A Lawyer

Dale is officially a lawyer! He was sworn in on September 19th...

 To keep K entertained during the ceremony, I let him take pictures with the flash off...

 Afterwards, K expressed his surprise at how short the ceremony was, because "Daddy's graduation lasted for hours!" :)

 My boys in front of the State Capitol...

 We are so proud of Dale, and SO excited to be done with school, and the bar!

Last Day of School

K and Dale celebrated their last days of school recently and it's hard to believe we've already finished an entire school year, let alone Dale's law school career! It has been so fun to watch K in pre-K and see how much he has learned, hear about his school friends and just see how much he has grown.

Pre-Ker

Kimball is officially a "pre-Ker" as he likes to call himself! Here, kids can go to Pre-K at public schools at age 4. It's everyday for 2.5 hours and Kimball is loving it. For whatever reason he refused to let me take a picture on his first day of school so this is his second day of school:

Kimball loves his teacher and is starting to make friends in class. We really felt like it was time for him to go to school so he could have more interaction with kids his age. Cameron and I stay at home until it's time to pick Kimball up, and we often look at each other wondering what to do with just the 2 of us :).

Dale also just started his LAST year of law school...it feels so close yet so far! I'm terrified of how fast our boys are growing up and trying my best to enjoy this stage in life, but I can hardly wait for Dale to be done with school.

Dallas

My fabulous mom came out to Oklahoma to watch our boys so that Dale and I could go to the J Reuben Clark Law Society Conference (basically the Mormon lawyers club), which was held in Dallas this year. We drove down Thursday afternoon so Dale could attend a student leadership meeting and got home Saturday evening.

I was flabergasted at how friendly such a large group of lawyers can be! It was amazing the connection that all of those complete strangers had with each other because of the church...after being away from BYU for a year and a half, it felt wonderful to just talk about church stuff and have everyone understand :)! I was especially grateful that everyone there was really good about talking to the wives and including them even if we had no idea what they were talking about.

On Friday there were a few spouse activities so we didn't have to sit through all of the lectures given. Southern Methodist University hosted the conference (which I still find ironically hilarious) and they even pulled out their collection of rare LDS literature such as a first edition Book of Mormon (picture on the left), Deseret letter Book of Mormon, first edition hymnal, etc.

That afternoon all of the wives went to the 6th Floor Museum which is where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from. We also got to go to the Kennedy memorial which is a large, open cement room, and Pioneer Plaza with who knows how many statues of Long Horns.

This was the longest I've been away from my boys (first time overnight away from Cameron) and it was so much fun to spend time with my husband and meet other women who are in my situation or have been here and could relate. I also really enjoyed the speakers I did listen to, such as the US Ambassador to North Korea, Area Legal Counsels for the Church, a former Attorney General, and many more amazing lawyers/judges, etc. I learned a lot and had more fun that I thought was possible!

He's Legal!

Today, Dale was sworn in at the Oklahoma City Capitol Building as a Licensed Legal Intern. This means he can act as a lawyer, representing clients, with the supervision of an attorney.

It was so exciting to watch Dale take this next step in his career. We got to listen to Chief Justice Steven W. Taylor as he gave advice to all of the interns being sworn in today.

We've all heard the lawyer jokes, and I am not one to spare them, but it was refreshing to hear from someone who had so much confidence in and love for the legal system. Among the things he said were:

• Lose your reputation for honesty and integrity and you will never recover in this work.
• Don't get in this business for money...have a job that in the morning you can't wait to get to the office.
• Never forget that for the person you are representing, in that courtroom, this may be the most important day of their life.

I'm so proud of my husband and all the hard work he's putting in to law school :)

Law school is amazing...

Among the doldrums of my contract case book, I found this glorious gem:

"The computer came with an operating system, without which it was useful only as a boat anchor."

Hill v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 105 F.3d 1147 (7th Cir.1997).

A whole new world

So, it has been a while since I posted. Here is an excerpt from an email I just sent my siblings a minute ago:

As for me, I’m alive and well and the big accomplishment is that I have kept up on all of my reading so far. It’s a trend I hope to keep up. When I had braces they needed to widen my upper jaw. The orthodontist put this nifty little crank device in the roof of my mouth and I would crank it a few times each day and slowly a gap formed between my front teeth that grew to almost a centimeter wide before I was done. The first few days of this whole cranking business really hurt as the not quite sealed part of my upper jaw pulled apart. I feel like the same thing is now happening inside my skull. Each day I crank a few times with books, analysis, and classroom discussions and several times a day my head just feels as though it is being pulled apart in all different directions. My hope is that it stops hurting so much, just like with the braces, and once it’s done expanding, I’ll hopefully be able to put everything in its right place again.

O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A Oklahoma! OK!

For the first time since my mission ended in December '04, I boarded an airplane and flew somewhere. Also for the first time since then, I left the Mountain Time Zone. It was a big week. Thanks to the generosity of my brothers, I was able to pull it all off for less than $250.

So, I was supposed to fly out Tuesday at 6:35 am, but they have this thing called freezing rain in Oklahoma that happens once every winter, and it happened on Tuesday. So, my brother and I woke up early to head to the airport, saw one flight was canceled, got scheduled for another one, and woke up a few hours later. Safely at the airport and through security, I wait only to have this flight canceled, and then another when all flights to OK were canceled for the day. I took my ticket for Wednesday at 6:35, and Judy came and got me, which was fun to spend the day with my family off of work.

Wednesday arrived and we just got me to the airport barely in time to board and I was off. I remembered that last time I flew I thought I should get some Dramamine, but by that time it was too late and the peppermint gum and ginger-ale proved ineffective, so my hopes and dreams of trying to be a missionary on the flight faded away to quiet nausea.

On the ground, the first thing I noticed was the great parking place my plane got as I was outside the airport in less than a minute from deplaning. Then I realized the airport was a whole lot smaller than Salt Lake's. The next thing that caught my eye was the John Deer tractor so diligently working to plow the ice from the roads and parking lots...a JOHN DEER as a snow plow at the airport, I knew I should have worn my Stetson! When my brother got there to pick me up, I noticed how flat it was, but the implications of this flatness would not be realized until I tried to get around on my own.

So, all of the University of Oklahoma was still closed due to the storm, so Wednesday afternoon I took advantage of my brother's connections with some current law students who had gone to BYU for their undergrads too. They were great. Dropped whatever they were doing on their unexpected free day to meet me at Borders and give me the inside scoop about Sooner law. They had lots of good things to say about the school, and not many bad things. The resounding message was that of an accessible faculty and administration that sincerely cared for each student in the school and would stop at nothing to help them succeed.

The next day, my visit to the school proved their point as I met with at least three deans who all took as much time as I wanted to talk to me and answer questions. One even did so unexpectedly during the middle of a meeting. Now, this could raise the concern about them not having anything better to do, but it did not seem so to me. The facilities were all very nice. There was a good mixture of modern style and technology with their rich heritage (Should I go, I will be in their centennial class).

Rent prices in Norman seem to be comparable to Provo, but what we're thinking is the price of housing. We could be in a $100000, 3 bedroom home for less than $600 a month, which we could then stay in, sell, or rent at the end of law school. Awesome!

All in all, OU put up a tough fight for me against other schools that may accept me (I still haven't heard back from any others that are on my first choice list). Even mighty Duke is in danger, should they choose to accept the humble author of this post and not put up a good showing on a visit there.

Now you know why I don't post very often. I'm a novelist that doesn't like writting. I can't do anything short because that just wouldn't do, and I hate writting long things. Anywho, now I ramble.