Mission Accomplished

Steve has a job! Boy, it's been a long journey! As most of you know, we have been looking for a job since graduation last May with little luck. He applied to positions all over Tennessee, with the federal government and the Coast Guard, but after 9 months we still hadn't heard a favorable reply. It looked like with the economic downturn we chose a bad year to job search. Finally fed up, Steve started driving up to Fayetteville, TN just on the other side of the border from Alabama and about 45 minutes from where we lived with my parents so he could at least sit in a court room and see some law in action. He ended up getting a few court appointments and an offer to do an office sharing arrangement with a seasoned lawyer in town. After A LOT of sleepless nights and crying on my part (hey, I am 7 months pregnant!), we finally decided to take a giant leap and start our own practice. We moved to Fayetteville 2 weeks ago and things have been going really well. It's a little scary that Steve isn't salaried, but between court appointments and getting fed cases from his fellow attorney he has had plenty of work. And there are promises from all the attorneys in town that he'll soon have more work than he can handle. Besides the trepidation of being the new rookie in town, Steve loves being a lawyer! He has had all kinds of interesting experiences already and he likes being able to dabble in all the different areas of law while he is learning the ropes. My favorite part is that he comes home happy and excited everyday. We had a very comfortable life with the Army, but we left that life and went to law school because we wanted Steve to work in a field that was really enjoyable and challenging for him, not just a good income. After a lot of studying, a lot of debt, and a lot of patience-trying months, it is good to finally see that decision come to fruition!

Baby #3 is a ...

Even though I'm only 15 weeks, we could see the little guy very clearly. He looked healthy, was very wiggly and was not especially modest, thankfully. The first picture is a bum shot and if you look closely you can see leg, (boy part), leg. The second picture is his profile. Cutie! A girl would have been fun, but we are so excited to have another precious, spunky boy to love!

The No-Snow, No-Tree Blues

So, apparently I caught Kate Anderson's depression bug and now I'm feeling down in the dumps. We had a really terrific Thanksgiving...lots of family, lots of food...good times. But today I'm dragging. We enjoy being in Alabama, especially with all of my family around, but we still miss Laramie...the friends, the town, and the snow. This is the first "day-after-Thanksgiving" spent in AL since Steve and I met. We spent our first Thanksgiving together as an engaged couple and we flew to Minnesota to be with Steve's brother. Our other Thanksgiving breaks were all spent in Wyoming. So we really associate Thanksgiving with snow and going to get a Christmas tree. We have the best memories of driving up to the Snowies with Steve's family to find the perfect Christmas tree. We'd have snowball fights and go sledding and get nice and freezing cold and then pull out the piping hot pot of white chicken chili. Once we were all toasty again, we'd get down to business. We'd drudge through 3 feet of snow sometimes for an hour, undoubtly falling several times, until we found it. The perfect tree. Standing tall against the other trees, sunshine pouring through its perfect ornament-hanging branches. Steve, ever the woodsman, would then pull out his saw and drop the perfect tree into a bed of fresh snow (sometimes hitting us on the way down). After bandages were applied, we would haul the perfect tree into the back of our truck, have some post-snow hot chocolate and then (the boys would) make one last batch of yellow snow before leaving the mountains. Steve and I were musing again last night how perfect our trees were the past 3 years. No crooked trunk that wouldn't fit in the tree stand, no bare spots that we had to hide. They never turned brown or dropped needles. And there was always the perfect branch on top to place the star on. We are definitely missing our perfect tree this year, since there are no real mountains around AL (just hills they call mountains), but we have high hopes that next year we will be living somewhere where we can again hunt down the elusive, but attainable perfect Christmas tree.

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