Say Hi to Darwin

Say hello to Darwin our adorable new sheltie puppy!

Florida!

A few weeks ago I left Jed at home and went to Florida with a few of my friends from high school and college. We had so much fun lying on the beach, floating in the ocean, going out to dinner, etc, but mostly we just talked ... constantly. It was so much fun to have the chance to hang out with these girls that I love and have known for so long. There was no need for small talk - we could talk about all the big and little stuff because we already knew about the minutia. And that was really great! I can't wait for more vacations with these girls.

A Comedy of Errors

I'm currently in Florida with some of my friends from high school and college, and even though it is raining outside right now that is hard to beat. Getting here though could have been a whole lot smoother.

I was supposed to fly out yesterday at 12:30, have a layover in Atlanta and then get to Florida at 6. That morning my mom got a call (I'm still not sure why Delta had her number instead of mine) and was told that my flight was canceled. I got online to check and sure enough I was out a flight. They had already re-booked me but with an extra stop. Now I would be leaving Cincinnati at 1:3o stopping in Chicago, then flying to Atlanta, then arriving in Florida at 7:30. I called Delta to make sure that was my best option and, sure enough, it was. So I relaxed with Jed at home a little and enjoyed my extra hour to back. Just before we were going to leave for the airport I figured I should check in at home and print out my boarding pass, and thank goodness I did because my flight from Chicago to Atlanta had been significantly delayed and I would miss my connection. Another call to Delta and I was once again re-booked. Now I would be flying out at 4:30, stopping in Atlanta, and arriving at 9. Fine - at least I'd get there eventually right. Now just repeat the same story from before - right before we would leave I went to print out my boarding pass and saw that my flight to Atlanta was significantly delayed. Luckily my layover in Atlanta was long enough that this didn't matter so once again I waited a couple of hours and then finally headed off to the airport and ended up leaving Cincinnati around 6.

Thank goodness I kept checking my computer because I would have been one unhappy camper if I had ended up at the airport at 11:30 and had to wait around all day. As it was I still ended up with a pretty unproductive day because I kept thinking I just had an hour before I had to leave, but I'm here now and crazy re bookings or not I'm ready to have fun!

The 4th

So the 4th of July happened awhile ago, but just because I didn't blog about it right away doesn't mean we didn't have a great time. For the 4th this year Jed and I both took Friday off and at least part of Tuesday so that we could have a nice (very long) weekend in Georgia at my parents lake house. We hung out with family, skied and knee-boarded, rode on jet skis, swam, and jumped off of the dock. No fireworks though. It started raining the night of the 4th (thankfully not during the day when we were doing all of the fun things mentioned) so we couldn't see any fireworks. We attempted watching the Macy's 4th show on tv but fireworks just aren't the same when you're not there in person. Oh well ... fireworks or not it was an amazing 4th. And to prove how much fun we had, here are some pictures :)

Danielle and my cousin Lisa swimming in the lake

Jed hanging out on the dock (somewhat begrudgingly taking a picture for me)

On the jetski

Coming back on the boat

I attempted to make a fun flag cake - it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself even though the picture doesn't look great. It is surprisingly hard to take an appetizing picture of food.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Working Downtown:

So I'm working downtown this summer in the federal courthouse. It's an awesome job and I get to do lots of interesting things but there are definitely perks and downfalls to working in the center of Cincinnati. Here are a few of them:

• Good: it is close to just about everything and that means if I ever need anything it is just a quick walk away



• Bad: it is not close to my house



• Good:I can go have lunch with people from UC, etc without anyone having to travel.



• Good: Fountain Square is literally right outside the courthouse so Andrea (the other extern) and I can have lunch outside everyday



• Bad: Fountain Square is literally right outside the courthouse so I hear a lot of street noise



• Bad: along with street noise a person drums on a plastic bucket everyday outside of my window for a couple of hours a day and another person plays a saxophone on the corner



• Ugly: the saxophonist apparently only knows 12 bars of music which he plays over and over and over again



• Good: the courthouse is very pretty



• Bad: the courthouse has security so I have to walk through a metal detector and have my bag x-rayed everyday



• Bad: parking downtown is a pain and the cheapest lot is 3/4s of a mile away from my office



• Ugly: so I walk over a mile and a half everyday in heels

Sometimes I Get to Do Cool Stuff at Work

So for anyone who doesn't know, I am working as an extern for Judge Weber this summer. He's a senior federal district court judge and so far I am loving my summer work. I do a lot of research and writing, but I also get to sit in on pleas, meetings in chamber, basically anything that happens in our courtroom. Well today I got to sit in on something especially cool: a naturalization hearing. A naturalization hearing is essentially the ceremony where people become American citizens. There were 70 people from 39 different countries at the ceremony today and each of them stood up and said their name and where they were from - it was absolutely amazing how many different places were represented. The ceremony felt like a graduation with speakers and congratulations and then everyone's loved ones taking pictures as they said their oath. It was actually a very moving experience and a wonderful way to finish up the week.

The Summer so Far

Since getting back from Italy we've gotten into the swing of the summer and are enjoying both our summer work and our more relaxed schedules. This summer I'm working for Judge Weber, a senior federal district judge, and Jed is getting started on research for his PhD and is studying for the boards. Other than that we have been going out to dinner with friends, planting new flowers, and watching movies ... in short all of those things that we weren't able to do under the crunch of finals.

Buongiorno

Last week we got back from an amazing trip to Italy with my family and I figured its about time I put some pictures up. Out entire trip was absolutely wonderful: we started by spending a week in a house in Tuscany and taking day trips to different cities in the area then we spent our last two days in Rome. Get ready for a lot of pictures . . .

Our first day we drove to our house in Panzanno and stopped at the Ferrari museum on the way. I don't have any pictures from there on my camera yet though so here we are in Sienna on our first full day enjoying a lovely view of the duomo (cathedral). It was one of the most beautiful cathedrals I have even seen.

Enjoying some gelatto (this would become a daily occurrence) in the Piazza in Sienna.


Our second full day in Italy was spent in San Gimignano a beautiful little city in Tuscany that was absolutely picturesque.

The next day we took a tour in beautiful Florence.

We spent the next day close to home. We went on a hike to a tiny monastery, then we went to the neighboring city of Greve and later explored the olive groves by our house.

Danielle and I in front of the house.

The olive grove.

Day 5 we went to Pisa and Lucca. Here's Jed and I in front of the famous leaning tower.
We also walked up the tower which was kind of crazy - those stairs were wonky!

Riding bikes in Lucca.

The next day was another great day in Florence.

After an amazing week in Tuscany we packed up and headed to Rome.
Here's Jed and I in front of some cool ruins. Ruins were everywhere in Rome. You would literally look down an ally and there would be some ancient columns sitting there.

Our final day we explored Rome some more. Here's Jed in the Roman Forum.

And this is everyone in the Colosseum.

Well there you go. That's our vacation in a whole lot of pictures. I hope you enjoyed and weren't too jealous :)

4 Years

Yep, it's true today Jed and I have been married for four years. That's a long time! I still feel like such a newlywed that it's weird to think that it's already been four whole years and not just a few months. At the same time it feels like we've been together forever. Kind of like when you are looking back at the semester (give me a break, I'm still a student so this is how I measure time) and it feels like you just started while at the same time feeling like it's been going on forever.

Sadly both of us are in the middle of tests so we will have to celebrate a belated anniversary later. Regardless though, here's to a whole lot more great years!

Rochelle's Graduation

A little over a week ago was my sister Rochelle's graduation from college and it was so fun to be there. Not so much the actual graduation - it was fun when she crossed the stage and all but I had to listen to a lot of unknown people's names get read to reach that point - but getting to see my family and hang out and celebrate with everyone was great. It was also an occasion to take some pictures, which I realized when I was going through my camera is something that I haven't done much of this year. So here are some pictures from graduation. I can't wait to see all of these people again in a couple more weeks!

Rochelle with her (not an actual) diploma

Danielle, Rochelle and I

Rochelle with Mom and Dad

Rochelle and Matt

Super Excited

Tomorrow I'm flying out to Utah to go to my little sister Rochelle's graduation from BYU. I'm so excited to see my whole family (other than Jed of course who's staying home because med school is an evil life sucking force) and to celebrate Rochelle's graduation. If only I didn't still have to pack . . .

Busy Busy Busy

It has been a very busy last few weeks. Jed has been frantically preparing for his next block of tests which start next week and I've been trying to keep up with school, research, law review, and my externship until spring break arrives and I have a little bit of catch up time. Luckily between all of the craziness we were able to have a nice weekend and go out to lunch and dinner with friends so that we could make it through the busyness of the last week.

Now that spring break has finally arrived for me the first thing on the agenda is to clean our messy house and do some laundry. Not exactly the perfect beginning to my break, but at least the rest of it should be lots of fun. :)

Five Months in Five Paragraphs

Well a lot has happened since my last real update (5 months will do that to you). So here's the recap:

My sister Rochelle got married! She got married the weekend before Thanksgiving. The marriage was in the Birmingham Alabama temple (since the Atlanta temple is still closed for renovation) and then the reception was that night in Atlanta. It was a very long, but wonderful day. We were so excited to have Matt in the family - Jed was especially excited that the boy to girl ratio is evening out a little.

At the Temple (Not the best picture from the wedding, but it's all I had on my computer)

After Rochelle's wedding we headed back to Cincinnati so Jed could take a test and then just two days later we were flying to Utah to spend Thanksgiving with Jed's family. We had a very nice Thanksgiving (who couldn't love all that food) even though I got sick for a couple of days.

Sadly I forgot to take pictures while we were in Utah

After Thanksgiving it was back to Cincinnati and time for finals. I'll just skip these three weeks because no one really wants to hear about Jed and I constantly studying as our house progressively gets messier and messier.

Once the grind of finals was over we hopped in the car to drive to Georgia to spend the holidays with my family. We had a lovely Christmas and had lots of fun visiting family and going to movies, etc, but mostly we just enjoyed relaxing for two weeks.

Jed and I in front of our beautiful Christmas tree which we actually managed to decorate this year (last year our tree sat bare the whole season)

Then it was back to school and that's what we've been doing ever since. So there's five months in a very short nutshell. Hopefully the next five will be just as good!

A Rant

Ok ... I need to get something out of my system so please excuse the rant. Today when I was avoiding doing homework I came across this article: http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/02/07/lea-michele-cosmo-cover/. It's basically about parents being upset about a cover of Lea Michele, the star of Glee, appearing on the cover of Cosmo wearing a low cut dress. I won't go into the merits of covers like this or whether or not they should be available for children to see. What I want to talk about is this quote the article referenced: “Lea Michele may be an adult, but to pretend that she doesn’t know her fans are 11 is just ignorance…. Now she is just turning off the parents of these kids who are her future consumers.” Seriously ... parents let their kids watch Glee but don't like the idea of them seeing a low cut dress? Have these parents ever watched Glee? If this offends them then I seriously doubt it. Just because a show is set in a high school does not in any way mean that it is a show for children. Glee deals with/portrays a lot of adult topics including teen pregnancy, homosexuality, masturbation, sex, and marijuana use. And all of that is addressed in the first couple of episodes of the 1st season. The point is that this show has a lot more adult going on in it than low cut clothing. If that dress is inappropriate for your child to see than you definitely don't want them watching Glee. Parents need to pay attention to what their kids actually watch not just what they see on the magazine rack in the super market.

End of rant, please enjoy the rest of your day.

P.S. Maybe I'll actually post my first real update of the last 5 months soon