saturn for sale

it's green and gets really great gas mileage. we have to sell it so we can make room for our new car that chris's parents were so generous to give us for graduation and med school
i was so shocked i was screaming and covering my face and being a total retard like people who win the big prize on price is right. chris was so concerned about how his parents would buy us a car that he asked them if it was too late to take it back. we are so grateful and i am so excited.

graduation

maren and i posing before commencement

chris and i just after we were given our fake diplomas

my dad wanted a picture in front of the BYU sign

the jones fam

all the jones girls

thursday and friday was graduation. it was really a nice experience and i'm glad that chris and i were able to do it together. thursday was commencment with the entire graduating class of 2008 {there were over 6000 graduates} and we got to hear elder bednar speak. friday we had convocation with the college of life science. it was totally fun and worth it to walk together because the announcer was fantastic. every time there was a couple he announced the husband first and then the wife by saying for example..."christopher thacker....AND HIS WIFE! {with serious enthusiasm and excitement}...staci thacker majoring in exercise science..." for some reason i was nervous that they weren't going to announce my name or i wasn't gonna get recognized for graduating. but they did and i was recognized and chris and i even got to take a picture of the dean together. for all of you people out there who think you're too cool to walk you should really do it...it's worth it.

terminado!

finished. done. the end. that's all folks. we have officially completed the undergraduate program at BYU. chris and i both took our last finals this morning. i can't believe it's already over. chris says it hasn't sunk in yet that he's actually graduating. too bad we don't get to really celebrate until thursday. as for now it's packing and cleaning like crazy.

rex austen

a few times on this blog, i've posted about rex, chris' best buddy. rex is a fantastic guy with an amazing family. over the past three and a half years we've become really close with the austen family and tonight they had us over for dinner as a final hurrah before we leave. rex's family has been super supportive of all our efforts and they even wrote one of chris' letters of recommendation for his medical school application. every holiday we get a little surprise from the austens and they even remember our birthdays. they gave us a really neat book for graduation called "we believe" by rulon t. burton. it's a doctrinal book that is very detailed and will be perfect for giving talks and lessons in the future. rex has been having a bit of a struggle with the idea of us leaving utah valley and him getting a new best buddy. every time we have gotten together the past few weeks, rex gets a little teary when he remembers that our time together is running short. he's such a sweet spirit and has really touched chris and i. he will never enjoy some of the blessings and experiences most people do, but that has never gotten him down and that is something that we can all take. i am going to miss seeing him every week and watching his funny little quirks.

deer steak

last night we had some friends get together for a bbq in the park. chris has been looking for an excuse to grill up some of the deer meat from the bambi he shot back in october. i've been very anti-deer partially because venison doesn't really sound very appetizing to me, especially since i saw the whole process first hand. i saw it alive, saw it dead...{i'll spare you all the gory details, but you get the idea}. eating this meat that had been sitting in our freezer for the winter was the last thing i wanted to do. so chris defrosted the bag of meat and prepared it for grilling. surprisingly all our friends tried it and a few of them even really enjoyed it...thank goodness we can pawn the rest of the meat off to them! chris tried his darndest to get me to try it, but i was being stubborn and got through the night without tasting it at all.

{don't worry, chris' deer wasn't that big, we saw that buck in durango, co on our honeymoon. we must have sat and watched it for at least 2 hours...i'm not gonna lie, i was a little worried that someone could be so fascinated with an animal, i had no idea...}

one left

chris and i each have one final left to take before we are officially done with BYU. hooray for us. i'm happy that my last final is open note and open group. chris found out today that he has to do really well on his final to get a B in the class. but either way, we're outie in T-minus 7 days. i am excited to graduate but i'm also really sad about everything we're gonna be leaving here in the next week. we've made some amazing friends and gotten to do some really neat things while we've lived in utah valley. i'm just happy that come fall we'll only be a short {40 minutes people} drive from all the good things.

stress + sun = leprosy

this is probably the worst case of herpes simplex my poor little face has seen in YEARS. and it actually looks pretty good today {after two days of miserable swollen and white pussy grossness}. the combination of sun burn at gooseberry mesa last weekend and the stress of finals, moving etc. does not yield a very lovely thing. thanks to my loving family for giving me this happy little disease.





{p.s. chris thanks you too because before he met me, he didn't have the privelage of these little darlings}

searching for storage

i guess having a light load during finals week can be a blessing and a curse. this afternoon has been consumed with finding a little storage unit in salt lake city to keep all our shtuff for a couple months while we live in boise. i've called 10 storage places in salt lake and have reserved a place at two of them...we'll see who gets our business. anyone out there know of an excellent {by excellent i mean cheap and nice} storage place in salt lake city that wont get broken into?

gooseberry trip

tomorrow we embark with our favorite group ever {a.k.a. mtn biking class} to st. george for a weekend excursion on gooseberry mesa. even though camping+mtn biking = pure delight there's one problem...ridiculous t.a.. i'm hoping we can both make it through the weekend without saying things to him that either one of us will regret later on. chris is hoping he finds reason to say something. just kidding. the weather is supposed to be in the mid 80s so that will be fantastic seeing as i was wearing a wool coat today. we'll update you on the fun factor of the trip with photos when we return.

wal-mart optometry

for the past six months or so chris has been complaining about not being able to see the board in class and especially not being able to see the score of ball games on t.v.. since BYU's health insurance doesn't cover eye exams, i set out to find the cheapest...which happened to be wal-mart {does that surprise anyone?}. yesterday was his appointment and we discovered that not only is chris near-sighted {meaning he can see better near than far} but also has astigmatism {your eyeballs aren't round}. once the optometrist wrote a prescription for chris's glasses, he showed us to a large wall of potential frames for chris to choose from. chris took complete trust in me to help him pick out a classy set of frames. i started handing him all kinds of funny looking frames only to watch him put them on in the mirror...it was hilarious and i was having a riot of a time...although i don't know how much fun chris was having. we finally ended up picking a classy square frame. we're set to get the glasses a week from monday and i'll be sure to post pictures as soon as we pick them up.

sales pitch

many people are probably familiar with the "time share shpeal" that you can often get rewards for listening to. well tonight we were drug into just such an occasion. for the past six months this company has been harassing chris about a two night vacation reward for listening to some presentation. we decided what the heck and went tonight. we both decided before {of course} that we would say no to whatever we were asked, especially if it involved any money. i'm happy to say that we succeeded, but those cunning little sales guys really are very good at what they do. we were given several very enticing offers and no one seemed to understand that we weren't gonna go into debt 10-15 thousand more dollars {on top of med school expenses} to have a "lifetime vacation". maybe we're stupid for passing up the amazing deals we were offered, but my guess is that if we really wanted them that badly we could get them in the future...cunning little sales guys.

new stomping ground

chris's grandpa thacker has been in the university of utah hospital since monday night and so we've been spending a lot of time in what will be our new territory. today we got up to salt lake just as grandpa was having an appointment with the doctor so chris took the liberty to show me around the med school facilities. we saw a few classrooms, lecture halls, admissions office and library. the buildings are all pretty new and very nice. the building where all of chris's classes will be was built recently and at the suggestion of previous med school students with tons of windows overlooking all of salt lake city. he took me up to the very top floor and we stared out the massive windows overlooking what we were about to become a part of. it's really very exciting.

ps. grandpa is doing much better and they're hoping to release him tomorrow morning.