The last trip to Pullman and back

Friday I took a day off and headed to Pullman with my parents.  I dropped Beany off with his buddy Everett (THANKS TYRELL) and hit the road around 9.  We stopped in Cle Elum for breakfast, and got to Pullman around 3.

At 6, we headed to campus for the Honors College commencement.  If you don't know what that is, most Universities have a special college for students with good GPA's that you apply to before you get to the school.  Basically, they risk their college GPA's to take extra challenging courses for the general classes.  They even have special dorms set aside and everything.  They had a special dinner and it was delicious.  That was the good part because there were about 100 graduates, and we had to listed to bios of everyone.  Pretty much it was all the volunteer experiences, awards, internships, inventions, research projects, study abroads, etc that every single person did. When you are talking about the Honors College, each person has a HUGE listl lol. It took like 2 hours. I was proud of my brother though :)

There's Erik getting his recognition

We got back late and went to bed.  Saturday we went to Erik's graduation (the real one).  He is graduating Magna Cum Laude (3.7-3.89) for now...though he will be Summa Cum Laude (3.9-4.0) if he gets all A's this semester which may happen in Materials Science and Engineering.  His college graduated with all the other nerdy science kids and farm boys (WSU is a big agricultural school), my brother being the former ;). Since the school is so big, they have a few different graduations.  The business school got to have the secretary of defense speak- I was kind of jealous.  Anyway, it was pretty exciting and I liked to see all the bedazzled hats.  It makes me want to graduate lol.  We sang the Alma Mater and fight song and listened to speeches and a lengthy list of names.  I am so proud of him!!!

He is about 3 behind the Materials science and engineering sign

He's getting his diploma holder.

CONGRATS!

The rest of Saturday we got ice cream at the famous "Ferdinand's" (it is NEVER open so it was my first time) and kind of hung around the apartment...apart from one last trip to the famous Denny's. It was funny because all the landmarks at WSU (the sign, cougar statue..) all had HUGE lines to take a picture by, but luckily Erik's friend had his dad take their pics a few days earlier.

I would just like to point out that I think WSU is awesome.  There is no other college around that has the pride in their school that they have. EVERYONE wears WSU clothes daily.  Every time someone makes a speech no matter how professional, they always end with "GO COUGS!".  I am glad I got to have the college  experience one year (dorms, homecoming floats, football and basketball games, parties, eating at the dining commons) or I would be incredibly jealous right about now :) I wish I could have attended a school with that kind of spirit though- everyone was pretty much just hammered at all of our events at UNLV lol.

On Sunday we had to pack all of Erik's stuff up.  It wasnt too hard because he has no stuff and he doesn't eat so the tough part was just loading everything into the tuck in its awkward shape and try to rain proof for when we hit the west side.  It was a task, and our tarp ripped a ton on the trip back.  We also went from big open fields to snow lol.  Funny Washington.  The traffic sucked though and I was super stressed to miss my first mother's day.

Loading up the truck

We had to pull over in the middle of nowhere to fix the tarp

Windy rest area!

The tarp was super ripped up!

We finally got back about 7 hours later (I told you the traffic was bad), and Sawyer has never looked so cute.  I missed him so much and I was afraid I'd miss him on my first Mother's Day.  He surprised me by cleaning the house, making me a cake, got the fixings for my favorite drinks, and picked out a super cute dress (he actually picked out the last one; the others he had help with).

These were waiting when I opened the door

My new dress

Beany is proud he picked out such a good present

It was a great weekend and was actually motivating to me.  It made me want to try to find some online classes to try to finish and get a degree while I am still fresh.  My work pays tuition reimbursement so I think I will start looking a little more into some degrees I might enjoy.  I kind of gave up after trying Hotel Management, Elementary Education, and Business and not liking any of them, but hopefully this new found motivation will lead me where I want to go.  I am leaning towards communications right now :)