Las Vegas pics.

I thought I might make a post and here it is! Here are some pictures from our las vegas trip. I hope you like them!

thanks-Hunter

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Sabrina’s Style

Sabrina brought me this dress and was so excited to wear it! This is a dress that Heather (my sister-in-law) made, yes she made it!!, for her daughter Ciel years ago. I love this hand me down. It is still so cute and fallish that I couldn’t pass up the chance to share some pictures. I wish I could have taken them without the yucky kitchen background, but I’ve learned that spending too much time messing with locations or poses makes your models cranky!

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Bar Widow

As stated in the post below, I was a “bar widow” for the summer of 2005. This meant that Rob was technically home for the summer, but nobody knew it. He could have holed up in the library or something, but since my parent’s basement is pretty soundproof from the chaos in the rest of the house it worked for him to study in there. He was in that basement bedroom studying all day; reading, taking sample tests, writing, and stressing out. Then he drove to Stockton every night (almost an hour away) for the BarBri class. This class is essential to preparing for the California bar, and he took it very seriously. It was brutal.

I was kept sane by staying with Nana and Papa who would help out a lot with the kids! Also, in the middle of it all, we found out that we were expecting baby Sabrina just days after Hannah started crawling at six months old. I put myself in denial about what that would mean for me, and dove into finding our family a place to live in LA. I did tons of research online, where were the best schools? a low crime rate? a decent commute? I drove down with my Mom and Hannah and we stayed at Auntie J & Dan’s house while we looked around. We timed the drive, checked out neighborhoods, called realtors and scanned the papers for rentals. Unfortunately we didn’t find anything from that trip so I went to plan B and started calling bishops in the area and friends of friends etc. Finally, I found a bishop’s wife with a lead! Someone in their ward was taking a year to practice law back east and wanted to rent out their house while they were gone. Ta da! They sent us pictures and told us how great the neighborhood was. We felt like it was a good fit, and signed the lease by fax. Luckily, it turned out to be just as nice as we had hoped and our blind faith paid off.

When the bar exam was over we started preparing for our move to LA. We settled in and loved our new community. The hours at the firm were a very hard adjustment for all of us. In fact I still have a tolerate/hate relationship with all firms. Regardless of where you work there is an unpredictable schedule and lots of surprise late night shifts. If getting through law school weren’t so expensive I think most people would never choose to work there, but when you finish school with undergrad debt and then law school debt, you do what it takes to pay the bills. It’s like having to pay for two homes, one that you live in and the other that houses your opportunity for a career. The firm takes good care of you financially and gives you lots of little parties and perks to keep you from saying “I’m outta here!” It’s what has been called the “golden handcuffs.” Once you go in it’s hard to leave behind. Although we are determined to not buy into the lifestyle and use these as our big earning years to pay things down to a more manageable level and then Rob can get a job with better hours, etc. So until then I have morphed from the “Bar Widow” into my current status as the “Firm Widow.” My next title had better be more glamorous!

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A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar…

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Ebert & Roeper and the reviewer that was filling in for Ebert had as his video pick of the week a documentary called “A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar…“. He said it’s been making the rounds at the film festivals and getting really good reviews. I found it on Amazon and ordered it (when I ordered it, it was $14.99. Now, it’s $21.95. Must have gotten popular). Amy and I just watched it last night. It’s really interesting. It follows 6 law school grads as they study for the California bar exam. It’s also interspersed with interviews of well-known lawyers and commentators (Alan Dershowitz, Nancy Grace, Scott Turow, John Stossel) talking about lawyers and the craziness of the legal system. I posted a couple of short clips from it below.

It brought back a lot of memories from my time studying for the California bar. It was by far the hardest, most stressful thing I’ve gone through so far. I basically had no life other than studying for the bar for the 3 1/2 months between graduating from law school and taking the bar. For me, the main source of stress wasn’t that it was just a hard test, but that it was pass/fail. I couldn’t just stop studying and say “I’ll just accept a lower grade on this one” (something I’d done on plenty of other tests in the past). It was all or nothing, and if I didn’t pass, that pretty much erased the degree I’d just worked three years for; not to mention that it would put in jeopardy the job offer I had, the reason I was taking the California bar in the first place. It was a lot of stress. I’ll have to get Amy to post about how it was on her end. I know it was pretty brutal for her too. We stayed with Amy’s parents that summer, I don’t know how Amy could have managed with the kids if we hadn’t stayed with them. Amy was a “bar widow” that whole summer.

One of my best memories though, was coming back home after taking the bar up in Sacramento (it was the closest testing site and an hour and a half from Amy’s parents’ house so I stayed in a hotel up there for the 3 days of the test). When I walked in the door, I was greeted with balloons and a cake and a big banner that Hunter, who was 7 at the time, had written on in big letters, “Lawyer or not, you’re still our Daddy”. That was pretty great.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3eZamdVnw

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEMBsS4VZD4

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NICU Preemie Costumes

 

My friend Kim sent me a link to this cute website Elliott’s Preemie Tees.  They also have adorable Halloween costumes.  I think it would be so comforting as a parent to have these tiny clothes if my baby were in the NICU. I have heard of people getting doll clothes for their preemies.  These seem so much nicer because they allow for tubes and monitors too.

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