Over the Mother’s Day weekend, we were invited to take my nephew to the Zoo for the first time. Oh what fun we had!
Uncle was holding nephew to see the sea lions swim over our heads in the tunnel.
There were tons of zebres out that day.
We even saw a baby camel! He’s hiding close to wall and the other camels are protecting him.
Dad and son. So precious!
The penguins were also a big hit.
Such a sweet family. Nephew is SO close to walking on his own!
On this beautiful Mother’s Day, I reflect on how incredibly lucky I am. I know everyone says this, but I am simply the luckiest daughter there is. My mom has been there for me every step of the way – when I’m sick, reading to me ever since I could remember, and always answering the phone to tell me that I’m not going crazy about whatever silly thing has got me all riled up (even when it was during her work day and I’m sure she was under deadline).
She has shown me how you can manage a crazy household, save for all the things her kids want, and still be an amazing attorney with a pretty important job. I can’t imagine a better model of what it is to be a working mom.
We’ve always had fun together. I can remember road trips with the family and visits to family over the years. And now that we’re older, we can vacation together even more. Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Disney World, who knows where we will end up next? I can only imagine what our next adventure will be!
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
If you are lucky enough to pass the bar exam, you are invited to the Supreme Court of Missouri to take the oath of admission to the state bar exam. The oath was scheduled for last Friday in Jefferson City at the Supreme Court building itself.
I expected to enter the courtroom and see just one judge at the front. As we were waiting for the ceremony to start, the clerk of the court explained to us that the judges (plural!) would enter soon, there would be remarks, then the oath would be administered, then more remarks. After that, the president of the Missouri Bar Association would read each name and present the new lawyers with their license. Then more remarks and then we’d be done. It was a pretty involved ceremony!
I was so happy that we were finally at this point in the process. Of course, I took a ton of pictures.
Waiting for his parents, contemplating the oath. Or something.
His lawyer ad pose.
It was a beautiful law library in the court building.
Waiting for the justices to arrive.
Even though they spelled his name wrong, we still got the license.
A blurry picture, but it’s official!
The new lawyer and happy wife!
And his happy parents.
I have never been more proud of my new attorney-husband!
So have you heard of this company called Stitch Fix? I’ve seen a few bloggers talk about it in the past few months and finally decided to try it last week.
The basic idea is that you fill out a style profile – what kind of clothes do you wear to work, how often do you dress up, are you casual or preppy, what sizes of clothes would fit you, etc. It takes about 20 minutes to fill everything out if you’re not paying a bunch of attention to every question like I was. I get distracted, even when talking about clothes!
They charge a styling fee of $20 to get your fix mailed. But if you like what you get in the fix, you apply the styling fee to your new clothes!
I asked for a mix of casual and work items, and for them to be towards the less expensive end of the spectrum. I got five items – four pieces of clothing and some earrings. Here’s what came in my first fix!
A gorgeous peach silk top with buttons that are sort of military inspired. I can see myself wearing this at work or even just hanging out on a beautiful spring night like tonight.
This is a sleeveless silk top which the styling tips said could be worn loose…
Or tucked in. I didn’t like either way.
Ick. Ok on the color but the buttons down the middle made weird bunching up.
Oh my. This cotton wrap dress is amazing! I loved it – AND it has pockets!
Hubs came in during my trying on sessions and saw the purple dress on me. He said, oh you need that! You can wear it to Disney and it will pack great for the summer. I told him I liked it and the peach silk top and he said I should keep both of them. The peach is unlike anything in my closet and I’ll wear the dress all the time during the summer. So for just over $100, I got two awesome items that were handpicked for me from my very own stylist!
I definitely think I’m going to be getting more Stitch Fixes in the future! What a fun site to get clothing delivered to my door especially for me!
I am on cloud nine today.
My husband passed the Missouri Bar.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I can’t even really put this into words. Since we started this whole journey back with his application for law school, the LSAT, all the classes and papers and late nights, the studying for the bar and the bar prep classes and then the AWFUL experience taking the exam. It’s all been for this day. When the exam results get posted. So he can be called esquire and sworn into the State Bar next Friday.
All day long, I’ve been obsessively checking the website. When all of Hubs’ friends took the bar a few months ago, the website posted the results earlier than the stated time. This go-around, it was scheduled to post AFTER 5 pm today. So naturally, I kept refreshing the site all day long. In between meetings and setting up for a few work events this week, I kept checking. During lunch, I kept refreshing and refreshing just in case they posted earlier! Nothing. Just nothing. GAH!
Then I had to attend a co-worker’s retirement happy hour at a local micro brewery. It started at 4:30 pm. I checked the site one more time before leaving the office and nothing had been updated. I loaded up the mobile site on my iPhone so I could refresh it from the road and again when I got to the party. We ordered a round of drinks and food for everyone, did the present thing for my co-worker and still, no updates. Thank goodness my colleagues distracted me.
At 5:00 pm on the dot, I checked the site. NOTHING. You have got to be kidding me! They said after 5 pm and nothing was posted. Back to my beer. At 5:08 pm, it occurred to me check the site again.
There was a new announcement posted.
“February 2013 Examination Results Released” – that’s it. It’s posted.
I just stared at my phone and said “ohmygoditposted" under my breath. My co-worker who has been on pins and needles with me all day waiting for the results looks over and says, “READ IT. Or gimme the phone and I will.”
A literal hush fell across the table – or maybe I just blocked everything else out as I clicked the link that shows all the names of those who passed the bar exam.
I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled, looking for our last name. I think I even forgot the alphabet at one moment because I could NOT find the first letter of our last name in the list.
But then…
Name
Name
Name
Name
Name
Name
Name
HUSBAND’S NAME
Tears just came pouring out.
HE PASSED!
I started sobbing and looked around the table and said he passed the bar. My friends cheered and told me to go call him!
Unfortunately, he was still at the office! But of course, he found out when a friend texted him that the results were up and congratulations. I told him I was so so so so so proud of him. I don’t think I’ve been a prouder wife.
These journeys we go on are amazing. They make us change and force us to grow. We are not the same people, not the same couple, that we were when he applied to law school. We’ve learned to work together when things are getting kind of tough, we learned to make money stretch. We learned to deal with stress in more healthy ways and we learned to celebrate with the best of him.
I loved our law school journey but I am so very excited to see what our next journey might be.
We celebrated Easter with brunch with our in-laws at a beautiful restaurant, the Historic Bevo Mill. What a fabulous place to brunch, even when not on a holiday! We ate until we were almost sick to our stomachs!
But what got me was the hat that my in-laws gave to my nephew for Easter. It matched his little golfers outfit with sweater and corduroys perfectly!
When we went back to our townhouse to open Easter baskets, our nephew found the Moroccan drum that a friend had given us a few years ago.
He was amazed. When he hit it, it made noise! We might have a regular musician on our hands. In addition to being an amazing football, baseball and soccer player, of course.
There had to be a picture with his Aunt Jessica, even though we could barely get him to sit still, after he switched into his pjs.
Isn’t he ADORABLE?! I can’t stand it.
You know how you always have those little things that bug you? Like a little bump on your cheek or a funky angle on your knee. No one else seems to notice them, but to you, they stand out like a sore thumb.
Over the past few months, I started to notice one of those things. A little bump on the end of my nose. It was red one day and I thought it was a pimple. I tried to pop it (ew, gross, I know, but sometimes you just gotta do it) but it definitely wasn’t a pimple. After it bled a few times, I decided to just ignore it. I guess I should have gone to the doctor at that point but it was easier just to ignore it.
I was at the dermatologist for another check up a few weeks ago, right before we went to Disney, and I had finally decided to ask the doctor if there was something he could do. He took a quick look at my nose and said it was a fibrous papule.
I suppose it’s better to have the doctor look at you real quick and say, yup, it’s no big deal, it’s this thing I’ve dealt with all the time and I can take care of it right now. It’s better than being “interesting” or something he’s never seen before! The doctor told me that he could cauterize the thing right off, in the exam room.
Yup, that means he was going to burn it right off. Given where it was, he said it was easier just to cauterize without numbing it. So I leaned back in the chair and he burned the thing off. It didn’t really hurt, just kind of pinched real quick.
Afterwards, it just looked like it did before, a bit red as if I scratched the end of my nose. And now, it’s totally gone!
~~~~~~~~
In any case, that’s not what was so surprising about the whole thing. At Disney, when I mentioned the procedure to my mom and that I didn’t think anyone would notice but at least I would feel better about it, she said that she was glad I got it taken care of. She had noticed the bump in high school and had been keeping an eye on it. I guess she was worried that it might be skin cancer or something. But the funny thing is, I only really noticed the thing a few months ago, maybe a year. I didn’t realize that it was there YEARS ago. Looking back through Facebook pictures, I can see it in pictures from a bit ago but I don’t have good close ups of my nose that far back. ;)
She said she noticed it because she’s my mama and mamas know everything about their babies. My husband said he of course noticed the bump too. It didn’t bother either one of them, of course.
But for some reason, it bugged me that she noticed it and never mentioned to me that I could have it removed! It’s a totally cosmetic thing, really, but still.
Now it’s gone and it was so incredibly simple to have done. I don’t have to worry about the bump anymore!
