Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving and Christmas was spent with our families. Sadly, I didn't take many pictures because we were too busy having fun with them!

Thanksgiving was spent with my family in Utah. I had not seen them since my wedding festivities in January so this was a great time to catch up and find out what's been going on back home. It was wonderful to spend time with my family and visit with friends. I do miss you all but thank goodness for technology! Phones and the internet make the distance much easier to handle.

Courtesy of my wonderful friend Ashley - thanks Ash!!

Christmas we spent in Missouri with Mark's family. I love getting together with all of the nieces and nephews. They are all around the same age and are such good friends. It is such fun to watch them all play together! Kinda jealous. Mark's parents got us a Christmas tree and a slew of beautiful ornaments to decorate it with. I can't wait until I get to play with all of it next year! (They also got us an electric blanket and it is the most wonderful thing ever. There is nothing better than getting into a nice warm bed when everything around you is COLD.) This year because our apartment needed a little more Christmas cheer to go along with our stockings and stocking holders , I decorated a little 3' tree. I made some of the ornaments and, overall, I was quite happy with how it all turned out. Thank you Pinterest for the inspiration.

We had a gift exchange between families and we had the Funks. We watched the kids so that Abe and Emily could go on a date together and we made the kids their own little craft easels. I hope they have as much fun using them as I had making them. (Thanks Pinterest....again...)

Ok...Maybe Miss Hannah had more fun with my shoes...

Santa Fe Part 3: Balloon Fiesta

So...the hiatus was all due to the abundance of pictures from the Balloon Fiesta - too many to pick from! I kept looking at picture after picture and picking more and more pictures and postponing the post longer and longer...so, sorry, the hiatus is entirely my fault. 

Anywho - Balloon Fiesta - lots of fun! We woke up early early in the morning (4 am) and drove from Santa Fe to Albuquerque to see the morning glow and mass ascension at sunrise. There was a long caravan of cars all with the same idea. The beauty of waiting in line with all those cars and actually getting into the arena was that you could see the balloons up close and personal. We saw the whole process: the laying out of the balloon on the ground, the filling it up, and finally the take off! The crew that we observed were from France. The Balloon Fiesta is an international event so people come from all over the world, which means hundreds and hundreds of balloons all filling up and taking off at the same time. It's absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! 

Filling the Balloons up at Sunrise - beautiful morning

The sun balloon in the middle aka "Lady Sun" is the balloon that belonged to the French crew we observed

All lined up ready to go...

Santa Fe - Part 2: Los Alamos

As part of our preparation for Santa Fe, Mark and I read the following book: 

109 East Palace - a story about Robert Oppenheimer and the nuclear bomb project at Los Alamos.

Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim took us to visit Los Alamos... and what was a surprise to me (which is really sad to admit to) I believed it was going to be a deserted town. (Kind of like the Japanese internment camps in Delta - don't bother going... There are only foundations to look at.) Much to my surprise, Los Alamos is still an active lab and the little community is still going strong. They had a museum which was great to go to for the sole fact that they had life-sized statues of Oppie and General Groves. After reading about them, seeing them in even in plaster form really made them that much more real to both Mark and I.

This was taken on the drive up. It's a beautiful sight, but at the same time, it is amazing to me to think about what it would have taken to go up the mountain in the 1940s without the convenience of modern engines and roads. Not to mention how those scientists must have felt to get to Lamy, NM and see the "nothingness" of the desert landscape in stark contrast to the California and New England landscapes they came from. 

There are a few events that took place in Santa Fe, and we had the chance to visit them as well. Here is the actual office at 109 East Palace - the front office for the project. Obviously, the office no longer exists, but it was so fun to be there!

And lastly, La Fonda - This is where Oppenheimber enlisted the help of Dorothy McKibben (a Kansas City native - woohoo!!) and the story story begins. History coming to life. I loved it!

Santa Fe - Part 1

At the end of September, Mark and I were very lucky to spend the weekend in Santa Fe visiting with his Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim. It was a fantastic trip because it had everything you could hope for - wonderful company, beautiful sights, relaxing moments, memorable events.

I had never been to Santa Fe (or any part of New Mexico). Therefore, my first impression of Santa Fe was "Oh wow! It's like being in Utah!" followed later by "Oh my goodness - it is SO DRY out here!" Santa Fe is definitely one of those towns with personality and it was fun to be there. Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim showed us the town and treated us to some great places (the Bishops Lodge and Pink Adobe) and we loved spending each afternoon chatting with them on their veranda as the sun set overlooking Santa Fe.

Santa Fe is known for their Pueblo-style architecture. As Aunt Margaret said, you have 10 different brown colors to pick from when you paint your house and you get in trouble if you don't use one of those 10. Yet people still put their personalities into their homes and I loved seeing the contrast between the green of the trees and the periwinkles, turquoise, and reds of their flowers, chilis, and painted door and window frames against the brown of the adobe.

This is where we went to brunch (my first ever brunch experience) and where we also had our very first taste of Buffalo meat - and it was DELICIOUS!!

Their art museum

This is the main plaza...vendors sell food, there's a bandstand that hosts free concerts in the summers, and there are people who sell jewelry along the sides of the roads. There are lots of little shops around the area if you really want to get into the Santa Fe spirit and buy fringe, sequins, and cowboy boots (which Mark almost did - I did not take pictures of this, but we did almost succumb and bought some Lucchese boots like theses ones). There's a really great small town feel, which is really interesting since as a State capital I would think it would have more of a bigger city feel. (And yes, that is Mark looking back.)

And of course we have to share the view from their veranda ...breathtaking!! We are both big fans of the view. :)

Teaching?! - Finance 2000 with Mr. McMullin

One of my dreams in life has been to teach. Though, I've always wanted to make more money than what teachers normally make. So my idea was to go out into the world, hopefully make money in business, and then transition into teaching. This fall, my dream arrive early...

As a third-year law student, I had applied for a TA position for business law. With my application, I included my resume and outlined my business background as well as my love for finance. The reply to my email was totally unexpected. While the business law TA position was mine if I wanted it, the instructor they were planning on teaching a section of Finance 2000 had fallen through at the last moment, the e-mail asked if I would be interested in teaching the class. My answer: absolutely!


Though I was very excited about this unique opportunity to teach finance to business minors, I was also nervous. Here was an opportunity that I had dreamed about. Yet in my dreams, it always happened when I was older, with more experience, and a proven track record. Here I was young, poor, and for the most part unproven. I was scared that I would fail - that I would either not like teaching or even worse, not be good at it. 


A month in, here's my take. It's harder than it looks. Especially teaching a class for the first time. It takes a lot of time to prepare for three classes each week. Especially as a rookie, it is impossible to wing it. Yet it is very rewarding. I like having an audience. I like being able to share what I have learned. I like how in preparing lessons and teaching the material to others, I learn. And perhaps my favorite part is seeing the light bulbs go on.... There is a lot of that in finance. For most of their lives they have heard about assets and liabilities, stocks and bonds, and now they finally know what those words mean.


Based on my experience so far, I would love to continue teaching part-time in the future. If anyone has thoughts on how to make that happen, please share them with me.

NYC - Summer 2011 - The Recap

Some decisions in life just aren't very hard. Such as when my mom calls asking if Daniela and I would be interested in going to New York City with them. Umm.... Absolutely!

We stayed just north of Times Square. The location was excellent. Walk a few blocks north and you arrived at Central Park. A few blocks south and you were in the theater district. And right there in the theater district is my new favorite restaurant in NYC - Carmine's Italian Restaurant. The portions were huge and the food was delicious! 

McMullin clan at Carmine's

Walking to the Metropolitan Museum turned out to be more of a hike than we expected. Though with the help of street vendors selling popsicles, Daniela and I made the trek. Pictured below, the beautiful Daniela with a coffin that I am sure my nephews would have loved to see. 

Our last day in NYC, was the day that the U.S. Women's soccer team was scheduled to play Japan in the finals. A few hours before the game, we began searching a for a good place to watch it. We found what might have been the best place to watch it. ESPN was hosting a watch party in Times Square. We grabbed a seat and joined the thousands of people who stopped to watch the game on ESPN's outside jumbotron. It was a blast!

We were totally not dressed to set out in the sun for hours. Luckily, there were more than a few vendors willing to sell us  " I Love New York" shirts to help us cool off.

Lake of the Ozarks - Summer 2011 - The Recap

This school year, I am serving as vice-president of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys (MATA) at Mizzou. One perk of that position is that MATA allowed the president (Josh Sumner) and I attend their annual conference at the Lake of the Ozarks. The organization, like the MATA members I know, was very generous. We got to set in on CLEs, attend dinners, see the Governor, and eat some delicious deserts (picture below). 

Also while at the lake, one of the partners (Scott Nutter) from Shamberg, Johnson, & Bergman was kind enough to treat Daniela and I to dinner at the Blue Heron. It was a memorable evening that we will long remember. Daniela also scored major points with me for overcoming (seemingly with little effort) her fear of heights to go parasailing. Many people warned us not to expect parasailing to be super exciting. While not an intense excitement like skydiving, parasailing was fun and we're glad we had the chance to do it.

Maybe someday we'll be super wealthy and willing to pay the high prices they charge to get a picture of us up in the sky. Until then, we'll stick to the pictures we can take for free. 

As for the Lake of the Ozarks, I'm glad to say that I've been there. It is just one of those things that being from Missouri I felt like I needed to visit someday. Still left on the Missouri to-do list, going up in the St. Louis Arch.