T-minus One Day

About four years ago when I had just started the blog, I did a post entitle "Finish Line".  It was all about Jeremy finally taking the LSAT and what felt like a finish line at the time.  I have been thinking about that a lot over the last few days.  I find it truly comical looking back at it now, how it we really the farthest thing from the finish line, but merely the very beginning of this journey.  It reminds me of that song by Semisonic (which interestingly enough was my mom's favorite song at the time) that says, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".

And so it is with this, the Bar is just one day away and while it feels very much like a end, I am certain that one day I will look back at this time and see that it is just the beginning.  In any case, when we meet again next week the Bar will be over.  While I am very much looking forward to having my husband back, a part of me (very small) is sad to close this chapter in our lives.  It is strange, but having the Bar be so all consuming has really brought our family closer together.  We have been united in a group effort to make this happen and everyone, including the kids, have made sacrifices.  It also has made me love Jeremy even more because I have watched how hard he has worked and know that he is doing this for us, for our family.

So now it is time to do this, put the period on the end of the sentence that is law school.  If you are reading this before Tuesday or Wednesday please say a little prayer for Jeremy and if it is after, know we are off celebrating.  We have planned a VERY top-secret surprise for Thursday and Friday so stay tuned for more on that later.

I will leave you today with some very unrelated, yet very cute pictures of the kids from this week.  And so that a few of them make sense, you should know Carrigan has become very interested in trying to put on clothes and shoes, whether hers one or someone else's.  Below you will find her wearing Jeremy's sock and Three,yes three, pairs of Merrick's underwear (clean).

Random Summer-ness

I apologize in advance for the randomness of this blog.  This week was not super eventful, but lots of bar study and a few highlights here and there.  Here is the rundown of the highlights.

Merrick finished swim on Thursday, I wish I could say this was a better experience than it was, but I was not super impressed with the place we went for swim.  I am not sure he learned much, but he had fun and I guess that is the important thing...right???

Fun time this week was also a little more low key.  Merrick even decided that the play area at the mall was good enough one day.  I took pictures because this was Carrigan's first time to get down and play and also because our life is so exciting these days that a trip to the mall play area is apparently blog worthy.

Also this weekend was my nephew, Colvin's, birthday party.  As is tradition he had a giant slip-n-slide party in his backyard.  I neglected to get any pictures of the slipping and/or sliding this year, but I did capture this sweet moment between Carrigan and her bestie cousin Lincoln.

Oh yeah, one last random highlight from the week, Carrigan discovered Ketchup...and she loves it!

Summer Fun (Time)

This summer I am a mom with a plan.  I developed a daily schedule for us to follow so that none of us go crazy over the summer break.  I always say that kids thrive with structure and routine, but let me just say that Merrick is taking this to a whole new level.  I had intended it to be a Mon-Fri routine but Merrick insists upon using it on the weekends too and he is the one always keeping me on schedule.

Some of the key components of the routine are chore time, reading time (30 min), school time (30 min), swim lessons, and fun time.  Merrick, again, is very serious about reading and school time.  He is bound and determined to learn how to read (I will keep you posted on that as the summer progresses).  He is also very serious about fun time.  Often when I give him his choices for fun time he will tell me that some of them are not fun enough.  He tells me that it has to be something really fun (for example the play area at the mall is not fun enough for fun time.)

So, here are some pictures and commentary from swim lessons and (really) fun time this week.

Here we are at swim lessons.  Carrigan is being bribed to hold still and watch with a sucker.

This was our first time to this particular bowling alley.  It was the nicest one I have ever been to and we were the only people there, which is good because Carrigan was walking around like she owned the place.  They had these really cool dragon things to help the kids send the ball down the lane, but CC preferred to use it as a slide.

And last, but not least, our trip to the children's museum.  They have a new outdoor area that the kids really loved.

Lots more summer fun to come!

Fourth of July Weekend

Friday was the 4th of July.  As has become tradition for our family we went to a party at our friends', Jim and Tamie Brown, home.  Here is what happens every year at the Brown's party; we eat A LOT of really good food, we talk and laugh with good friends, and we cap the night off with fireworks in there culd-a-sac.  This year did have some differences, however, namely the addition of a balloon animal maker and face painter and the added excitement of a few firework mishaps (the worst of which was a firework launching straight into the neighbors house). As is always the case, everyone came home exhausted after a really fun evening.  In fact, we had such a good time I forgot to take pictures.  The lone picture from the evening came courtesy of Jeremy's phone.  He and his friend, Matt, captured this little moment between Merrick and Matt's daughter, Silver.

The other highlight of the weekend was our visit yesterday to the river beach.  Jeremy had class yesterday morning and when he got home he needed to study.  I decided to take the kids and go to the river to feed the ducks.  There were a lot of people around and the ducks were few and far between.  We did manage to find a few and the geese were plentiful.  Merrick enjoyed feeding them the sunflower seeds we brought, but Carrigan preferred to eat them herself.  Eventually Merrick started asking to go in the water and we decided if we were going to do that we needed to go get swimsuits and daddy.

After a change of attire and with the addition of Jeremy we headed back to the river.  Merrick of course got right in and played until we forced him to leave.  We had not put Carrigan's swimsuit on because we figured she would not really want to go in the water.  We were wrong.  She loved running in and out and after fallling a few times was sufficiently soaked.

Despite the fact that our lives have become completely monopolized by bar study, we managed to squeeze in a bit of family fun this 4th of July weekend.