Gradumacated

Introducing Kelsey Tanner, Master of Arts in Dance.  Woot. (Plus a little addition).

My parents came for my graduation.  They were also extremely helpful in packing up our little home since Grant couldn't be there to help for very long.

Grant was proud of me graduating, but more excited that I could finally join him in Colorado!! Yay!

There's me.  I brought snacks for the ceremony but then left them in my purse with my mom... about 20 minutes in I got really nervous that I wouldn't make it through the whole thing.  Darn that Baby T sometimes.  Luckily this graduation was significantly shorter than the endless BYU graduations we were used to.  I survived.

Yay for education!  Also yay for my parents coordinating their outfits without knowing :)

I even managed a picture with Dr. Hanstein.  She is the head of the dance department as well as Chair of the School of the Arts.  She spoke at my graduation and did a fabulous job.  

And now real life begins... again :)

On the Back Burner

I'm not in the mood to write a lengthy or clever blog post today as I'm a bit preoccupied.  Last night, Grant & I went to the public library and picked up a few good reads.  I checked out The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, a novel that borders the line between history and fantasy, and I'm already sucked in.

When the summer began, I checked out a few non-fiction history books from the library and wrote about it here.  However, it wasn't long before I discovered that non-fiction just wasn't going to do it for me this summer.  I've been fictionized... and I love it.

Grad School? Rad School!

Yes, it's true. I am a grad student. A few years ago if you asked me what grad school would be like I would probably have said something like, "Memorizing more than humanly possible, writing enough papers that I would rather die, and overall exhaustion..."  (Actually, that was more like my undergrad).  However, a few years ago, I wasn't really thinking about getting an M.A. in dance.  And I also never guessed I would be taking an intense 2 week workshop in Hip Hop for graduate credit.  Awesome?  I think so.  That's why I'm allowed to look like this:

This was taken right after I learned how to spin on my back... Hello bruises!

In the below picture: those aren't my shoes... but I wish they were.

Today was our teacher Teena's birthday.  I love how she gets a fruity frilly cake when she is really a gangsta.  Check her out here. (In all honesty, I didn't get to eat this cake.  Thanks Calli (my acupuncturist)) Can I do double parenthesis like that..?

Matt ate my share of the birthday cake.  Actually, he would need about 3 more pieces to eat my share, but that's okay.  No shame.  Love it.

All these pictures make it look like we sit around and eat cake.  That really only happens after we get super (and I mean super) sweaty.

Grad school is great.  At least, it's great if you're in the dance program, it's a two week long summer term, and you don't have to think about big, deep concepts like connectivity, collaboration, aesthetics, engagement.... blah blah.  There's plenty of time for thinking in the fall :)

What Summer is Really All About

Fall: Attempt to ignore my school readings

Winter: Succeed in ignoring my school readings

Summer: Read everything I can get my hands on!

Last summer I read a lot of books about events surrounding World War II: The Zookeeper's Wife, Refuge Denied, Shanghai Diaries, etc.

I also read a few books about the Rwandan Genocide: An Ordinary Man, and Machete Season. 

I have yet to decide what to base my reading around this year.  I grabbed three books at the library today: One is about Colonialism in Africa (1800's), one is about the Balkan Genocide (1990's) and the other is about the American Revolutionary War (1770's).  We'll see what direction catches.  This is what our library study room looks like. 

 Grant turned up the gazelle intensity for his Series 7 exam next week.

Quick Update

Life is good:
1) Kelsey got accepted into a Masters program at Texas Women's University (TWU)! She will be pursuing an arts or fine arts degree in dance. She starts in the fall. We are very excited about that.
2) I got my car window fixed, $160 later. It wasn't too bad...lesson learned I suppose.
3) It has been 103-105 degrees everyday of the week with the forecast indicating the weather will continue to be like this for a while. If you live where it's not this hot, enjoy it for us.
4) I am liking my job alright. College to the full-time grind is a hard transition. I'm surviving.
5)Kelsey has a birthday on Saturday. She'll be 21 and alcohol will finally be legal ;).

So Much Fun, So Few Pictures...

We've been up to a lot in the last month! Both of Grant's parents came to visit, we went to Boise for a weekend, Grant got a new job, we went to the Draper temple open house, we had a painting party at my aunt Gina's, I went to a dance workshop, Grant whooped our Bishop in raquetball, I had a freshman hall reunion, and I wrote WAY too many papers. However, we don't have pictures of any of these things... (though I suppose writing papers is not worthy of pictures anyway).

However we do have a few pictures of other things that have happened so here they are:

Hermana Malena came to visit! She is a lady from Grant's mission and was in the States visiting her kids. Luckily she drove up from Vegas for a day to see us.

They went to go visit Elder Wood as well. I didn't attend this little trip because I had no idea what anyone was saying... Hermana Malena didn't speak English...

We went to visit Gina and brand new Bridgette in the hospital! She was a perfect little baby, complete with bird legs and skinny little fingers!She was just over 6 pounds, a tiny little thing! Holding a perfect little baby made me realize just how important (and therefore a bit frightening :)) parenting will be.We've been spending a lot of time with our friends, the Garners and the Nebekers lately. This is a picture of the men after their "Saltine Challenge." Zach is moving to Boise soon and the rest of us will be leaving the Nebekers behind at semester so we've gotta get in all the fun we can!

Coming soon: Tanner Ceramics!!

Back to School, Back on the Slopes

It's January and we're back in Provo! I started up school again on Monday-- it's my last semester! I'm only taking 3 classes, but they are all intense reading & writing classes. In fact as of this afternoon, I've already read around 400 pages! They should all be really good classes though so I'm excited for them.

Grant also started an internship on Monday. However, he was informed Tuesday that they only budgeted him to work 8 hours a week instead of the 8 hours a DAY we were originally told.... (I was NOT very happy about that). So Grant has been on the job hunt which is quite interesting. Needless to say, not many people want to hire someone with the economic scare, especially someone who will only be around a few months.

We've also gotten to go skiing lately so that has been great!! Last weekend my whole family was in town so we went skiing up at Brighton. It has been quite some time since all the Peterson's have been up on the slopes together and the first time in Utah! Everyone did great-- Dad & Grant braved some scary double-blacks and Robbie and I attempted a few incredibly difficult runs on our own. Of course, I had a few good tumbles, including one that involved sliding about 20 feet down the mountain not knowing which direction was up... I'm a work in progress...

Today we went up to Snowbird (we bought passes for 10 days there this season) and the snow was GREAT! It was a beautiful day all except for one run when we took the tram up to the top of the mountain. The wind was blowing SO hard-- you could barely see a person in front of you with the blowing snow and when we finally got off the top we had big wind burn lines on our faces. However, I did about 6 black diamonds and I was quite proud. I think I only lost a ski twice and always knew which direction was up :) However, we did have one incident where I couldn't get my ski on for 20 minutes or so because the binding moved when my ski popped off... I don't seem to be the luckiest... But you can't deny that I'm pretty daring! Or was that reckless? hmmm Maybe next time to be lucky I should deck out with these...

The end as I know it....

So I am now only two finals away from my undergraduate degree. The last 16-year period of my life is soon-to-be over. It feels...great, wonderful, soo good, liberating, refreshing, fantastic. It also feels...weird, scary, new and unknown. Well, here I go. Wish me luck!

True BLUE through and through!!

Kels and I got really BLUE.