The Katy Trail

About midway through the Spring semester, we discovered something that we really enjoy. The Katy Trail is a hiking/biking trail that runs through a good portion of the residential/small business districts just north of downtown Dallas. It runs along a power easement and has pedestrian/biking bridges over all of the cross-streets. We've found that we can access the north end of the trail by riding our bikes from our apartment through the neighborhood near us. Mockingbird Lane, a major thoroughfare between Love Field airport, SMU, and I-75 near downtown has been shut down through our neighborhood for construction, which has been awesome for us. Once on the trail, we can ride down to the Knox/Henderson shopping area and all the way down to the American Airlines Center downtown - all on a bike path! The trail's website is www.katytraildallas.org.

The weekend between my final exams (I'd taken two and still had three to go), we got up early on a Sunday morning and rode down to the Starbucks at Knox, where we sat for a couple hours and read (I studied negligence and proximate causation in Torts, for those of you who are interested). Here are some pics!

Here's us after biking to Starbucks. We enjoyed breakfast and coffee there:





Here are some pics of us on the trail:









Then we biked down to Victory Plaza near the American Airlines Center downtown. It was a Sunday morning, so not much was going on. One of the local news stations broadcasts from there.







And here's Steph momentarily visiting New Mexico from a friendly, local playground:

Finishing up the semester and looking ahead to summer

Hey, everyone. We've been doing well. Most of my time lately has been devoted to wrapping up the semester, getting ready for exams, and getting things together for summer work experience. Once classes end this week, I'll have two weeks of exams and then be done with my first year (!) on May 9. I've gotten involved at school in some things that interest me: I was recently voted as one of four students at school to sit on the law school's Honor Council, which hears cases of violations of the school's honor code. If there aren't any reported violations, then I won't be busy with that, but if there are, the decisions the Council makes can show up on students' official school report when those students apply for bar licensure, so it can be a fairly serious thing. I also applied for and was selected to be a Mentor for new students coming in next year, which I'm excited about. All in all, it's been a really good first year of school.

This summer, I expect to be working at a non-profit agency in Dallas for the first half of the summer. The program is through the school, and I haven't yet heard where I'll working. The second half of the summer, I'll be working downtown at the federal courthouse for a U.S. District Judge, which should be a very good opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different legal issues and the working of the U.S. court system. At some point in there, we're hoping to visit Albuquerque to see family and friends. We'll also try to make some weekend trips to Tyler and Austin. Malory hasn't ever been to Austin, so we need to get her down there!!

Steph has been doing great at work. She's enjoying it and getting along really well with both her co-workers and her customers. It's great that she's able to know so many students from the law school - her Starbucks store is only 2 blocks down, so it's a popular source for caffeine and sitting somewhere other than the library.

More later,
Nathan

Jed & Christine's Visit

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jed and his girlfriend Christine came up from Austin to visit us. In the two weeks since then, I was spending a lot of time working on an appellate brief, which constitutes my final exam grade for my Legal Research & Writing Advocacy class (the only grade for that class, as we have only one graded test per class in law school). Also, Steph's parents were in town over Easter, which was really great. On a side note, we were all pleasantly surprised to find that Chuy's (a Mexican restaurant in town) has some authentic New Mexico green chili sauces! Woo-hoo for familiar New Mexican food in Dallas! Needless to say, we'll be going back...

We had a great time during Jed & Christine's visit. During the weekend they were here, we drove around downtown and tried out some places new to us, we saw Derek Webb, a favorite musician of ours, perform in Deep Ellum, and we stayed up beyond late playing Phase 10. Malory stayed up late with us too, but sadly, we did not get any photos of the fun craziness of that night. It's great having a weekend like that every now and then, and it was so good seeing our friends.

Here's us enjoying Pioneer Plaza and the bronze longhorns...









My beautiful red-headed beauty with the blossoms.



Jed & Christine playing around on modern art in front of Dallas City Hall.

Life these days...

Sorry it's been such a while since any updates.  I got pretty sick a couple weeks ago and missed some school, so I spent some time catching up.  Then my Dell hard drive crashed (the second crash in two months - come on!), so I'm spending some time catching up.  Plus, I'm trying to balance studying with the summer job search, working on my big legal writing project for the semester, volunteering some time for the law school's public interest group - oh, and normal things like sleeping and hanging out with Steph.

I am happy to report that, aside from being sick two weeks ago, Steph and I have been able to make it to the gym together twice a week for about six weeks now.  Also, we've begun meeting again with our home group on Wednesday nights after a break for the holidays - something we really committed to doing last semester, which has been good.  Sometimes it really takes a while to get to know people (especially on a once-a-week basis), but it's been rewarding.

You invest in what you love.  For us, that means taking time away from studying and just spending Saturday together - or meeting up with our home group Wednesday nights even though that's my busiest day of the week (by far).  We stay really busy these days between school and work, but we're two of the happiest people we know.

Our love to you all,
Nathan

A Valentine from Sally

My sister-in-law sent me an early valentine from Sally. This is definitely not an insignificant matter. Sally has had a crush on me for several years now and relishes any time she's able to get with me. She gets especially jealous when Stephany is with me. She'll actually try to get inbetween us and break us up. If we start hugging, she'll bark at us. She's weird, but that's Sally - she's a Vizsla with passion (or, at least, bizarre, animal-human passion).

Happy Birthday Nathan!!!!

On February 4, 2008, my love Nathan turned 27. We spent his birthday weekend with his family out in Tyler, TX. We had a great time with his family. It was so nice getting out of town and celebrating his day.

I love making Happy Birthday Cookie Cakes for my love!



Kid's having fun at Gran's house.




This is Hart...laid back, havin' fun too.

Working on Uncle Nate's cake.



Here's Nathan with his birthday cookie.

Eat the cookie not the pan...EAT THE COOKIE NOT THE PAN!!!!

More Family Photos









Birthday Time!!!









Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Nathan. Happy birthday to you!