The Competitions Continue

This past week we baby sat Nicole's Cousin's kids while they went on a cruise. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience for both of us. Nicole took them to the park almost everyday and watched a lot of Barbie ® movies. Most of them were requested by the two year old boy. Clayton felt his pain because the poor boy is out numbered by girls. His favorite bedtime books were Purplious and Fancy Nancy. Clayton tried to help him out by playing ball and wrestling; the little boy is surprisingly coordinated and extremely vicious. Her cousins also gave us a bunch of cute baby clothes and toys from their last baby. We are so grateful for all the stuff people have gotten us for the baby.

(From last week)
Clayton's mock trial competition was a lot of work. He was lucky to have a great partner and they both argued really well. There were 120 students competing for about 30 spots. Clayton was excited to be selected for the board. Next year he will have to coach teams for the mock trial competitions held at GW. Nicole got to be involved as well. Nicole demands that we include part of the feed back from the judges; they said that Clayton's closing argument was "excellent" and he even convinced the other team that they were wrong. In all fairness Clayton did get some excellent advice from his mock trial coaches. She played the part of an expert witness on journalistic ethics. She did great, in part because she taught a class on it in relief society... Just kidding, she minored in communications and had taken some journalism classes. She did get really snippy with the opposing team because she thought they were mean. After it was over, we went to our favorite Chinese Restaurant, Chinatown Express.


Clayton is busy applying for internships. This weekend he also had the Journal Competition. For those of you wondering the journal competition is essentially taking a 75 page Supreme Court opinion and condensing into three pages of 12 point Courier New font. It was really challenging. We are looking forward to the rest of this week Clayton has spring break and we are taking a short trip to the East Virginia Coast. We are going to spend the rest of week getting getting ready for the baby. We found a great video that Clayton should have seen earlier it is advice from law students to their sixteen-year-old selves.


Some of the ladies in our ward are throwing a baby shower for Nicole on March 20th about 2 weeks to baby time. We are grateful such a great ward.

Baby now packs quite a punch and really enjoys kicking, especially when Nicole is trying to sleep.

Shout out to CalDon's cross-country team for being featured in a web advertisment you can check the video out here. Its pretty cool it a 5k festival of colors, with crazy people that run even though they are not running from a T-Rex.

Shout to Amanda and Barret who are moving to LA. Amanda got hired to sing for the LA opera. Now we can have an East side, West side feud.

We are also keeping Nicole's Grandpa in our prayers. He fell last week and is in the hospital.

The Mock Trial

Hey everyone, We wanted to drop a quick note and let you know we are doing great. We are watching Nicole's Cousin's 3 youngest kids this week so we will fill you in on what happened this week, next week.

The three big news items are:

1. We completed a birthing class. They showed a video from BYU and it was a real eyeopener.
2. Nicole was a fantastic witness for Clayton's mock trial competition. He competed twice this last week.
3. Clayton made the mock trial skills board.

Hope you are all doing well.

(more details to follow next week)

Nesting

In the past two weeks:

Nicole went to Kentucky. She had a great time visiting with family and attending Amanda's opera. She also got to go see Brittany play basketball and Regan sing at the all-state choir competition. She also got to spend time with her grandparents

Clayton stayed home and worked on a paper for his class. After several late nights and early mornings, he turned it in with 20 min to spare.

Clayton is also busy preparing for the mock trial competition. Nicole volunteered to be one of the witnesses. He will be competing twice next week. He still has a lot of work to do before he is ready.

Clayton is also applying for internships for this summer. All he needs to find is something legal. So if you hear of any openings let us know.

Nicole has started nesting. She is organizing and planning for the baby. We got the baby's corner set up.

Clayton also started ridding home on the slug line. He gets home earlier but still has to spend time at home studying.

Clayton is also trying to learn to play a song on the guitar and Nicole is doing a lot better at sight reading music in her calling.

We taught the boy scouts the cinematography merit badge. It was fun to interact with the youth in our ward.




We hope you are all doing well.

Art & Other Projects

This week, Nicole went on gallery stroll in D.C. She got to talk to a lot of interesting artists in the area. She felt like people were more talkative than other gallery strolls she has been on, possible due to the open bar. She talked to a ceramic artist. The artist was very interested in the pieces Nicole is working on right now. Nicole also had an interesting talk with a Buddhist lady about the after life. A musician also gave Nicole a CD of his work. You can check his music out at http://www.myspace.com/rhapsodyb

Clayton got roped into a project for the J. Reuben Clark Society. He spent most of Friday taking pictures. You can see the promo video he made at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Hn7drZfHc

The baby is doing well. He is kicking and wiggling away. Only two more months to go. We set up the crib and planned how we want to decorate the baby space. Its just a space in our room because the other room in our apartment does not have a window and we worry about safety.

Nicole also organized her studio and is preparing for some art projects. Nicole is leaving Clayton to fend for himself for the week, while she goes to Kentucky to see Amanda's opera.


Please and Blessings.