Wohoo!!!

We found out on Thursday that Dallin officially passed the Virginia State Bar Exam!  He is officially a lawyer now! We are so happy to finally have this law school stuff done.  :)

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Fall

Fall is finally here and it's amazing! (although that's not what this post is actually about) This summer seemed to be a bit longer than normal, but that was probably because it was the first one that I had to work straight through. The one down side to not being a student anymore is the lack of a summer break, although the pay checks are kinda nice.

Dallin is officially a working man now! He survived the Virginia state bar exam and has joined a patent litigation group in DC. His office is only about .5 mile from mine, which in theory means we can have lunch together sometimes, but we've yet to pull it off. He's also been riding his bike to work which is a lot cheaper than the metro, and more enjoyable for him. It also brings us to the actual subject of the post. A few weeks ago I was on my way home when I got a text from Dallin asking if I could come pick him up because he crashed on his bike! I was waiting for the bus, so I told him I'd get there as fast as I could, but it'd be a while.  It took me about an hour to get into DC where he was. Thankfully he crashed near the Barlow Center (a place owned by our church that has some dorms and classes and stuff) and he was able to hobble over there and some really nice people got him ice and Advil (They must be related to Jim, my old swim coach, anytime someone was hurt his answer was to "take Advil and ice it, 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off..."). Then when I finally got there with the car some more nice people helped us get his bike on the bike rack. We have no idea who any of the people were, but they were really great. 

So we started our drive back home, which took a while since it was rush hour.  On the way Dallin called his friend JC who lives down the street and who was nice enough to let Dallin borrow some crutches (and even brought them out to the car when we got home).  Then he called our home teacher Anthony, who came over pretty much right when we got home. By this time Dallin's ankle was about the size of a tennis ball (see picture). 

JC and Tony were able to give Dallin a blessing and we started looking up places to get it xrayed in the morning, everyone who saw it was sure it was broken, an ankle is just not supposed to look like that!  The next morning we went to an urgent care down the street and found out it miraculously wasn't broken! Just a really bad sprain.  So Dallin got to hobble around on crutches for a little over a week with a brace. A few days later his foot started turning a bunch of different colors (see other picture). It looked like a zombie foot. 

Now, about 3 weeks later, he's able to walk normally and run a little bit.  He rode his bike to work this morning, which I'm a bit nervous about (I told him if he crashes today I'm getting rid of the bike).  His ankle is still not a normal size though.

We've decided to name it Calvin.

Calvin the cankle. 

Crazy? I was crazy once

Luckily there was no rubber rooms or rats, of the real or rubber kind, involved.  They drive me crazy! (extra points if you know what I'm talking about there)


Supposedly, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  And if that's true I was insane for most of the day yesterday.   I kept walking into a room and flipping on the light switch and then being frustrated when nothing happened.  For some reason I couldn't remember that our power was out.  (As if it being 90 degrees in the house wasn't enough of a reminder.)


It all started Friday night.  We got home from cub scout camp (no, that wasn't the cause of the insanity, although it would have been a pretty good excuse) and watched the local news.  They said we were going to get strong thunderstorms that night.  I didn't really think anything of it.  It had been 104 degrees that afternoon and super humid.  That kind of heat usually draws in evening thunderstorms and the rain usually helps cool things down a bit.  No big deal right? (Wrong!)   


We were getting ready for bed when there was a ton of noise outside.  I ran to the window and peaked out to see horizontal rain and trees that looked like they were going to fall over.  I quickly turned around and plugged in my phone, wishing I had charged it earlier in the day.  Then the lightning started.  And then, a few minutes later, the power went out.  So much for charging the phone.   


The storm looked pretty cool, so we grabbed our flashlights and headed out to our balcony to watch.  (We're crazy like that)  There was so much lightning, it was incredible.  You didn't really need a flashlight to see outside because the lightning was so bright and frequent.  Dallin said it looked like there was a TV on in our skylight.  

This is an actual picture of the storm, but I can't take credit for taking it.

We watched as tree branches started breaking off and falling, keeping our fingers crossed that one wouldn't land on our car.   After a while we decided to head in and sleep... what else can you do when it's dark and you don't have electricity.  


I woke up Saturday morning, my phone told me it was 5:30 (and that it was about to die), but it was too hot to go back to sleep.  Dallin and I went for a walk to survey the damage.  There was quite a few downed limbs from some pretty big trees, but there weren't any downed power lines or smushed cars (in our area).   We had some friends over for breakfast (hurray for gas stoves and matches!) and I learned it's hard to cook bacon by flashlight.  By this point it was about 9 am and we were all sure that the power would come on any minute.  It had too.  the temperature was supposed to get up to 101 and we NEEDED air conditioning.  By quarter to 10 when there was still no air, we decided to take a drive.  It looked like a war scene, downed trees and power lines, smushed cars, smushed houses.  And there was no power anywhere!  Which meant no AC :(  On top of that, cell phone reception was horrible and we had no data coverage so there was no way to find out what was going on. 

This is right by our city hall

At least this guy had a sense of humor... the sign says "for sale, recently lowered"

We suffered through the afternoon and Dallin left, on his bike, at about 3:30 to go check on the families he home teaches.  At about 6 the power came back on!  I did a happy dance and turned all our fans on!  It was great.  Dallin was at our friends house who still didn't have power so we invited them over to dinner in a slightly cooler house (it took quite a while for our AC to limp back to life).  We had dinner and talked and then they went home and we made one more stop by my friend Liesel's house to offer our AC since they were still without it.  And then slept in our wonderfully air conditioned house!  


I turns out that the storm we had was called a derecho, it's like a tornado that doesn't spin. (News video about the storm here).  The peak wind gusts in our area were 80-100 mph.  And we were without power for so long because on top of the downed trees and power lines around the neighborhoods, some of the big transmission lines were knocked down by the wind.   We are some of the lucky ones to get power so early.  A lot of people don't have power still, and might not have it for a few days.  Church doesn't have power so that has been canceled for the day (our chapel is in the middle of the building and doesn't have windows).  We've been invited to the Arlington wards' sacrament meetings, so at least we'll still get to go to part of church today!


So today, I'm thankful for electricity and for the people who have been working non-stop in the heat to get our power back up!  I'm thankful that I was not born in pioneering times, because I just don't think I'm cut out for it (I realized I like air conditioning way too much!).  I'm thankful for the Arlington wards who are going to let our not-so-small ward join them in their not-so-big building so that we can have the opportunity to go to church and partake of the sacrament even though our building is out of commission.  I'm thankful for cold water and for the fact that we got power back quickly enough to not lose everything in our fridge (we had just gone grocery shopping).  And I'm very thankful that as far as we know none of our friends were injured in the storm. 


If anyone needs AC, someplace to charge a phone, or a cold drink, just stop by, we'll be home most of the day (although if you're reading this, you probably have power too). 

Graduation

Dallin Graduated!!  Hurray!!!  We were so excited and I am so proud of him.  My mom and Dallin's parents were able to come out to visit for his graduation.

He got to wear these great robes, and a funny little beret-ish hat :)

It was fun to talk with some of his friends and professors.  This is Dallin with his friend Corey, and yes his hair is blue.  It's how he showed up to law school the first day.  He did it blue again just for graduation.

The whole motley crew.

Now... on to the bar!

EDIT: I meant now onto the bar exam... not the other kind of bar...just in case you were wondering