The End is Near...

That's all I really have to say at the moment. But life as we know it... grad school, that is... is drawing to a close. Graduation is at the end of the week. And finally, I'm feeling a little bittersweet about it. But not enough to get all weepy... it's time to party! I'm finally free!

I'll write more later on this one... lots of pics and fun things in the works this week!

Fridge Surprise

So I love it when I get a few extra minutes and my mind starts to think about things other than grad school, what's for dinner, or how much laundry is piling up and what is a good and reasonable excuse for avoiding it one more day. (Thanks to my creativity on that last one... I avoid it quite often, and Benj usually encourages it as well...that is, until we both start running out of things to wear.)

But on this specific occasion, I didn't need an excuse about laundry & I happened to be wandering around in the grocery store (it was a no list trip) wondering what else I may need. I ended up on the soda & chip aisle. I saw a pack of Benj's favorite rootbeer. It was on sale!

And the the next thing I knew I was headed home and it ended up in the fridge looking like this:

*Note: Our fridge doesn't look this trendy & cool in real life. That would be me and my crazy antics in Photoshop. I've taken up a new hobby and am still in that "totally in love" phase with it. So, is the pic true to life? Not really. But "hecka cool"? (yeah, learned that one from my nieces over Conference weekend) The answer to that would be... most definitely yes.

Anyway, by the time Benj got home from work, I'd been focused on probably 40-50 other projects (chronic multi-tasker, sick I know). I had forgotten that I'd even bought the stuff, let alone dressed it all up and stuck it in the fridge for him to find as a surprise. But it worked its magic... when he found it, I got that big grin...and it was "hecka cool".

Eggs To Dye For

I know. Nothing says Happy Easter like a Storm Trooper, right? We splurged, and after perusing the Target Easter aisles we decided that typical egg dyes would not be enough this year. Hence, we picked out the ultimate Star Wars-themed egg dying kit, complete with those egg wrapper things (which I thought were super cool as a kid, and still, to this day, think the shrink effect that you get when you put the egg & wrapper in hot water totally rocks). And hence, the Storm Trooper egg was born.

Now although the Storm Trooper is cool, it doesn't even compare with:

Yoda. I'm not sure it's really right to have one favorite Easter Egg, but I'm pretty sure if it was, this would be it. (*Tangent: If it wasn't for my dumb camera, I'd have some great shots of us dying the eggs and of Benj and I. I love technology, but when it doesn't give you what you thought you had access to... it makes me a little frustrated.) The coolness didn't stop there though. As I was picking up the Easter prize I was looking for a few plastic eggs to fill with candy for Benj. Why is it the boy stuff is always ultimately more cool than the girl stuff? I mean, when you have these...

Hello Kitty eggs just pale in comparison. I mean Kitty and the flowers & hearts are cool and all but, Transformers take the plastic egg to a whole new level.

Our Easter weekend was packed full. In fact, we had planned to do the egg dying earlier, but ended up doing it late Sunday night before we went to bed. That said, the amount of stuff we got done over the weekend was amazing. We had a chance to visit with my brother's family who came for Conference weekend. So that meant a ton of fun with 5 nieces as well as 4 sessions of General Conference. Additionally, the week leading up to the holiday weekend was a pretty big deal as well.

The Business Plan Competition Final event was on Friday, with the Semi-Final being an all day event on Thursday. Thursday night, Benj and I went to the Founders Dinner, got an entrepreneurial leadership award and some overall inspiration, and Wednesday night I spoke on a Women in Business Panel for an undergrad dinner in the Marriott School and then stayed up most of the night working on a case for my Change Management class and commiserating with some of my best friends who also were being punished with this assignment for Peter's class. Grad school really does have a lot of perks! And just to prove my point on this one...

During my little late night stint on the change case project, I got an email from a good friend with the following link and an explanation that she had a mini dance party for one just to wake herself up. I was pretty groggy myself when I got the email, but promptly gave it go...and of course the song of the night was...

You've got to love a dance party with teeny bopper hits.

Despite the busy'ness, the weekend was a great one! Now to just get caught up on all the other fun stuff that we've been up to, but I've been to busy to post up!