Final Stretch

This week has been kind of quiet.  The reason is that both Jeremy and I are both trying to keep our heads down and get through this next little bit.  Monday was Jeremy's last day of classes of his law school career and now he is in the hard press through finals.  This coming week he will take the first two of his three finals as well as complete a final paper.

Once all his finals are complete he will have a couple week break before graduation and then starting bar prep.  His bar prep class starts the Tuesday after graduation and last all the way until he takes the bar at the end of July.

It feels like such a relief to have him done with classes, but we are by no means out of the woods yet.  Even after finals, bar prep, and the bar, there is still one more thing to do.  He still has to find a job and that is probably the toughest part of all.

Easter 2014

Today is Easter and I am so full of the Spirit of love and thanksgiving.  I am so grateful for my Savior and my knowledge that He lives and because He lives, so will I.  I have so thoroughly enjoyed spending extra time today talking with Merrick about Christ.  Every time I do, I watch him just soak up the information.  I see that he gets it and it make sense to his sweet, pure spirit and I know that is because it is true.  It strengthens my faith every time.

As a whole, it has been a great Easter.  We started celebrating yesterday since we try to keep most of the secular stuff the day before.  In the morning we took the kids to the city Easter egg hunt.  They had an Easter bunny and Merrick wanted to have his picture taken with him, but Carrigan wanted no part of it.  Later on we had the fam over for an Easter egg hunt, movie, and take-out.  Everyone had a great time.

Today we did start out the day by opening our Easter baskets (after we found them...silly Easter bunny), but then tried to spend the remainder of the day focusing on the real reason for Easter.  I found this fun little picture of a bunny that listed the Christlike attributes of a "real Easter bunny" and it had a scripture to go along with each attribute.  I cut it up into pieces like a puzzle and hid the pieces for Merrick to find.  Once he found all the pieces, we put the puzzle together, read the attributes, and the scriptures.  After church, the family all got together again for dinner.  We had a non-traditional/traditional for our family dinner of sourdough pancakes.

We really could not have asked for a better Easter.  We are truly blessed.

11 Down, 1 To Go

Late as usual, but the topic for today's blog is Carrigan reaching the 11 month milestone.  Yet again I was late in getting her pictures taken and getting them up on the blog.  Thankfully, my mom came into town and helped me check a few things off my to-do list and I was finally able to move taking pictures to the top of the priority list.

First, a few things about CC this month.  She really wants to walk!  She is cruising and pulling up on everything and you can just see the determination to figure it out in her eyes.  She is a busy girl and mostly wants to be down and going.  I am rarely able to carry her up the stairs anymore because she almost always wiggles out of my arms so she can climb up herself.  When she does hold still, she gives kisses and loves and likes to play peek-a-boo.  She says "Dada" (her first word), "Mama", "Kee-kee" (Linky-for her bestie cousin Lincoln) and sometimes "Baba" (for brother).  She will also wave bye-bye if the mood strikes her.  That is the thing about Carrigan, it is always on her terms.  She know what she wants, when she wants it and she is not afraid to let her feelings be known.

She is our little sassy go-getter and we seriously love her!

Business and Babies

Two points to start.  One, you may have noticed the blog for this week is late.  That is due to the fact that Jeremy and I have been lost in the vortex of tax time.  We have been working on both my business and our personal taxes and this has left little time for anything else.  The second point is that the title of this post should actually be "baby" rather than "babies", but it sounded better that way, so there you go.

So, business.  A while back I was contacted by our local library and asked if the preschool would like to display some artwork.  Of course I jumped at the chance, I never turn down free advertising.  My co-teacher, Lora, and I started brainstorming and decided on a springtime mural.   The kids completed the projects over three weeks, first painting, then adding butterflies, then snails, and finally flowers.

What we ended up with a massive (approx. 30x190), adorable piece of artwork.  Transporting and hanging was a bit of a challenge, but I am really pleased with the end result.

And now on to baby.  This last week we added a new member to our family.  Becca gave birth to Isabel Skye Brown on 4/1/14.  After 9+ months and a really bad April Fool's joke we were all really excited to find out Ben and Becca would finally get some pink in their home.

We couldn't be happier to add this sweet little spirit into our family and look forward to loving her and watching her grow.