The Post-Bar Party Begins: July 30-Aug 4

This post is not about the bar exam. I think it's fair to say that the three-day, eighteen-hour California Bar Exam doesn't really deserve to be talked about or remembered. But I will include one picture--the convention center in Ontario, CA, where I took the exam. I suppose that the one pleasant part of the bar exam was that I got to be in southern California to take it.

Thankfully, I didn't have to be in California by myself. Andrea and Olivia drove down with me and kept me sane during the three stressful days. On Thursday night after the exam was over, we drove down to Corona Del Mar, and introduced Olivia to our favorite beach.

Olivia wasn't thrilled about actually touching the water or the sand (she screamed her head off), but she did enjoy looking at the water from a distance.

It was nice to be at the beach while the sun was going down. Great lighting for some pretty pictures.

I think Olivia's already a California girl!
Instead of driving right back to Utah after the bar, we decided to take a road trip through Arizona. All in all, we put 2,000 miles on our car during our 10-day trip to California and back. And Olivia was a pretty good sport about being in the car for long stretches.
She kept herself entertained with her new cup. We didn't want her to feel left out while we slurped our slurpees.
In Arizona, we met up with Heather, Platte, and Belle. Olivia enjoyed watching Belle crawl so much that she saddled up a time or two!
They are both unmistakably little girls. There seemed to be a lot of hand holding...
The six of us stayed in Sedona, AZ, on Friday and Saturday nights. (We even shared a hotel room to save money.) It was a beautiful town. On Saturday, we drove to the Grand Canyon.
It was incredible. I don't think I previously comprehended how big the canyon actually was.
It really makes the view from the Empire State Building much less impressive.
On Sunday, we went to church in Sedona.
After church, Heather and Belle loaded up in our car to make the trek with us to Utah. Platte said goodbye to the rest of us and drove back to their home in Mesa. He had to work during the time that Heather spent in Utah. But it was fun to see him for the weekend.

Perhaps surprisingly, having two babies sitting next to each other in the backseat for a 6-hour car ride wasn't as bad as we were expecting. The only real mishap came the next day when we discovered that Belle's left cheek had gotten sunburned during the ride.
For most of the ride, Heather sat in back with the babies. You can see their reflection in her shades.
Our next stop was Lake Powell.
Well, we wish that our next stop had been Lake Powell. Maybe next year. This time, we just got to drive past it. :(

But we did stop for a couple of days in Cedar City, UT, for the annual Shakespeare festival. My parents and two little sisters drove down from Centerville to join us. My parents drove down primarily to see their two granddaughters, whom they babysat while the rest of us went to The Comedy of Errors on Monday night. Before the show, we all sat on the grass to watch the greenshow--a short, comedic sing-and-dance production. [Note: The extra kid on the right is sitting in for both Adam and Platte, our only missing family members.]

We then enjoyed watching the play in the awesome outdoor theater. It was a very funny play.
But the highlight of the Shakespeare experience, as it is every year, was eating the homemade cream cheese tarts sold by SUU college students trying to imitate (in dress and in speech) medieval Englishmen.
On Tuesday, we made the drive home from Cedar City to Orem. We stopped for lunch at one of Andrea's childhood favorites, the Daley Freez in Payson. I would definitely go back for the lime sherbert.
All in all, our road trip was a great introduction to a fun year-long adventure.