New School Year

Tomorrow begins a new school year, granted I have already had a week of college but it doesn't seem to count until seminary begins. Tomorrow marks day one of our study of The Book of Mormon, do I have butterflies, yes, but I am so excited to begin a new year. I know most of my students already but am looking forward to meeting some new freshman as well. I am optimistic that this is going to be a great year.

P.S. If I don't post as regularly please understand.

Sparks Fountain

Well Farmer's Market was coming to a close so we thought it appropriate to let Bailey have one last romp in the fountain for the season. You can see she wasn't afraid to get wet.

She speaks

Bailey has become a full on chatterbox lately. Here is a sample of one of our conversations.

Finally!

It is finished. The court actually gave us the whole proceedings on DVD so I hope to have some video up here soon. Also, they certified a copy for us right there while we waited. It's kind of cool being in court when they like you. It turns out that family court judges love adoptions. Think about it there normal line of work is divorce, custody battles, removing children from unfit parents. Our attorney is actually business partners with the judge. This would normally be cause to reassign the case but with it being uncontested there wasn't an issue. In fact our attorney called the court to have the case reassigned as a formality but the judge wouldn't do it. It turns out that he really wanted to do this. All in all it was an amazing experience, I am so glad that we have it recorded so we can go back and see what he had to say.

The Human Slinky

So four days before we are supposed to go to court to finalize the adoption Bailey finds the rough weather beaten concrete stairs and decides to just tumble down the lot of them. So she's bleeding from her face and arms and now we're paranoid that we are going to look like child abusers. Luckily, after using Neosporin like it was going out of style she healed up nicely so by the time court rolled around no one was the wiser. Shhhh.

Our Staycation

Well we missed my folks terribly this last week. To make matters worse we also missed my niece and nephew who were visiting from New York. But, we couldn't spend the week moping about what was beyond our control so we tried to have some fun and we were, at least I believe, successful.

We went Monday to Virginia City to peruse the shops and to take in the atmosphere. We also were brave and tried to watch the gunfight. Bailey started out doing fine but as the show went on she got more and more upset by the noise until she finally broke out in tears and we had to leave, kind of embarrassing but oh well.

Tuesday, we went to the park and had a picnic, outside of my being accosted by an English Bull Dog it went without incident.

Wednesday, we tried for some Geocaching which was successful in that we tried, Bailey however didn't last long so we returned home pretty quickly. The evening went better, we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Anderson and played a lively game of pin the tail on the donkey (a word of advice, Jennifer cheats. :D)

Thursday, was awesome. We have a really cool water park in Sparks that is geared towards younger children. It is pretty small but only $3 per adult and children under two are free. They have a whole series of different fountains and there were a ton of kids there for Bailey to play with. I think she kind of freaked one girl out though. Since Bailey doesn't really know how to play with others she just walks right up to them and then stares. This poor little girl who was the focus of her stare down kept looking around then back at Bailey, she wasn't quite sure what to make of the whole situation.

Friday, was the crown jewel of the week. Not only did Jennifer and I celebrate our eighth anniversary but we also enjoyed our wards annual daddy daughter camp out. Jenn brought her dad and I brought Bailey. It started out pretty rough for Bailey, everytime she fell down she got stabbed by pine needles. Grandpa luckily brought her wagon and began towing her around the camp site. She had a lot of fun after that, besides the head wounds that is, but more on that later. We sang silly songs, ate S'mores and had a generally agreeable time.

So, while it was not the week we intended it was nonetheless a good week. I love you mom and dad and hope to see you as soon as we can.

Birthday Wrap Up

Before

After

Well today was great. As I was getting ready for church I found a box on my pillow. My wife bought me a brand new bow tie (since I've learned to tie them I've really gotten into them). I decided to don it for church and for the rest of the day as well.

We went to Jenn's folks for Sunday dinner as usual. I wasn't sure that my mother-in-law remembered as there was no mention of a birthday dinner and I didn't want to make an issue of it but to my surprise she had prepared an amazing birthday spread. I've been on a kick for the past couple years where I have really wanted German food and she pulled out all the stops. There was a pork roast in red cabbage. Sausage in sauerkraut and another type of sausage. Of course for sides we had potatoes and more cabbage. She even made my favorite cake, German Chocolate, from scratch. It was so good and I ate far more than is really healthy for me. Thank you everyone for remembering me today it was a pleasure to be able to share this day with you in everyway.