Brigham, you've come so far and I know you'll do great things. I hope you find your passion and enjoy doing whatever you do as you work hard. I am excited to take the ride with you and work together on the rest of our lives! Love you!

Ready!

Lydia loves her bath and will play in the tub for a long time. One day when I got her ready for her bath and we were waiting for her tub to finish filling, I turned around and she just grinned at me and I thought she was too adorable to not document. With her hair out of its recent pigtails and just in a diaper, Lydia excitedly chatted as she followed me around while I prepared her bath. She just looks like a cute happy little girl with her messy hair, and I love this picture :) You can tell she's trying to take off her diaper so she's completely bath ready.

Here you can kind of see her cute pot belly as she runs around the house. She's got a nice buddha belly that sticks out nice and round. We love it :)

My Beautiful Wife

Hi Everyone!
I wrote this last summer. I just want to share it with all of you to let you all know how incredible life is for me because I am married to Kari Ann.
 I wish I was able to show Kari how much I really love her! I mess up a lot and I do things that upset her and I can be a stupid man sometimes or a lot of the time. I sometimes don't do as well as we both know I can and sometimes I just am lazy and act like I don't care. I really do care and I try as hard as I can to help her and to show her that I love her without a shadow of a doubt. I want her to know that she is the world to me and I know that I would be no where in this world if I didn't have her. I say a lot of flowery things sometimes and it gets me into trouble because when I really need to express in special terms how I feel it comes out the same as other times when it isn't as important. I want to be able to know Kari like she knows me. She knows what I want for gifts for lunch or dinner and she knows how to make me happy at every turn. Lately  I just don't know how to budget my time very well and I end up wasting the time that I could have spent with Kari just messing around. I want nothing more than to just be with her and to have her know that she is what I want. I miss her so much lately. I want her to know without question that I am dedicated to her and only her.  I love to flirt with Kari! I never want anyone besides Kari and I want to flirt with her and I want to understand her and to have her understand me. I wish we could always just understand each other. I also wish that we didn't fight so much. Kari can get a little too intense and I know how to push her buttons too well. Kari is literally the best thing that has ever happened to me. I never want to hurt her or be unappreciative to her. I know why I married Kari. I married her because first and foremost I am deeply in love with her. I fell in love with her because I knew who she was. I knew that she was the most pure girl I had ever met and that she will be able to put up with me and even be able to help me improve myself better than I or anyone else on this earth could improve me. I knew that I wouldn't ever have to help her with her testimony of the gospel. I knew that her smile melted me. I knew that she loved to have fun and play. That has always been one of my favorite things about Kari is her ability to have fun and play as if she was ten years old. She loves sweets and games and surprises (even though I am not too good at surprising her). Kari is smarter than most people I know and she knows how to put those brains to work. Kari knows how to make success. This is another big big reason that I fell in love with her. I knew that she would be successful in whatever she did and if it was marry me then we get to be successful together. I love it when I impress her. I love all the times when she looks at me like she did when we dated. I love when she says things like "Wow Brigham, that is so good." or "Brigham you are such a good man and I love you and I would have no one else." Kari doesn't say a lot of things like that. She isn't really sentimental. I understand and appreciate that. I can be the sentimental one out of the two of us. I have enough of it to share. On my Facebook page where it has favorite quotes, my most favorite is "I love you" - Kari Ann. I love when my wife tells me that she loves me. I love to know that she does. Not because of ego or anything like that, it is because I love her and I realize how incredibly lucky I am when I get her love. I am the luckiest man in the world for several reasons. A few of those reasons are as follows. I have the most precious, beautiful daughter in the world, I have the most amazing and capable of anyone in the world to be my child's mother and I have the most amazing wife that anyone could ever have. My wife makes my lunches for work every single day and has since we were married and a little before. Kari smiles at me when I come home from work. She helps me with my homework and she helps me when I get worried or stressed. There is no one in this world that can calm me like Kari can. I think everyone needs someone like Kari in their lives because Kari's hugs are always so sincere. Her kisses are so passionate and absolutely amazing. I love Kari Ann because I feel like I can be better when I am with her and I strive for that. My wife is amazing!
Happy Anniversary Kari! Thank you for putting up with me for three years so far! I can't wait for the rest of eternity!

Burned

So I was reading an article in a magazine the other day about skin cancer. It was saying some pretty intersting things such as, if you are under 30 and you lay in tanning beds, you increase your chances of melanoma by 75% (holy crap that's high! Stay out of tanning beds!)! Also if you have freckles, they should be in places that the sun shines on you. If you have them on your shoulders or other places and they don't go away when not regularly exposed to the sun then it means you've had severe burns in that area. This is the case with my shoulders, they are covered in many freckles due to multiple burns (this is bad!). Basically if your freckles don't go away when they are no longer exposed to the sun, it's bad because it means your skin is damaged.

Also if you are under 30 and you have face wrinkles when your face is relaxed then it means you've had too much sun on the face as well. :( well frowny face for me because I have forehead wrinkles. Well this made me determined to do better with the sunscreen. Brigham has had multiple burns on his nose that have made it turn into a giant oozing blister (gross, scary, and sad). Well besides taking better care of us I wanted to make sure to take really good care of Lydia because she is so fair skinned.

However, the other day I went for an hour long walk and it was really cold out side. So I bundled Lydia up really well and felt like a good mom. That is. . . until I got home. Her whole face was red and puffy and I couldn't figure out why. Maybe she had an allergic reaction to something outside? Well it wasn't until she woke up from her nap that I realized . . . she was sun burned! Augh! I felt like the worst mother ever. I didn't even think about sun screen and I don't even HAVE baby sun screen. It was so bad that she even got a blister on the side of her nose. So much for taking good care of my family's sun exposure.