New Glasses

I got new glasses because I lost my old ones. Here is a picture of Karen and I being glasses buddies!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

Hello all,

So, yesterday was my first day back to work. My two appointments cancelled and Dr. Burr was out of town, so I only stayed for a whopping 4 hours. Joe played with Ezra in the morning and me and Ezra enjoyed the afternoon by listening to our drunken neighbor scream along with Pearl Jam and topping it off with maintenance saving us from a near kitchen flood (again). Ah, what a life. Love to all!

Dear Siblings

do you know anyone who wants to date me? if so kindly send them my way, thanks
love,
catherine

Done

Well I finished my legal research and writing take home test. I have to wait until ten o' clock to turn it in though. I can't wait to get rid of the dang thing. I just want to turn it in and not think about it again. I think I did a pretty good job, but grading here seems a bit on the arbitrary side so I am not sure how well I will do. This only counts as 30% of our total grade for this class so it is not as bad as finals are going to be where the three hour exam counts for 100% of your grade. Fun stuff. Anybody have any fun Thanksgiving plans? Karen and I are going up to Bert and Tiina's house to have dinner and then we are going to watch Rattatoullie (we got it about two weeks ago but have been saving it to watch it over thanksgiving). We are pretty excited. I also wish I could find someone with cable so I could watch the BYU Utah game at their house. I guess I will just have to settle for listening to it on KSL.

Mission: FAILED

he wasn't home so i couldn't give him cookies and i would have just left them but i want to see him.....that was the whole point of the cookies so i guess i will just call tomorrow? i don't know. Why do things have to be hard?

James, do you still....

Hello all,

Tonight for some reason I was thinking of James' always needed Friday dance. So do you still do the Friday dance, James? I would assume you have beefed it up for Law School- I'm sure it's even better now. We will all be excited for a presentation when you return!

Love to all.

Story Time

Brush With Death

Bet that title got your attention. Huh? Huh?

So Karen and I went to have dinner with a friend who lives in Maryland on Sunday. We got directions to his house from the internet and you know how sometimes they aren't exactly clear? Well we were on what we thought was the right road, but then it ended and our only option was to turn left or right. So I decided to turn left and then make a U turn and go back. I also decided to call my friend and see if he could clarify where the heck his apartment was. So I get out my trusty cell phone and try to find his number and then dial him up. While the phone is ringing the light turns and I have a green arrow. But I'm still kind of distracted because by now my friend's wife has answered the phone and I haven't met her yet so I'm trying to be polite and still ask her for directions and dive at the same time. Consiquently I am a little slow getting out into the intersection, when suddenly a car that must have been going at least fifty miles an hour totally blows through the intersection and misses us by inches. If I hadn't had been distracted by the cell phone conversation I would have probably been dead, or very seriously injured at the very least. Which would have put a damper on our dinner plans.

So here is a case where talking on a cell phone in the car actually prevented an accident from occuring. Kind of ironic huh?

Ezra's first "vacation"

Hi Siblings,

So, I kind of forgot my password to get on the blog and then James kindly reminded me it is just gmail name and password. Sorry for my absence.

This week has been an adventure! We got word that Joe's Grandma was pretty sick so we left on a spur of the moment trip on Saturday morning. Ezra didn't have the best time during our 12 hour trip to Los Alamos, but we made it okay and he slept through the night that night! Sunday we drove to Amarillo with Ann to see Grandma Parsons. I am glad that we went when we did because she passed away that night, so she got to hear Ezra before she passed away. We left Amarillo on Tuesday and will hang out here at Joe's parents house until Friday when we'll go back for the funeral.

All in all it hasn't been the most ideal baby's first vacation, but at least he will have a picture with his great-grandma and we are glad we came in time to see her. He is definitely getting used to long car rides, so I guess that is good.

Hope everyone is having a fun November- talk to you soon.

Happy Halloween

We carved our pumpkin yesterday. Here are some pictures.

Just kickin' it in the library, old school!

That's right friends, I am writing this blog entry because my brain has ceased to function. Hopefully it will get back to functionality in about five or ten minutes because I still have a lot of reading to do. We shall see. Everything is going pretty good here. I am still really busy, but I am understanding things a lot better now, so that is good. Karen and I are going to listen to the House Majority Leader speak tonight so that should be cool. We are also going out to dinner before we go, so that should be cool too. Don't forget to post!!

man i am hardcore

So i went bridge jumping today and it was pretty intense and a lot of fun.

me cass tyleen and janiece decided to form a rollerblading gang so here we are, matt remarked that if i want to look hardcore i need to stop smiling but frankly it is hard with these girls!

Adventures in the big city

So Karen and I went to the Nationals baseball game on Friday night. BYU was having an alumni night so we got tickets for just $8. We were going to go right after Karen got done with work, so I met Karen at her office and we took the metro over to the stadium. We had to go to parking lot number seven to get the tickets and they were going to have pizza there too. Well, parking lot seven is in the twilight zone of the stadium. We found parking lot eight and six and five but not seven. After walking around for a good half an hour we found it, ate some pizza and went to the game. It turns out that the nationals are not very good. They were playing the Philadelphia Phillies, and they got spanked. To make matters worse, there were all these really obnoxious Phillies fans sitting right behind us. They kept chanting really loudly. It was annoying. So we decided to leave early because I still had to go up to campus to get my books. We left at nine o'clock and didn't end up getting home until midnight. The trains run a lot slower after rush hour, so we had to wait about twenty minutes every time we wanted to take a train. It was not cool. While we were waiting for the train to go to metro center these two girls stumbled over to us. I was sitting towards the end of the bench and this girl just colapsed right next to me. It was very obvious that they had had a little too much to drink. So, of course, I used them for entertainment. One girl commented on my civil procedure book and said that she had one just like it at home. So I said "oh really, what do you think of personal jurisdiction?" She replied "I believe in it, I really do" It was kind of funny and sad at the same time. They rode on the same train as us, got off at metro center and took another train back in the same direction they came from.

Anyway that was our exciting adventure yesterday. Today I have been doing homework all day. All in all a very exciting weekend.

Wyoming, a state worth not exploring

I feel obligated to post because everyone else who has moved to another state has posted some sort of update. Well here is my update, everything is exactly the same every day. I am sure my experience here has been an episode on the twilight zone. If not, it should be. Sounds like the other out of staters have much more sweet stuff to talk about.

I-Daho

is pretty weird i will tell you what

a far cry from hanging out with jamie anyways
i always forget how many stupid couples there are
and how many attractive mormon boys there are.

things have been good thus far my roommates seem nice enough or maybe even too nice

i am excited for the rest of my friends to get here love you all!

First Day

So I have concluded that the first day of law school is a cross between a BYU premed class, and a conversation with dad. It is like a BYU premed class because everyone is raising their hand constantly to prove to the professor how brilliant they are, and it is highly competitive. Everyone wants you to know exactly how much smarter they are than you. (this is a bit of an exageration but not far from the truth) It is like a conversation with dad because you need to back up everything you say and be prepared to defend your comments. I think that being a member fo the Bates family has prepared me well to argue with anyone around on any subject imaginable. (that might be anexageration as well but hey, what the heck) also there is a large number of legal pads present in most areas, and everyone and their dog uses laptops to take notes. I am bucking the trend and using plain old pen and paper for now, but we will see how that goes after a while.

Our apartment

Hey everybody. Here are some before and after pictures of our apartment. The before ones were taken last Thursday right after we finished moving in, but before we had started unpacking. The after ones were taken today because today is the first day that we have had the internet. Not as exciting as a baby, but we do our best.

Before:





After:






We will take more pictures and post them later. Karen wants to start a new blog for both of our families so that her family can see the pictures too. I will send everybody the link.

hello fam

james/dia when do you start school?

james how is VA?

i feel very disconnected from you all i hope everything is well

Have a Pepsi and a smile

Today was my last day at Coke. Kind of weird to think that I will probably never go there again, and never see those people again. I am glad to be moving on though. It will be nice to actually have to think at my occupation instead of just being an order entry monkey. Everyone was really nice to me when I left though, so that was good. I talked to Karen just now and she is stuck on the tarmac in Washington DC. She doesn't know when she will be taking off. That is no good, I hope that she is ok.

Peoria

Congrats to Andrew on his mission call. I was poking around the internet and foud this website Check it out.