Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful winter holiday!

Whatever your faith, this time of year has probably brought you closer (physically or emotionally) to your family. In that spirit, I am sharing a picture of my great-grandmother, my father's mother's mother. Her name was Eliza. We don't know when this picture was taken, but it had to be some time before 1934.

Almost Done!!!

Now that I've finished taking all of my final exams for this fall (whew!), I only have one more semester of law school left. You can't even imagine how happy I am to be so close to finishing!

I Made a Hat!

Old Pic of My Mom and Laura

I just scanned this picture into my computer from an old photograph I had and I thought I would share. I think its cute. I took this picture some time in the early 90s at my Mamaw's house in Louisiana.

Elliot Has Inspired Me

I don't have any time to learn how to knit right now, but I was so jealous of Elliot's cool new hobby that I bought a Knifty Knitter loom set. Have you seen these? Here's what they look like:



You can make hats or pillows... or if you're really advanced then you can even make scarves and blankets, but I don't know that I'll ever get to that point. I'm working on a hat right now. The loom is really easy to use so I don't feel like I'm learning a new skill, the way Elliot has been. He's doing such a great job of learning how to knit, and I'm just twisting yarn around pegs. After 2 1/2 years in law school, I must admit that doing anything besides reading dusty old case books and writing pretend memos to pretend judges is a welcomed change of pace, though. I can't wait until graduation, just so I will have some time to be creative again.

So, if anyone needs a hat, let me know!!!

I have always wanted to learn how to knit so...

I decided to finally give it a try.



proof of concept; so far so good

Yes, the knitting POC is a success and now only more advanced projects can derive from it. I would like to make some slippers as my first project. We shall see if I can finish them in time for Christmas! Though this may turn out to be just another fad of mine at least it has taught me to create something even if so far it is only big enough to be a key chain.

Happy Holidays

I set up our Christmas tree today. With four cats, it can't be anything too elaborate or delicate. Elliot's mom gave us this fake tree last year, and it's perfect for our house. As you can see, Yoink is already enamored with it. He keeps waiting for me to leave the room, but I'm increasingly worried about what will happen when I do. Let's see if he can stay on Santa's "nice" list this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What am I thankful for this year? That I'm almost done with law school! I have just a little more than one semester left to go.

By this time next year, hopefully I'll have a job and a REAL Thanksgiving vacation. Not a "break" from school that is spent making outlines and PowerPoint presentations and reading case law. Next year, I'll be able to eat my Tofurky in peace.

Of course, I'm thankful that I've had the opportunity to go to law school in the first place. Don't think I'm ungrateful. I'm just really glad that my tour of duty is almost over. And with that said, I must get back to outlining my presentation on the intersection of Native American treaty rights and federal wildlife laws. *sigh*

Happy National Adoption Month!

November is National Adoption Month!

National Adoption Month celebrates family and brings about awareness that there are hundreds of thousands of children in foster homes waiting to be adopted.

Both my family and Elliot's family have been expanded and enriched through adoption. If you would like to learn more about National Adoption Month, click here or here.

My Birthday!

I celebrated (yet another) birthday on Friday, and I was fortunate enough to get to share it with my family. I'd like to thank them for making the road trip to my casa and for tolerating my cats for the weekend. Here are a few pictures:


Laura and (her boyfriend) Spencer at the duck pond on Saturday.


My parents, eagerly awaiting entry to the county fair Saturday night.


Elliot and Mark, apparently pretending to be comedy and tragedy theatre masks.


Sara and me at the fair. It was COLD!


At brunch Sunday morning. L-R: Spencer, Laura, Sara, Dad, Mom, me, Elliot.

Reception Camera #24!!!

What with all of our home repairs and the other fun and exciting things going on in our lives, we completely forgot to get camera #24 developed. Oops!

Here are the pictures:

Reception Camera 24

Update! Our new bedroom looks great all put together!

Bed and bookshelf



Closet Curtain and a chair and bed again.



Yo! He's the fishy, I'm the human!

We have such an adult looking room now(except for the stuffed animals)!
-This is a first for us-

Mary and Kelli

I love this picture of Kelli and me. It was taken at Kelli's wedding reception last year by her cousin, Reagan, who photographed my wedding, too.

I miss Kelli. We live too far apart, in my opinion. :(

And now our room is painted!

Before:


In between:


After:



Finally we can have nice walls!

Two down one to go!

Now that we have Sara's room done there is only ours left to go!

Here is the before of Sara's room...



...and here is one in the middle!



This is the after picture.

A Hawk in our neighbor's front yard!

And it looks like it is eating something.


Pretty cool eh?

We have all sorts of animals around here. Owls, Hawks, um other birds and of course racoons and cats and bunnies and pigs. What a neighborhood!

I Must Get a Job Soon :(

The first year of law school is all about figuring out if you really want to be there, and if you do, how to organize your time and write your exams well. The second year is all about figuring out if you want to concentrate in any one area of law, and about trying to get an internship, externship, or summer job. And the third year is all about finding a job once you graduate. That's MY take on it, anyway.

I'm in my third year now. *Sigh.*

I've been really lucky to get lots of interviews... I just need to figure out once and for all what I want to do with my degree. There are so many things to consider: salary, benefits, the kind of work I'll do, flex time, travel requirements, location. I know that these are things that every person considers when they are looking for a job-- but I feel like I'm setting the tone of my career with this first job out of law school, so it's kind of scary.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Clotilda Is Sneering At Me

Today is blog about the environment day!

So everybody should consider buying compact florescent bulbs to replace their aging conventional bulbs and try to use less disposable plastic bags and all that stuff! Mary and I have been making a conscious effort to lessen our impact on the enviornment and we may even one day become carbon neutral. We also regularly make sure to make trips to the special hazardous waste disposal site at the dump for electronics, batteries, chemicals, and if we ever manage to burn out a compact fluorescent light that is where we will take it too because it has mercury in it or something.

Good luck everybody!

Never judge a book by its movie. ~J.W. Eagan

Exception: The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Both the book and the movie are excellent.

The Princess Bride is the last book that Elliot and I have finished reading together, and I just want to take the time to recommend this book to our friends and family. It was really fun and Elliot and I both enjoyed it a lot.



I keep a list of the books Elliot and I read together and I also write down when we finish reading them. My records reveal that we average 1 book each month. Not bad, huh? We've been reading together for just over 2 years and we're on our 25th book right now.

New Carpet!!!

At long last, we have replaced the disgusting carpet that was in our house when we bought it. (I'm talking SERIOUSLY gross.) And we're re-painting all of the bedrooms, too. The computer room (our 3rd bedroom) has been freshly painted, but we still need to get the other two bedrooms finished.

Here are some before and after pictures of the computer room:


Look at this nasty carpet! It was at least 15 years old because that's how long the people who owned the house before us had lived here and they said they'd never replaced the carpet.


And here is our new carpet. It's brown and white berber.


The last owners of our home painted AROUND their furniture when they painted their walls. Can you believe that? I hated the color they had painted the computer room anyway. Elliot and I found a match for the old color in the Home Depot paint department and it was called "Salty Tear," which was exactly what I was crying when we finally painted over this terrible color. Salty tears of joy.


Here's our new carpet and new paint job. We picked a darker blue and I LOVE it.


Another before...


...and after.

My Husband

Taken 1/3/04 at Mary's parent's house.

Asian Festival

Last Saturday Elliot, John, Sheila, and I went to the annual Asian Festival held in downtown Tallahassee. It was really cool-- there were lots of booths set up by vendors selling food, clothing, arts, and crafts. There were some informational booths, and there were also two stages exhibiting dance, music, and martial arts performances. We tried samosas and persimmons for the first time and heard Hawaiian music on an instrument we've never seen before.

Here are a few pictures:



A belly dancer.



Elliot and John.



A lady fan-dancing.

Driving on I-75

Here's a picture that Elliot took in December 2003, after he got his first digital camera for Christmas:

We're on the mental_floss magazine website!

Our friend Randy blogs for mental_floss and one of his recent posts, "Your Own Personal Yellow Submarine," features a picture from our honeymoon!

Here's the link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8228#more-8228

Yay!

Hey, Vern! Ernest is on my blog...

In honor of Elliot's profound love for Jim Varney and his Ernest character, here are a few funny shorts that I found on youtube.com:

New Recipes

There are a few new recipes up on our recipe blog, souperduper.blogspot.com. Taryn and Brendan sent us instructions for how to make homemade yogurt and Honey Granola, and Jen sent us the recipe for Pumpkin Curry Soup.

Yum!

I Heart Beethoven

On Friday night, our friend John invited us to go with him to see FSU's University Symphony Orchestra perform "Frenergy" by Estacio, "Songs of the Wayfarer" by Mahler, and "Symphony No. 5" by Beethoven. It was wonderful. Elliot and I both like classical music a lot, even though we don't know much about it.

We saw one other orchestral performance together several years ago when Kelli gave us tickets to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Reflecting on both of these experiences, Elliot and I realized how much we enjoy seeing live performances of classical music. We've made a decision to see AT LEAST one symphony orchestra performance every year.

Here's a performance of "Symphony No. 5" that I found on youtube.com:

September 2004

Here are two pictures taken on September 13, 2004, right before Elliot proposed to me. Look at how short my hair is... and I have braces!

The Rest of Our Honeymoon Pictures

Here are the rest of our honeymoon pictures, most of them from underwater cameras. On Saturday we got to go snorkeling (I saw a shark!) and rent PERSONAL SUBMARINES!!! It was sooooo cool and you'll see how strange they looked-- like underwater scooters with a big bubble over our heads that traps air so we could breathe normally. On Sunday we went snorkeling again and saw more cool fish and an airplane wreck off the coast of Cococay. We also went kayaking.

Elliot's Underwater Pics

Above-water Pics

Mary's Submarine Pics

Mary's Snorkeling and Kayaking Pics