OUR BIG DAY

Well we are freshly returned from our graduation trip to Cancun and I can't wait to share some pictures! But first I need to document our actual big day, May 15, 2009: the day Joe became Dr. Dastrup and I became a J.D.!!

The day began with my alarm going off at 5:30 and then leaving the house at 6:40 to grab seats for Joe's dental school hooding ceremony at the Hippodrome in downtown Baltimore. The crew included me, Joe, my parents, Joe's parents, and Nate & Lori. We got there just in time to get good seats and then I went with Joe to get him ready, take some pictures with his friends, and wait for the ceremony to begin.

During the ceremony I had a special seat on the front left part of the auditorium where the "hooders" sat. I didn't know much about hoods until that day, but here's the deal: people receiving advanced degrees are "hooded" with a long decrative hood displaying the school's colors. Normally faculty members do the hooding, but for the dental school's ceremony the students had the chance to choose any person to hood them that held an equivalent or higher degree. And I got to hood Joe!!! My mom thought it was terrific and I guess it was pretty cool. Lots of students had Dads or Grandpas hooding them but I only noticed one other dental student being hooded by his wife!
I tried to watch the first few students being hooded to figure out what I was supposed to do. What a moment!

I can barely remember the program anymore (I think Cancun wiped my brain clean) except that it was very nice. The senior class president gave a thoughtful speech and the hygiene students and those graduating from specialty programs were also recognized. On the way out Joe gave us a triumphant fist-pump. Go Dr. D!

I was super excited to greet Joe afterward since he had accidentally ignored me after I hooded him and beelined it back to his seat instead. I thought maybe I had messed up on the hooding or something?? Turns out he was just in the zone and thought I had turned back the other way instead of following him off stage.

Me and Gina (Joe's mom) with the good-looking Dr.

Us with Joe's parents ....

Us with my parents ... It was so fun to have such an occasion to have both sets of parents in town together! We had a lot of fun.

And of course with Nate & Lori! Lori did a fabuous job helping to document the day. Thanks for taking a day off just for us! :)

And here's Joe with the majority of his fellow LDS dental school buddies. He knew 4 of them (2 not in this picture) before dental school and they were a great group.

Us with our close friends the Austins! Two days later they headed to Tennessee for an oral surgery program and we are going to miss them like crazy.

And with our close friends the Skinners. They are headed to AZ and we are excited for them and are glad we'll hopefully get to see lots of them in the future.

Group picture with the wives ... yes we all should be congratulated for successfully getting through these tough 4 years!

Just the wives (well some of them) ...

After the picture taking we hurried over to the law school a block away and caught the tail end of a brunch that had been going on all morning. We had just enough time to quickly eat some eggs, potatoes and french toast before the family had to get back to the Hippodrome to get seats for my hooding ceremony and I had to be to Westminster Hall to get lined up.

The law students and faculty then processioned to the Hipprodrome which was exciting. It was really happening! I got to ever-so-briefly say hi to a few of my professors on the way into the building and then the program began. The law school and dental school programs were quite different. The day class president giving the speech was a friend of mine and she did a great job. We also heard from Congressman Elijah Cummings who had a lot of great thoughts, but his style was a little intense for my taste (think Baptist preacher). Then there were the hoodings ... unfortunately I didn't get to pick my hooder and was hooded by two professors I didn't know.

After that the graduates walked back to the law school where I met up with my family. For the next few minutes I had a bit of a hard time since I realized the day was not going how I wanted and had envisioned. Because of the way it was set up, the time to see friends and professors was during the brunch (which we missed), and after the ceremony everyone just scattered and I couldn't find anyone. It's hard to explain why I was so bummed but I just was. Several of my professors have meant a lot to me over these 3 years. I respected them greatly and learned so much from them and I know they thought highly of me as well, and I was excited to have them meet my husband and family, to say thank you, and hear words of congratulations which would have been more meaningful than most since they actually knew how hard I'd worked. Anyway, that didn't work out and it's okay. But it did put a damper on things for a few minutes which I why I don't look so ecstatic in these pictures (and why they aren't very many of them). :)

I was happy that we got to see Brigham and Kristen. We have been in the same ward for the past 3 years and Brigham and I were the only two LDS students in the law school. Funnily enough, we ended up being in the same "small section" first year and had lots of classes together. They have been great friends and we'll miss them but wish them the best of luck in Salt Lake!

Joe and me ... walking off the campus as graudates. I still can hardly believe it!

After that we took a trip to the Bookstore for some t-shirts and made short stop in Columbia on the way home (more on that in the next post). By the time we got back we were completely exhausted and had dinner reservations in not too long ... but we stopped to take some pictures with both Joe and me in our gowns since we knew we'd never get around to doing it another other day. Here they are!

Displaying the hoods - I love this picture.

Pretty sweet jumping picture.

Don't know what this is supposed to be ...

Gotta throw the hats!!

Oh yeah ... can't forget this one. :)

That's it! We are not students anymore!!