Graduation

The Smiths

The Rudnickis

My fellow PA's and good friends

so these pictures are probably going to be out of order but you i hope you enjoy them! graduation day was awesome. my parents, both brothers and tomi (phill's girlfriend) as well as mike's parents all made the long trip from Florida and it was so wonderful to see everyone. it was a beautiful day with perfect weather and it was just so good to be done with school and surrounded by the people who love and support you the most. i was honored to receive the leadership award and be inducted into the national PA honors society so i really felt blessed and like my hard work paid off. after graduation, we headed to hammonnassett state park and grilled, played games and enjoyed the sunset.

here we are taking the PA oath

a group photo before graduation

i did it!!!!

caroline's blurbs

so.....i'm graduating so soon!!!! august 11th is the final day! so far no other news. i have been applying for jobs in cardiothoracic surgery and emergency medicine in various states. mike seems to be enjoying his job a lot as a recreational director and is actually doing really well at it. he's organized all kinds of fun events and has been running a camp for the kids all on his own. the parents and kids love it!!! he's actually been getting a lot of positive feedback so that's exciting. besides that.....not much is new. we're looking forward to seeing family at graduation. the weather has been pretty beautiful and i've been doing a bit of traveling. i went to DC a couple of weeks ago (pictures will be posted soon) and this weekend i'm going to boston with a bunch of the girls from our class and my cousin kasia who is visiting from poland. we've been in new england for over 2 yrs and haven't really had the chance to travel so i'm looking forward to it! i miss friends and really am grateful for many prayers. our lives are definitely about to change and we will be going through some time of transition...a little scary...but also very exciting. we love to hear from our friends and miss you guys!

Six Flags and Hurrican Harbor

mike and i took my cousin and her friend sylwia to six flags in springfield mass. which also has a water park attached to it. we had a super fun time and the weather was nice and hot for us...yes even new england gets hot in the summer for all my FL people. we had a great time although i was feeling pretty motion sick by the end of the day. my favorite rollercoaster was the batman!

catherine's surprise birthday party

catherine is my good buddy all the way on the left. it's actually 2 weeks after her real birthday but because we were crazy studying for comps we didn't get to celebrate and decided she needed a special party.

we had a beef/chicken taco bar and rice for the main meal, bean dip, salsa, and guacolmole and chips as appetizers and brownie sundaes for dessert. all favortie foods of catherine's, of course. there were also plenty of margaritas and coronas to go around with our mexican theme.

My cousin Kasia comes to visit

on the right is my cousin Kasia who is visiting from Poland and on the left is her friend Sylwia. here we are about to experience a true American tradition....country line dancing!!!!! neither of the girls had ever been country line dancing so we went out and had ourselves a little bit of a hoe down. also as you can see they had a mechanical bull which michael bravely rode like a champ.

Autumn's birthday

for our good friend autumn's birthday we decided to have a giant girlie breakfast at the cracker barrell...yummy! this is rosie

here's the birthday girl on the left and catherine on the right

in the evening a few more of us decided to get together to continue celebrating autumn's 25th birthday. starting from the left is: brooke, autumn, catherine and molly. these are all my PA buddies and we're enjoying a glorious meal at Hot Tomatoes in downtown New Haven.

here's autumn and brooke, autumn is from california

this is jon (also from california) and rosie and of course me and michael

Picnicking at Hammonasset Beach

The boys nate and mike..diggin into some yummy burgers

michael...grilling up some corn on our friends camping grill, oh how we miss grilling every night in our own backyard!

getting our plates ready for a great meal at one of our favorite new spots.

this is perrin and nate hickey....a couple that we frequently hang out with. perrin is one of my fellow pa students and closest friends and that's her husband. we've now gone twice to this really great state park/beach and grilled out, played frisbee, football and bocci ball. it's great to be able to get away every once in a while.

here we are eating delicious burgers!!!

it's no FL beach but it sure is nice to hear the ocean and this will certainly do for around here.

there are pretty sunsets even in CT :)

Pseudo-Graduation

here are pictures from my pseudo-graduation. the school makes us all walk in may for the official cap and gown ceremony which was very nice. however, we actually go back to school for another semester and have our true graduation which we call the"white coat" ceremony august 11th. it was nice to see everyone but we actually still had one more week of our last rotation and 2 exams that week...needless to say we weren't as joyful as a lot of the other grads.