Another Little Photo Shoot

My friend, Kayse, saw the pictures I took of our other friends' one year old and asked me to take some shots of her family. I said, "Yes!" Here are the results:

Cheesy kid smiles make my day.

I love how both their hands are folded!

Now my friends are encouraging me to start a little portrait photography business on the side, something I definitively said I wouldn't do at the end of this post earlier this summer, but that I am now considering. To be continued...

Cross-Town Move

We are packing, packing, packing and moving on Saturday. My in-laws just retired and moved to a city north of San Diego on Wednesday, so we're moving into their house on Saturday. That's right, house. We don't even have close to enough stuff to fill it up, nor are we going to buy stuff to fill it up since we're still in that "we could be living anywhere in the next few years" stage of life and we like to keep our possessions trimmed down.


Here's the state of our apartment.


Closets crammed full of boxes. At least they aren't stacked in the middle of the family room!

Items that have never been neighbors in our apartment now find themselves roommates in the same box. Exhibit A: flour and hangers

Boxes.

Boxes.

Boxes.

Every surface has a pile of sundry items.

Ripping up the garden. But, that means that we'll be making green tomato cake once we're settled in!

Pictures of the new place will be coming in the next couple of weeks!

My Bar Exam Experience

In addition to being exhausting and stressful, as expected, taking the bar exam was a very unique experience. Here's my recap:

The exam took place in a large Convention Center. From my vantage point in my assigned seat in the back left of the exam room, rows of tables, laptops, and aspiring lawyers merged into a sea of heads. Based off my best estimate, I guessed there were at least a thousand, possibly even two thousand examiners in the room, which was one of two rooms in the convention center. I later used the good ol' internet to get a more exact number and found out that there were FIVE THOUSAND people in that convention center. So, for the last three days, I took a test in the same room as 2,500 other people.

One announcer at the front of the room kept time and gave instructions and announcements. My least favorite announcement: "You have 30 seconds remaining." How is that helpful?! Every time he said it, I got so freaked out, I couldn't regroup for the first 10 seconds.

There were dozens of proctors engaging in a zone defense type system. The majority of proctors manned a small zone of test takers and other proctors had jobs such as checking our admission slips before we entered the room, guarding the tables holding a couple thousand tests, etc.

Each morning and afternoon, I had a three hour session. After each of them, I felt physically tired and like my brain was shutting down. But, amazingly, by the next session, whether it was after the lunch break or after a night of sleep, I always felt ready to go again.

Did I pass? I don't know. I won't know until mid-November. But, between you readers and me, I think I did, not based off of how it felt while I was taking it (because it's one of those exams were you frequently feel like you're failing), but based off of practice exams.

Fortunately, I was well cared for. Most of the examiners had to stay in hotels in the area. Since we live so close by, Michael dropped me off and picked me up on Tuesday and Wednesday and even came at noon to bring my lunch and eat with me. It was so nice to get that kind of princess treatment during the difficult three days. On Thursday, he had a lunch date with his mom, but the princess treatment didn't end. I joined two law school classmates for an amazing meal that was prepared and served in their small hotel room kitchen by their two Russian mamas.

When I got home last night, Michael took me out to my favorite Spanish restaurant and we split a bunch of super delicious tapas. The food was so good, it was almost all we talked about for the entire dinner. But, that's typical for us.

Now, I am going to hit "Publish" and put this test far behind me and get on with the last five weeks of my summer!

Eli's One Year Photos

New friends of mine asked me to take a few shots of their one year old. We went to a local park during that lovely time of day when pictures turn out best with the sun getting low giving everything a golden glow. I loved how the pictures came out! Here are my two favorites:

Summer Dinner

After weeks of waiting, our tomatoes finally turned red, so I made this for dinner:

No, I am not on a diet. In fact, I had In-N-Out for lunch. I just find that I often eat unusual dinners when my husband is out of town and I particularly love this salad... I think it's called Caprese? Or Insalata Caprese? Or Caprese Salad? I don't know. All I know is that it's delicious.

If you want to make it:

1. Layer slices of tomato mozzarella cheese (fresh mozzarella is best!)
2. Drizzle with olive oil and squeeze fresh lemon juice on top (balsamic vinegar is how it's always served, but I prefer lemon juice)
3. Sprinkle on salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

Blog Hiatus

Hello faithful readers!


It turns out that studying for the California Bar Exam is about as time consuming and stressful as everyone says it is.


To give you a feel for it, I reviewed Criminal Procedure today. (Think Miranda Rights, Double Jeopardy, "I plead the 5th.") The four unit course was stripped to a three hour lecture. After watching the lecture, I spent the afternoon doing practice problems and cramming as much as I could into my already saturated brain.


And that was it for Crim Pro. According to my online course's syllabus, I will not be hitting this topic again all summer. And so it will go all summer, I'll hit a massive subject, like Crim Pro, for anywhere from one to three days before moving on to the next massive subject. Then, I'll have two weeks to review everything before I take the test. Yikes!


I really have enjoyed my little blogging hobby, but studying has made me realize just how many priorities I have that come before Scattered Snippets... sleeping, hanging out with friends, eating well, grocery shopping, exercising, spending time with my husband, calling my family, keeping my apartment clean, sitting and doing nothing, church, playing the piano, small group, to name just a few!


I may put up a couple posts over the next six weeks, but I very well may not. Either way, I'll be back in August.


I'll leave you with a picture. Studying makes me feel like this guy. But, slow and steady wins the race, right?

Cute Kids on Catalina Island

Every June, my husband's work has their regional conference on Catalina Island, and I get to go! This weekend was the third time that we've gone and I realized that it's turning into an annual highlight. The best parts are as follows:

1. The food. The chef at the camp has taken "camp food" from barely palatable to delectable. BBQ brisket, Caprese salad, 1000 calorie cinnamon rolls... oh my.
2. The content. It's always encouraging and amazing to hear about what God is doing at college campuses throughout Southern California and to get a sneak peak into what might be coming in the future.
3. The people. Michael's coworkers are a big, unruly bunch of truly amazing people, and mixed in the bunch are some of my dearest friends. It's a blast to spend a couple of days with them on an island every year. And many of these people have cute kids. I brought my camera, but only pulled it out for about an hour of the weekend, but I was delighted with the adorableness that my camera caught. Enjoy!

Just realized that these two sweet kids were in this post last year!

Maybe if the legal career doesn't pan out, I'll become a child photographer. No, some things are better as hobbies.