Kevin's Graduation

A day that we had been looking forward to since we were first married came on May 2. Kevin graduated with his masters in mechanical engineering! He has to write his thesis still, so that will take several months, but it is still a huge symbol of all the hours and hard work he has put in over the past 7 years. The ceremony wasn't until 7, so I knew it was going to be tough with the boys. It was really hard because they usually do bath time/bedtime at 8. The ceremony right before ours didn't finish until about 6:40 and Kevin already had to go line up with the graduates. I hurried in there with the boys to try and save some good seats for my parents, Grandma Nelson, and Kevin's parents. The ceremony was about what you would expect, long and boring, but at least they read all graduate students names first because there were tons of undergrads that had to be read! They read Kevin's name, we cheered and took pictures and then we got out of there! The boys actually didn't do too bad. Ryder was being especially good. Easton on the other hand was so tired and cranky! He cried for most of it which means me and my dad took turns taking him out and walking around with him. I'm so proud of Kevin! He has sacrificed SO much to get to this point and to graduate from grad school with a 4.0 GPA is incredible. He is so driven I know he will be successful in whatever he does next.

Speaking of what he'll do next, we are trying to decide that. He has two job offers from national labs, one in Pittsburgh and one in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The two cities could not be more different from each other! Los Alamos is a really tiny town with not much to do except outdoors stuff. It has awesome schools and the climate is about the same as Utah except a little more mild. It would be about a 9.5 hour drive to see our families. They would be starting him almost like an intern not making much at all. After a year of that, if they hired him on in a normal position, the pay is amazing. On the other hand, the job in Pittsburgh would be more interesting and fun for Kevin. The weather is nice, except super cold in the winter. It would mean rarely visiting our families since airfare is expensive and a day flying with kids is torture. Pittsburgh is just a few hours drive to a lot of awesome places like Washington DC and New York. There are only certain suburbs outside of the city with really awesome schools, so we would be a little limited on where we would want to live. The pay isn't as much as we had hoped, so Kevin went ahead and countered with a higher amount and now we are just waiting to hear back from them on that. We are definitely leaning toward Pittsburgh. This has been the hardest decision we have ever had to make! We have been going back and forth on this for months now. I'm just ready to make a decision and start planning from there.

 The boys loved playing with Great Grandma and Grandpa Brasher before the ceremony.

 

 

 These are all the grad students. The undergrads were sitting up in the stands.