Well we need a little Christmas, right this very minute...

Okay, so I wrestled with the idea of writing the obligatory Christmas letter and sending it to everyone, but after much pondering, I decided to save the USPS the trouble of hauling 80,000 letters all around the globe and went with the option to do it this way... so welcome to the first annual Aivaz Family Year-End/Christmas Report.

Cue fanfare.

No, no not that... make it a little more seasonal.

That's better.

Anyway, how do these things usually go? We just write about the events of the last year, post some pictures and then just expect people to read it and care? Okay. Well, I guess we'll just start off with the youngest member of our little family, Reagan.

Reagan had a pretty big year in 2011... she turned 1, learned how to walk, talk, count, and most importantly (and most recently) sleep in a "big-girl" bed. Yes, as of tonight, Reagan says goodbye to the crib forever (and Seana and I probably say goodbye to sanity). Reagan loves staying at home with Seana all day, she gets restless at home sometimes when it's too cold to go outside, but she's generally good to go and play blocks or baby dolls upstairs in her room after a small period of freaking out. She's a tender little thing, who gets her feelings hurt very easily, but is physically very tough... she wipes out with the best of them and springs right up, usually saying "I okay". She loves her sister, running around the house, and jumping on beds.

Reagan's Christmas wish list:

• Baby dolls
• A lifetime-supply of cranberry mixed juices
• Anything Elmo-related (Seriously, she's obsessed)
• Some fuzzy boots (Her sister has a pair and Reagan flies into a jealous rage whenever Katelyn puts them on)

Next, we come to Katelyn, our little Kindergartner.

As you can probably guess, Katelyn's big deal this year was starting school. When we got the news that UNLV wasn't going to be an option for law school, my one real silver lining to the storm clouds brought by that realization that Katelyn wouldn't be stuck in the den of failure and iniquity known as the Clark County School District. After doing some reading online about the Oxford School District, I knew that even if it wasn't the right fit for me, it would be the right fit for Katelyn. And I was exactly right. Katelyn LOVES school. I honestly think she likes her teacher, Ms. Henry, more than she likes me and Seana sometimes. Okay, most of the time. She is doing really well in school... she's generally well-behaved and was even her classroom's "special friend" one day (the special friend gets to help with things in class and acts like a tiny little teacher's aide) She'll be turning 6 next August and starts 1st grade in August. Time flies when you're having fun (and being naughty).

Katelyn's Christmas wish list:

• Books
• Not having to listen to her parents (The gift that keeps on giving)
• A make-up desk
• Her very own TV so she can watch Netflix constantly

Now I can either decide to go in age order, with which I would be next (Seana's a total cradle-robber) OR I can make a legit editorial decision and make Seana next...

Seana seen here in her usual position: Comforting Reagan.

Seana's been a real trooper this year. Of all the adjustments we've all had to make this year, she probably had the toughest. And I can't blame her. Her entire life was in Las Vegas; family, friends, everything she ever loved literally was in that town and suddenly, over the span of a weekend, she was in Mississippi, with no family or friends within 2000 miles, through no fault of her own and with very little time to prepare herself physically, mentally, or emotionally. But, where others might have turned inward or threw a never-ending pity party for themselves, Seana kept at it. Sure, many tears were shed and some homesickness came, but she always picked herself up and keep going. She has even made some splendid new friends and, though it may not feel the same as Las Vegas, she is doing everything she can to make Oxford home. It's not always easy being a homemaker... you can feel very alone and sometimes feel like you don't have your own identity, and I admire her for her faith and her strength. Everything I am or do I owe to her and her example keeps me going and on the right track. I love you, Seana.

Seana's Christmas wish list:

• A Forever Lazy (Not kidding)
• Some Hostess Snowballs
• A clean house
• Plane tickets to Las Vegas

Although, maybe Christmas came early this year... Seana's parents came to see us for a couple weeks and a great time was had by all. Except for maybe Seana's parents, who had to sleep on a queen-sized air mattress in our kitchen. We'll pick up the Chiropractor's bill, I promise.

Well, that brings us to... me.

Looking super-duper fly, as always. p.s. Not my real hair-do.

I had a pretty big year, this year, myself. Coming off my epic fail of my first LSAT attempt, I studied hard and was able to get a pretty decent score, all things considered, on my second attempt. I'm not going to discuss numbers specifically, but suffice it to say the second attempt was a significant improvement. I thought the strength of my GPA (3.83 in-program) would carry my mid-range GPA and get me into UNLV, however, this was not to be. I saw Ole Miss on the law school brochures and saw that it was competitive to get into, was ranked relatively high, and was a great value (i.e. My 2nd-and-3rd years COMBINED will cost as much as my 1st year at UNLV ALONE would have cost) so I filled out an application and sent it in, not thinking anything of it. Plus Seana absolutely refused to move to Mississippi. 3 weeks later, I got an envelope from Ole Miss... accepted. All told, I applied to 9 schools, got into 6, got turned down by 1 and wait-listed by 2, including UNLV. After some prayer, we narrowed our schools down to Willamette (in Salem, OR), Washburn (in Topeka, KS), and Wyoming (in Laramie, Wyoming). Ole Miss didn't even make the final 3 cut. But after some prayer, our list began to winnow...

1. Willamette - Was too expensive. Gone.
2. Washburn - Hefty scholarship offer, but would have forced us to live in Kansas. Yuck. Gone.
3. Wyoming - Seana doesn't do snow. Neither would our front-wheel drive Hyundai beater car. Gone.

Suddenly, Ole Miss was the last reasonable man standing. In April I sent my seat deposit in and that was that. I was an Ole Miss Law student. It was weird. We were moving to Mississippi. We were going to live in a state other than Nevada. In May I made the reservations for the moving truck and in July I left the state of my birth and started the 2,000 mile drive to my little family's new home, all our earthly possessions packed into the back of a 16' Penske truck and into our little car. But, somehow, it's all worked out thus far. We moved into a nice cozy little condo, met some great people and have settled pretty nicely into our new little church family. Even law school isn't as bad as I thought it would be, heading in. I figured every night would be non-stop studying, never seeing my family and dying of a blood clot from sitting forever. But I did none of those things. And I still feel like I did reasonably well this semester. Finals are now over and we're awaiting my grades, but I'm just happy I survived this and proved to myself I could do it. Many thanks and love to all those who helped me.

Jason's Christmas wish list:

• Some alone time with my wife
• To be listened to by my children
• An entire semi-truck full of Reese's Trees
• The 49ers to win the Super Bowl (The Reese's Trees thing is probably more likely to happen)

Well, I think that just about does it for this letter, however, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to write a little bit about the Savior. We, as a family, try as much as we can to focus on Christ not only over the holiday season, but all year long. This is, by our experience, easier at certain times than it is at others, however, Christmas is one of the handfuls of times throughout the year when we, as believers and followers of Christ, can all unite in faith, despite the name of our church or which scriptures we use, and celebrate the birth of that man foretold of by Isaiah as "Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Regardless of where you are, or who you're with, the Christmas message is for you. May we all take a moment between the hustle and bustle of shopping and wrapping and stressing and cooking to remember Jesus Christ and the wonderful things he brought us... the true first Christmas present.

We love you all and wish you all the merriest of Christmases and a very happy New Year/Seana's birthday (yes, she's a New Year's baby and yes, she hates it. But I'm going to try and show her a good time, regardless).

PEACE! (onearthgoodwilltoman)

Avent Park

Since there's not a whole lot to do here in Oxford and we don't like to spend money, Reagan and I spend a lot of time at Avent park. It is so big and so rad. They have two big wooden playgrounds with swings, slides, sandboxes and much more. Reagan loves the swings. She usually has to go on each swing to try them out. She loves to climb all the steps and go down the slides. I like it because it's essentially in the middle of the woods so there's plenty of shade and it doesn't get too warm. Here are some pictures.



They have these rad little xylophone things. She loves them.





One of the times we went with Katelyn she found a caterpillar and insisted on bringing home. Unfortunately, "Mr. Caterpillar" didn't last long.



We are enjoying the lovely weather here and the time we have spent together. That's all for now.

Our home away from home...

Yeah, hi. We are still alive. Right before we moved our camera broke. We finally got a new one, so I finally felt like I could update. So we've been in Oxford for about month and a half now. It's going really well. Katelyn started school on August 5th. She LOVES it. She has done so well. She has all day Kindergarten. She rides the bus. In Vegas I would never even consider it, but it's worked out well here. She gets on at about 7 every morning and gets dropped off at about 3:30 in the afternoon. It makes for a really long day but she is learning so much and hasn't really seemed to have any issues with it. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Henry and she is amazing. We love her. She is an Oxford native and has been teaching for like 15 years, so she knows what she is doing. We love her school and we love her.

Jason started law school on August 15th. It's crazy and hard and busy and he loves it. I think he was pretty well informed going into this so it wasn't any kind of a shock at how much work he would have each day. It's not easy by any means, and he has A LOT of late nights at the kitchen table, but he is so passionate about what he studies so it's going great!

Reagan and I are still adjusting to being alone together all day. She is so smart and she amazes me with what she picks up everyday. Sadly she has very recently eliminated one nap a day so she only takes one now. Boo!! We enjoy going to the park, cleaning, watching Blue's Clues and reading books together. She misses Katelyn all day and gets sooo excited when she gets off the bus each day.

The south is really cool. I can honestly say that I genuinely like it here. I miss all our family and friends TERRIBLY, but I really like the small town feel and the hospitality here. We made some friends really quickly and everyone has been so welcoming. For the first time in my life I really understand what a "ward family" is.

That's our update for now. Now that we have a camera I'll update it more. Some people have expressed interest in the townhouse, so I'm including pictures. It's only 1,100 square feet, two bedrooms, one full bath and slightly ghetto, but it's ours and we've been pretty happy here. Enjoy.

Here's our front door. Obviously.



When you first walk in you see the stairs. Obviously.



Here's our cute little (!) front room. Don't be jealous of my freaking awesome couch cover. Or my gigantic T.V.



I love my kitchen. It's a lot bigger than I thought. Tons of cupboard space!



Can't say I love my "laundry room" as much, but I'm soo grateful to have it.



Here's the girls' room from their closet.



Here's the girls' closet from their beds. Love all the room for big toys!



Here's my room. Nothing special. But I love it anyway.



We have our desktop on our dresser. Ghetto? Maybe. Convenient? Not Really. Necessary? Yes.

Not pictured: The bathrooms, because, well, they're not clean to the "show this bathroom on a blog" standards. Suffice it to say it's your typical bathroom only with less room and more cracked floor tiles.

Here it is...

Well, we're moving! To Oxford, Mississippi! After much, much prayer we feel that Ole Miss is where the Lord wants my husband to get his law degree. I know it's not a complete surprise, but we've been waiting to "announce" it until we knew for sure that's where we were going. Here's how it went down...

Jason took his first LSAT in December of 2010. He didn't do as well as we'd hoped and it was evident that he needed to retake it if he wanted to get in to UNLV and other schools. He worked his butt off. Seriously, he studied harder than I've ever seen him for the next 6 weeks. He retook it in February of this year and his score improved by 9 points, which is huge. He started the application process. He applied to 9 schools, including UNLV. He was admitted to 6, some with partial scholarship offers, he was denied at one (Forget you, Louisville!) and wait-listed at two- and UNLV was one of them. We were a tiny bit devastated. We knew we had some serious decisions to make. Since there is no ranking of the wait system, we were pretty sure UNLV was out. It had basically become between Ole Miss and Washburn (in Topeka) at that point. Washburn had offered him a really decent scholarship and we were looking that way, but something kept telling us not to count out MS. We looked into the school districts and Oxford has an amazing one. The town is tiny, which I love and we'd be insanely close to campus. The tuition is also cheaper at Ole Miss and if he lost his scholarship over at Washburn we'd be kind of in a mess so this was another plus. We continued to pray and feel we have our answer.

We don't know where we're gonna live, how we're gonna pay for it, or what is going to happen but we are turning to the Lord and trying to trust completely in Him. I know it's going to be extremely hard, but I have faith in our little family and our ability to find joy in the little things and to make this an adventure. We would like to publicly thank all of you for your support and the many prayers that have been offered in our behalf. I'll keep this updated as regularly as I can as we prepare for our trek to our new home in "Missippi".

Change

Evidently Jason isn't any better at this than me.

I don't have it in me to do a real post.

Big changes are headed our way.

I'll post about them soon.

That's all.

What Seana Missed: November

Okay, so we've all had times in our lives that kind of suck, yeah?

November contained a day kind of like that for me. The 4th of November, actually. It started out good enough. I was busy at work when one of the partners pulled me into his office. He cut straight to the chase:

"Jason, this is a termination meeting."

I was floored. I hadn't been laid off since right after 9/11 decimated my former employer's New York City headquarters. My boss did a very good job at comforting me and telling me that I wasn't being fired, but laid off. See, I worked at a Construction Law firm. In Las Vegas. During the worst economic downturn in Las Vegas' history.

My LSAT-taking friends will be able to follow the logical reasoning that's about to come up.

I worked at a Construction Law firm. If the economy is good, people are building stuff. If people are building stuff, they are hiring subcontractors. If they hire subcontractors, sometimes the subcontractors don't get paid. If the subcontractors don't get paid, they hire attorneys. If they hire attorneys, they would usually pick our firm. If they pick our firm, I get enough work to justify my employment. I did not get enough work to justify my employment.

So yeah, that hurt a bit. But it was all for the best. I got to hang out with my family, study for the LSAT (more on that in probably next "month's" post. Epic fail.) and just generally chill out for the first time since I graduated high school. PLUS I get to collect unemployment. I figured I have paid into the system for the past 12 or so years, so now I get to reap all the benefits.

But enough about me.

We discovered something REALLY cool about November...

No one takes their kids to see Santa.

Seriously. The opportunities abound but people refuse to take advantage of them. They'd much rather wait until right before Christmas and spend 87 hours in line to see a Santa who may or may not have their kids' best interest at heart.

But not us. We took our kiddos to see not one, but TWO Santas.

(For those of you who have children who can read and still believe in Santa, that should read "We took our kiddos to see Santa not once, but TWICE")

Once at the Santa's Village at Bass Pro Shops at Silverton and once at the Cactus Garden at Ethel M's... we waited a total of 5 minutes combined for both.

Because we're awesome.

And because people don't realize Santa is just as likely to get you a gift if you ask for it in mid-November than if you ask in late December.

Also, our girls were not terrified of Santa. This wasn't a shock as far as Kate went, but Reagan was like, 10 months old and in the middle of her stranger danger phase. Yet she didn't freak out. I wouldn't say she LOVED Santa, but she didn't scream.

Here's the proof.

And of course other fun stuff like Thanksgiving happened, but we got zero pictures of all that. I know, I know, bad blogger.

As a way to make it up to you all, here's a picture of Reagan being naughty.

Ciao, suckers! See you all in December,

What Seana Missed: October

Okay, so I guess since LSAT stuff is all done with and I'm not gainfully employed and I only do school 2 days a week, I can afford to commandeer the blog from its neglectful owner.

So what I'm going to do is this: Go through the pictures on my laptop by month and make a post per month. Counting October through this month, that's 5 posts. So enjoy it. Enjoy me. And enjoy...

OCTOBER!

First thing: We went to Disneyland. Yeah, it's no big deal. Our girls were cute. We brought Seana's mom and dad along. Being able to pay for your parents to come to Disneyland feels cool... like you're a real live grown up or something. Anywho, good times were had.

Reagan went through a stage for a few months there where, if she saw a mirror at her level, she would go to the mirror and begin to make out with it. Like, graphic making out. As in, if the mirror were a boy, it would be talking to the business end of my 12-gauge by now. Apparently she's just that cute. She can't even resist herself.

Katelyn was very happy to be there, obviously. She proudly rocked her Tangled shirt.

Oh, and she met Tinkerbell. Again. This was like her 4th time. It's getting to be old hat at this point.

What wasn't old hat, however, was riding Splash Mountain... I need to say, I've ridden Splash Mountain countless times before. I love the ride. One of my favorites. I had never gotten all that wet before.

And then I rode it this time. I don't know if they put more water in the ride or what, but I got absolutely soaked. Katelyn, too.

And it wouldn't be a trip to Disneyland without a visit to Ariel's Grotto for the Princess Lunch. This time around, we had Reagan. They loved them some princess dresses. And some Snow White.

Seana had a great time. It's always fun to see a baby on their first trip to Disneyland.

Well, that was pretty much it for October. Please join us next time for November. Thanks for stopping by.

Updates.

Seana's not very good at doing them.

Yell at her.