End of Fall Semester 2011

I love the end of the semester. This is the first time I've ever managed through a full semester of school while working full time. I really admire those who do this and have children! I feel like this is this first time since August that I'm actually going to have free time, which is funny because I'm still going to be working full time. I remember when I was in high school and "free time" meant that I literally had NOTHING to do. No school, no work, no chores, just empty time to fill with friends or whatever I wanted to do. Funny how things change. Now I view free time as time to get grocery shopping done, clean my house, contact maintenance about our broken dishwasher, finally get around to all that Christmas shopping I need to do, haha. I can't imagine what free time will feel like someday when we add children into the mix.

Jason and I are going to be heading to Colorado for Christmas this year. We're both beginning to get really excited about it. Jason more so than me because his trip to CO is going to be a few days longer than mine is. I'm not taking extra time off of work for our trip to CO because during the first week of January we are going on a Caribbean cruise with my entire family to celebrate my mom's 60th Birthday! Now I am SUPER excited about that! Although last year when I went to Mexico right around this time in December, it was already SO COLD in Minnesota and there was so much snow that I couldn't wait to get away! But this year it has been really wonderful weather-wise in MN. We have like 1-2 in of snow outside (note to all you Colorado people in case you've forgotten, the 1-2 inches doesn't just melt away like it does in your magical land, it will probably stick around until Feb or Mar), it continues to be sunny even though it is often chilly (below 30), though today it is 35! So I'm not nearly as sick of the cold weather this year as I was last year. This year it seems completely tolerable. Also this year I feel like I've learned how to navigate the downtown skyways so I can just walk all around downtown without having to step foot outside, whereas last year I was standing out in the cold a lot. I've even located a Dairy Queen in the skyways! I was pretty excited about that!

Speaking of DQ, did you know that the DQ headquarters are in MN? Between Target and DQ being headquartered here, Kohls being headquartered in Wisconsin, and Chipotle being headquartered in CO, I feel like I'm associated with some pretty awesome states. What more could you possibly need in your life than those four places?

Moving on. We have a couple of exciting things that have gone on in the past couple of months since I last posted. First, Jason was offered a position for next summer at a law firm here in Minnesota! We are super excited about it. The firm is right in downtown Minneapolis and this means that we're going to be staying in one place for at least a solid year (though we foresee living in this apartment for at least 3 years, this is an AWESOME apartment and neither of us have lived at a place for over a year since high school, so we're feeling very excited). We also found out that Jason was granted in state tuition for his third year of law school! He had to petition for it, but since we foresee living in MN past his graduating from law school we figured it was worth a shot and it worked! The last piece of exciting news is that I got a promotion at my job! I am now the Lead Teacher in the Infant Room. I just love this job so much. I don't ever mind being there. I love spending time with the babies. It isn't all fun and games, obviously in a room full of infants there are moments of complete chaos, but I love the babies, but I've got wonderful co-workers, and it is a great company. I never have a feeling of "I don't want to go to work today", and I love not having that feeling. In fact I don't particularly love the weekends because I start missing all the babies. So needless to say, I hope to stick with this company for a while. I anticipate school taking me a while longer and it's nice to have a great job while I continue to make my way through school.

Anyway, that's all for now. I've posted some pictures from the goings-on in our life from the past two months. Enjoy!

Here we have (from left to right) Aleisha, Kelly, Rachel, Tiffany and  me. We met up with our friend Sam and went out for a girls night! We are all married to or dating a boy in the law school (except Kelly who just got to come along because she's super awesome).

Rachel, Kara and me. This is a picture from Halloween, we were the Three Blind Mice. It was Rachel's idea and she just threw the outfits together really fast. It was amazing. She's my hero. 

We decided that our family room needed a little tweaking so we went to Ikea and found some new stuff. Peter came over and helped us put it all together and now I am so much more in love with my family room!

Rachel, Aleisha and I had a baking day last Saturday. I have really wanted to take the "Pepsi Challenge" for YEARS. When I was little my Dad had a Pepsi Challenge t-shirt and I remember him telling me about him doing it. So us three girls gave it a shot. All three of us succeeded in guessing the correct one. I was even able to tell just by smelling them. I sure LOVE my Pepsi! 

Last but certainly not least, you get a picture of Rachel and me (or at least our legs) in our University of MN Law School sweat pants that our husbands bought for us. Lovely :)