graduation

jonathan graduated yesterday from fordham's graduate school of education with a master of science in teaching! the day started off with a school-wide commencement including an impressive processional, an address from mary mcaleese {the president of ireland} and a lot of medieval pomp a circumstance.

next was the diploma ceremony for the graduate school of education where jonathan actually received his diploma. i'm so proud of him!!

my birthday!

may is the month of birthdays in the bond family. it all starts with my mom's birthday on the 14th, my birthday on the 19th and marie's birthday on the 22nd! let's just say in this month we have a lot of breakfasts in bed, delicious dinners, yummy cakes and fun parties. so fun!

i always miss being close to home around events like this, but jonathan sure made our one-on-one celebration special! thanks to everyone for all of the birthday wishes!

we {heart} nyc

during one day of his spring break, jonathan and mark {a good friend of ours} palled around on the scooter with cameras around their necks. here are some images jon captured and a few of the reasons we absolutely love this city.

the other "y"

it's official - we submitted our notice of intent to yale! it sure feels good to make a decision, and we're really excited about it!! after a lot of pondering and praying we felt like this is the best fit for us, and we're excited to start this new chapter of our lives.

an added bonus: we can keep all of our byu gear!

right now our plan is to stay in manhattan and migrate somewhere closer to metro north on the east side. jonathan would commute about an hour and forty-five minutes to new haven and use that time for studying, class prep, etc.

we've also considered moving to connecticut, but this would mean both of us commuting over an hour, buying a car so we can actually go places in a suburban area, moving away from the city (and from family in philly this summer!) and seeing a lot less of each other. because we love nyc, our scooter and being together, we most likely won't go this route. in good jonathan curtis fashion, however, we haven't completely ruled it out either.

as you can see we still have a little bit of figuring out to do, but at least we know where we are going! we'll keep you posted.

next steps

this is a favorite phrase at my office - "next steps." after the close of a promotion or launch we have to determine the action plan for moving forward. jonathan and i are kind of at that phase in our lives right now. he's wrapping up his 2nd year of teach for america, and with this coming to a close he's getting ready to move on to the next big adventure.

our next steps:

master of public health. jonathan was accepted to columbia, yale and nyu. we've ruled out nyu and are trying to decide between columbia and yale. a couple weeks ago he and i both took the day off and headed up to new haven for an open house. as soon as we got there i felt like hermione from harry potter. if you haven't been to yale's campus, it looks just like hogwarts!

jonathan is off to columbia's open house tomorrow. hopefully that will help us solidify this decision that we have to make by next week! from there everything will fall into place.

the next big step after that is medical school. jonathan's summer break will be spent studying for the good 'ol mcat, and he'll apply next may. it's a year away, so you never know what other ideas we will think of, but that's our plan for now, at least. we're just taking it one step at a time.

as for me...i'm still loving my dream job!

Tampa

I used to think my dad was the luckiest man when he would go on business trips - he was going to some cool place, flying on an airplane, staying in hotels and eating out! It seemed like he was practically on vacation. Ha - after one business trip of my own I quickly learned that these trips are definitely not vacation. They aren't as glamorous as I expected...

During the week of Valentine's and President's Day I had to go to Tampa for some business meetings. Luckily Jonathan was on mid-winter break that week, so we decided to make a little vacation out of it! Unfortunately the weather wasn't as warm as we anticipated, but it was still nice to have a change of pace and scenery. The beach is always good for my soul!

Christmas 2009

"There's no place like home for the holidays..."

We loved being home for Christmas spending time with our families, eating delicious meals, skiing beautiful Deer Valley and just being home. As I'm looking through our photos I wish we would've taken more pictures. I guess we were too busy having fun!!

While in Utah, we were also able to attend our nephew Thomas' baptism. What a special event - we were so glad we could be there!

We were also able to get together with a few of my friends from high school!

What a good bunch!