Happy Birthday to ...Me!

Well, I've been 24 for a couple of weeks now and thought I'd make it official by, of course, putting it on my blog. So far its been great! Kimball and I went to the movies and out to dinner. I also bought myself some scrapbook stuff a while back for Kimball to give to me. Thanks sweetie!!

We also had a luau at my parents house to celebrate mine, my Aunt Ranee's, and my baby cousin Taya's 1st birthday. It was so much fun! My parents and Shelley can put together a great party. Somehow I managed to get stung by a bee, but after caking on some mud (which I don't think really worked) I felt better in a couple of days. Despite the crazy bee, it was a great day.

Baby cereal

This last week Jo started eating rice cereal. I can't believe she's 4 months old now. I feel bad, but I kind of put off starting her on cereal for a few days because it takes that much more effort than just a bottle. Now that its part of routine its not so bad though. She's learning fast, it only takes about 15 tries to get a spoonful in, rather than the 20 we started out with. :)

She sure is a sweetie though. Her personality is starting to come out more and she is so tender and sweet. She loves to be held and cuddled. The closer the better for Jocilyn, which is very different than how I remember Kaden. I love my little family, I get caught by surprise at how much we are growing and changing all the time.

LeBaron Reunion

Last weekend we went to the LeBaron Reunion here in Utah. It was a ton of fun seeing everyone. A bunch of Kimball's family showed up so it was like a mini Jones reunion too. This reunion was for the descendants of Kimball's grandparents on his mom's side. Can you believe that includes 503 people?! The descendants on my grandparents side is like 27 people. That's a big difference!

After 5 years of being a Jones I'm finally starting to get a few of Kimball's cousins sorted out, which made it that much more fun. We mostly played a bunch of games together. Some were Mafia (late into the night), and also a crazy game called Fresh (that I did not get at all). And what would a reunion be without a few crazy skits. Luckily, I was assigned to keeping my kids busy. I promise I didn't whine or beg, they just didn't want Jocilyn screaming or Kaden running around out of control (for once I was grateful Kaden can be a little wild sometimes). Kimball and Alvin were not so lucky, although they did a great job. But it does explain some of the stranger photos. And yes, Alvin is holding a plunger--hopefully new and unused.

Nerves

I don't know if any of you are keeping up with the Olympics, but I cannot go to sleep each night without my daily dose. The gymnastics competition is driving my crazy! The men's all-around is going on right now and I can't take the anxiety. I don't know what I'll do when the women go.

Closing a Chapter

As most of you know Kimball has been going to law school for the last three years and finally graduated in May. It was a really hard time for us, going in with such high expectations only to realize that law wasn't just something Kimball didn't enjoy, but it made him truly unhappy. Thankfully we made it through--hopefully a little wiser about who we are and the things we really need from life. I don't know if Kimball would admit to this, but law school really did teach us a few lessons. The old saying "money doesn't buy happiness" comes to mind. I know its cheesy, but that's the best I can explain it. Our plan was for Kimball to get a job out of law school doing the grunt work for a few years as almost all lawyers do then working our way up to partner. The pay would be good at the kind of firms Kimball had in mind, but for about 5-10 years we wouldn't see much of him. In the beginning we were willing to make the sacrifice. But the tough schedule law school requires gave us a glimpse at what that life would be like, and I'm glad to say we saw the error in our thinking. We also realized that the grunt work Kimball would have to do was, for Kimball, beyond tolerable for any length of time. Each summer during our internships I watched Kimball go in hopeful that a different perspective might show him something more appealing in the law. As time went on he became worn down and unhappy about everything to do with his work. It didn't take long to realize a fat paycheck would never be worth what this work did to him.

I hope I'm not depressing anyone too much. Good things happened for us in the last three years as well. We now have two beautiful healthy children and some close friendships we wouldn't have had otherwise. We are very grateful for these things.

We recently moved from Provo into my parents house while we get the job situation taken care of. I'm grateful to have married such a talented guy. We've had to look a little harder, but Kimball has come up with a few really good options doing things he should enjoy. Most of them have to do with finance and one with sales. Right now he's considering three different options: two are sure things if he wants to go that route and we're going through the interview process with the third. We hope in the next week or two to know what we'll be doing. I'm not going to go into detail about the jobs until I know which one he's chosen. They're all so different it would take too much time and this is already a ridiculously long post. Just letting you know what we're up to and that things look really good. I'll keep you up to date!