#2 catch up: Friday Nurses Pinning and Party / Saturday Graduation

What the entire week was about was sharing in and experiencing the accomplishment and joy for and with Ashley as she was Pinned and Graduated from A.P.U. as a RN,BSN. She started her journey after High School graduation in 2003 by attending Cal State Univ of Long Beach for 2 1/2 years completing all her general ed, and accomplishing a minor in Psycology, with the intention of doing the nursing school there. But the nursing program was just clogged with applicants and a waiting list as long as your arm where they only train 70 students at a time.. She applied to A.P.U. for the fall of 2005, and than again for the spring of 2006 with the intention to "attend" APU in the spring as a student and made up all of the classes that were required to graduate from there school. She was accepted for the Fall of 2006 into the nursing program and with having taken all of the 16 units of sciences already at CSULB it put her ahead of the others in that any APU student nurses had to wait until entering the nursing program to take sciences not before. Ashley later said she was soooo glad she didn't have to do those classes during nursing classes..

So this graduation was the completion of a 5 year plan that was delayed an extra year with the "waiting" period in the middle. But she used it to get a minor in psychology.. Of these 6 years, Ashley worked 5.5 of them at Disneyland to pay for college with some intense hard work to keep her loans to a small and reasonable amount. Disneyland was not the kind of employer where you had any of the holidays, spring breaks, or summers with time off, you were working. And she perservered to carry the load and yet accomplish her schooling at the same time. Jan.2 was her last day and she had the last semester where extra requirements of time were needed to fulfill class work and 72 hours of preceptorship training.

At the Nurses Pinning Ceremony on Friday May 8, 2pm. The class theme for the year had been "blessed to be a blessing". There were 71 students graduating with a RN,BSN and than there were a total of 157 students graduating in total. The rest were those who are RN to BSN, SCAN (second career at nursing) and EENAP (I don't know what this stood for). This was the largest graduating class of nurses in school history and a extremely well respected program across the nation. The first class at APU was 25 students. We had in attendance in support of Ashley 16 family members of Symens, Van Essen, Loftus, Dykstra's.

The Pinning ceremony ended at about 4:10 and I had to send our sons home (as carpool buddies) a little beforehand in order to meet the Taco cart caterer at 4:45 to setup. The celebration party that was planned at our home to start at 5pm. We arrived at the same time the caterer did who was running a little late, but in plenty of time... We had invited 70 people who were important friends/family in Ashley's life and/or ours. As we have for all of the high school graduations and having just done Shanes last year... we set up tables and chairs in our backyard, served dinner/dessert and just enjoyed those who came.

Saturday May 9, was the big graduation day ceremony at 6pm.. but, our family first had a special wedding to attend in Temecula (1 hr 20min) southeast of us at 1:30pm.. Stephanie Hyink was marrying her high school sweetheart Joshua Pulido and we were honored to be invited. The Hyinks are old friends from Bethel church before they moved out to Temecula, and now we meet up each year at the river trip. While we had hoped to make it to the backyard reception at their home, we decided after a little bit of a late start to the ceremony, that by the time the wedding party arrived we would have to be leaving, and so we ABSOLUTELY needed to get Ashley to the school at 5pm. We were fortunate not to encounter any traffic and made it in good time back to Azusa. My parents, Marlys & Char had headed to the stadium at 3pm to save us seats for our group of 16 plus another family of 6 who are friends of Ashley's. We had great seats on the grass in the section behind the graduates and dead center of the stage.. For this we were grateful. We arrived at 4pm and the ceremony started right on time at 6pm and was over at 8:20pm.. We took tons of pictures and than headed to dinner in Cerritos at T.G.I.Fridays. and than some goodbyes to the Loftus and Dykstra families who were heading home in the morning.

Whew.... what a day and what a weekend.. and a joy to be a part of it with her.

This summer she will vacation, study and than take the NCLEX state boards, and with a passing score will than be given her date to report to San Antonio TX for officers training in the Army Nursing Corp.

I have posted all of the pictures (tons) at my flickr account and than choose SETS under the header title to go to individual "folders" of events organized. I added pictures from numerous cameras of family, Facebook entries, Enjoy! http://www.flickr.com/photos/symens