Post-Bar Life!

I'm so excited about this post because, let me tell you, post bar life is FANTASTIC! Hopefully, y'all weren't too worried that I only managed to blog after day 1 of the bar (sorry, Mom!). The rest of the bar exam went just fine and I feel at peace that I did the best that I could and that my exam is now in the BEST hands ever. What a blessing to have had the experience that I did. For all my friends taking the bar next year and the year after, sign up with people! We didn't know that it would work out that way, but sitting with Pepperdine friends made the whole thing so comfortable and stress-free (ok, stress minimized). I'm hoping that I will have more advice to share when November results come:)

And now the fun part! I left Friday morning for Odessa and I think that I had an even better time than I had dreamed about for 2 months. My trip got off to a great start because Kate was sweet enough to take me to the airport at 6am. We stopped for coffee and the whole thing was bittersweet because my sweet Kate is now in Hawaii and I miss her so much and that was our goodbye. But, I'm so happy and excited for her new adventure and life in paradise!

My flight was perfectly on time and I had a butterfly COLONY in my stomach when I landed in Midland and was walking through the airport to see Aaron. I can't believe that we hadn't seen each other since May. He had lots of surprises for me, including these pretty things!



Aaron's parents were very busy moving into a new house this summer and I was really anxious to see it. It is so awesome and they are just about settled. It has a neat patio and so we sat outside and watched the summer rain before we went to dinner in Midland. The next morning, we were up and at 'em, headed to Lake Brownwood where Aaron's cousins have a lake house. I had heard so much about it and it was so cool to finally have the opportunity to check it out! It was about 3 hours to get there and we drove through a lot of itty bitty towns that were so precious...picture old hardware stores with rocking chairs outside:) We got to the lake about lunchtime and Aaron's grandparents were there along with Aaron's aunt and uncle and cousins. Our friends Matt and Courtney were so sweet to meet us there for the weekend, leaving Savannah Grace overnight for the FIRST time! The lake was totally relaxing and the water is SO warm...how pretty is this view from the house?



Here's the view from their dock:



Growing up with summers at Tahoe, the water was always way too cold to even think about jet skiing! But, I am proud to say that I went for my first ride and Aaron was kind enough to not throw me off despite me being a pretty easy target:) Here's me looking like I know what I'm doing:



Here we are with Matt and Courtney right before they left on Sunday (so great to see y'all!):



Aaron and I went out "tubing" with his cousin Blaine before we headed back. Here are the boys in action:



On Monday night, we went with Aaron's parents to a Rockhounds game! It was cool to see where Aaron was working all summer...and they won, making it 11 in a row! I got to meet some of his co-workers, most notably:



It was a great summer night for baseball!



I got a kick out of this...so Texas, I love it!



The rest of our time in Odessa was spent running some errands, visiting with friends and Aaron's family, eating good food...all time well spent:) On Tuesday, we got to see our friend Brad as he was driving from Abilene through Odessa out to Malibu to start work at Pepperdine. After we saw him off, we had to go to Hobby Lobby to get something framed for Aaron and I was pretty much in heaven there...it's a craft store but so much more! I was sneakily taking pictures with my Blackberry camera to get ideas... I had to take a picture of this...ET, I thought your letters were an original of mine!



We also got to see our friends Jonathan and Jennifer for Taco Tuesday at Rosa's (Aaron's favorite). Here's their son Jed opening a gift from Aaron's mom (sorry it's blurry, he was fast in action!):



New baby girl Jocelyn slept the whole time but what a blessing to get to see her and all of the Ross family!

I took this picture on our way back to Odessa from running errands in Midland on Tuesday afternoon. I love the clouds and all that Texas sky!



We packed up and hit the road on Wednesday for California. I was so sad to leave because we had such a great time, but I'm already looking forward to the next visit. Aaron was lucky enough to get out of a little bit of his graduate RA training so we spent the night in Phoenix with Aaron's aunt and uncle on Wednesday and continued onto LA on Thursday morning. The Odessa to Phoenix route is a little long because there's not much to see but we did stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico for lunch at Whataburger...this is my only picture from that day, haha:)



We had breakfast in Phoenix and were back on the road about lunchtime. If I haven't bored you yet and you're still reading, here's where the story gets really funny! We were about 60 miles outside of Phoenix, literally going through the desert of not much, and we see 2 teenage boys walking from their broken down van and trailer on the side of the road. So, Aaron pulls over and we get out and about 8 boys climb out of the woodwork and none of them know what's wrong with their van. Turns out, they were a band from Tempe, on their way to San Diego to do a show in some music festival out there. Aaron figures out with one of them that they were probably out of coolant and oil so Aaron and I get back in the truck and head back towards Phoenix to the gas station that the boys said was only about 5 miles away. Well, after about 30 miles (!), we reach a gas station and pick up lunch and the stuff for their van. We head back to meet them and we don't see them and we both start to wonder if they've left. Aaron and I learned our lesson that we probably should have given them one of our cell phone numbers so they could let us know if someone else was helping them. But after almost losing hope that they had waited for us to help them, we came up on them. They were so sad and hopeles sitting there, watching the traffic! Once we got there, this was their reaction:



It was so funny! They were so incredibly grateful and just a great group of kids. They gave Aaron and I a poster of their band, CDs, and band t-shirts. They offered to put us on the guest list for their show in San Diego and they took our picture to put on their myspace page, haha. We listened to their CD as we made our way out of Arizona and they are pretty good! Check them out! www.myspace.com/astepaheadmusic

We arrived in LA safely and unpacked Aaron up at school. He's in the same apartment as last year so it was nice to go back and know exactly what to expect. I'm planning on heading back to San Francisco on Tuesday so I've just been enjoying the time off to tie up some loose ends and visit with friends. I spent all day yesterday cleaning my WHOLE apartment. Apparently I was living in filth all summer! It felt good to take my time and clean everything and throw some stuff out. Aaron's boss was sweet to invite me to the RA dinner last night so I went up to Malibu and we unpacked Aaron a little bit more and hung out with some friends. Yesterday was our 23 month anniversary so we celebrated with some Malibu Yogurt but we're hoping to have dinner tonight to celebrate the t minus 1 month to 2 YEARS of blessings!!

Anyway, I hope that everyone had a wonderful week and I'm really excited to have more time to blog now that I'm officially done with school and the bar...crazy!

Happy Saturday and weekend!

"Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:3-4