HAIR

I NEED OPINIONS PEOPLE!  Seriously.  I think I want to cut my hair.  Like big time cut.  Like chop.  Here are some ideas for what I am thinking:

I like the bangs of Cameron here:

Yep, Penny from Big Bang Theory (Season 1 hair)

 Loving the volume here:

Liking this length and bangs:

Love this look, but maybe too layer-y for my liking (I'm really lazy when it comes to hair):

Love this curly look and want to learn how to do it!

I'm scared to chop it because long hair is totally the style right now!  But I just never have the time or motivation to blow dry it and THEN curl it or make it cute, so it is always straight and gets way heavy and flat by the end of the day.  Also I'm going to be a teacher and I'm hoping shorter hair may make me look older?  Don't know but I think it's finally time for the "I've been married for a while" haircut.  Time for a change!  I've had the same hair style since like Sophomore year of high school.  Let me know your thoughts pleaseeee!

Thanksgiving 2012!

I need to blog about Thanksgiving before Christmas comes!

Thanksgiving was super fun this year.  We headed out to Arizona!  We were planning on leaving on Tuesday morning but the rental car place ran out of cars!  What?!  Didn't know that could happen when you had a reservation.  But we had to leave a lot later than planned so we drove to Kanab and stayed in a hotel for the night.  That was fun!  We drove the rest of the way on Wednesday.  I can't remember what we did the rest of that day!

Thursday we got up early to head to a Turkey Trot in the morning but it turned out it wasn't happening?  We couldn't find it so me, Jody and Billy went on a run on our own!  It was so fun!  We ran 5 miles boo ya!  We are awesome.  Then we got all set up for the big Barnes family Thanksgiving!  Me and Billy washed off some chairs and made some green beans and decorated the tables.  Then the family all gathered!  Such a fun Thanksgiving!  Here are some pics of the event I stole from Aunt Becky's Facebook:

It was a great day full of food and family!  That night me, Jody, and cousin Hannah went black Friday shopping to Macy's at midnight!  We are crazy.  It was pretty insane, so we didn't get anything and me and Jody headed right back home because we are old and love sleep.

Friday we took it easy.  We went out to lunch at a new Mexican restaurant, took it to the park and ate and played bocce ball.  Ceci was loving crawling around in the grass.  So cute.  Too bad Ceci kind of hated me the whole trip and would cry whenever I got near her.  That's okay she's still cute.  Then we had to get ready for Billy's cousin Ariel's wedding reception.  We headed over to the reception which was very nice!  They had delicious red velvet cupcakes!  More family fun time! 

Saturday we got to go on a steamboat ride at Canyon lake!  So fun!  It was very relaxing and lovely.  We saw some mountain sheep and some BALD EAGLES!  Can you believe it?  In the wild!  It was amazing.  Loved it.  Ceci was being super cute on the boat.  She makes this noise like a baby raptor and it is so cute.  After the boat ride we headed back home and helped make some turkey pot pie for dinner YUM!  Then we listened to Christmas music and set up the Christmas tree!  Karen has the best tree decorations.  It was super Christmassy.

Bruce taking a little snooze...

Beautiful!

It was such a fun trip!  I think I felt the most comfortable I have felt yet at my in-laws :)  I got really lucky with in-laws.  They are all about what I am all about: relaxing, eating good food, and watching movies.  It was a much needed break!

I need to get some more of the pictures from the trip from Jody :)

Sad/Bad Day

I'm just going to say it...today was a bad day.

It started out awesome.  I went running which I haven't done in a while due to finals and such.  Then I got home and was going to have to hurry to get ready but then saw an email that my 11 o'clock class was cancelled.  Yay!  I was excited to go to my noon class because we were doing a lab making peanut brittle.  And I was excited to go to my Bio 100 class because I like the teacher and all the students I TA and wanted to say bye.

But then...my vision went weird and my hand went numb (which was really strange).  Then my head slowly started pounding and I thought oh no...this is a migraine.  I have only had 2 before in High School and they are literally the worst.  Like if you move a muscle you feel like your head is going to explode and you are going to throw up all at the same time.  There was really nothing I could do, so I just popped some advil and crawled into bed.  I slept from like 11:30-4!!  What?!

I am so sad!  This is my last semester EVER of college classes and I missed the last day of my favorite ones.  I am getting really nostalgic about BYU and Provo lately, and this migraine was just like a cruel joke.  At least I still have one class tomorrow.  I will get to say bye to all my friends :(  I have gotten to know the people in my major so well and while they all still get to see each other next semester, we will be in DC and far away from them.  I'm really sad!!  I will especially miss my friend Katelynn who has become one of my BFFs over these last few years of taking classes together.  Hopefully I feel better tomorrow so I can see them all one last time!

I am feeling better now but still in no mood to do everything I have to do.  But, alas, I must finish up my last few assignments ever. (Crazy!!)

Pictures of a bunch of my major friends on our bug trip last fall (ah, the memories):

so...

We bought our plane tickets yesterday for DC.  WOWZA it's really happening!

Also, this happened the other day:
Me: "I had a dream last night that we forgot to go anywhere for Thanksgiving.  So we just stayed here."
Katelynn: "Wow, that sounds like a really exciting dream"
Me: "Yeah my life is really intense"

And this happened yesterday:
Billy: "If I go through the intersection right now I'll hit that fatty"
Me: Start crying (really, I started crying.  How funny is that?) "Sometimes I am amazed by how perfect we are for each other"

that's all

Big News!

Most of you already know about this big news (and I just put it on Facebook) but...

We are moving to Washington DC in January!  Yay!

I decided I wanted an adventure for us so I applied to do my student teaching in DC.  We talked to my cousin Greg who works for Senator Mike Lee about getting Billy an internship at the Capitol.  Billy applied and just got offered the internship last week!  Hooray!  So we are officially moving out there.  Billy's internship ends May 3rd so we will be out there at least until then.  Then we don't know what we're doing...but we'll figure it out :)

I'm really nervous but pretty excited.  I'm mostly nervous about finding a place to live.  We haven't found one yet.  And I'm stressed about all we have to get done (I'm a stressor...Billy is not.  I think he gets annoyed at my craziness sometimes but at least he balances me out haha).  We need to sell our car so if anyone is interested in buying our awesome 4-runner let us know!

Also some other kind of big news is that I got released from being a Sunday School teacher!!  Yayaya!  Callings in our ward are usually only for a year or less and I had that calling for a year and 3 months.  It was a great learning experience and honestly I've never studied the Book of Mormon harder before in my life, but I'm excited to sleep in on Sunday mornings again!

Also, Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK!  What?!  Time flies!  We'll be heading out to AZ to spend time with Billy's fam and can't wait.  So excited to have a few days off of school.

Carving Pumpkins

On Saturday, after the half marathon, I was feeling really sick.  I was starving but I couldn't eat anything or I felt like I was going to throw up.  It was weird.  So I slept a lot.  Billy got in on that action:

I have so many funny pictures of Billy sleeping from over the years...I'm going to have to do a sleepy Billy post sometime.

After I woke up I was feeling a little better and was able to eat some stuff.  We went to the store to get pumpkins to carve that night!  Carving was super fun!  We tried to take some creepy pictures of ourselves with the pumpkins and they looked super creepy on my phone screen...but not so creepy now because you can see our bodies.  It looked like it was just our heads on my screen haha.  So now these pictures are kind of lame but still funny.  (Of course I carved a giraffe.  And after much deliberation, Billy decided on the traditional jack-o-lantern).

Yeah on my phone screen Billy looked like a ghost in this one...

 Supposed to be a floating happy head

This one is still pretty creepy haha...

So that was fun!

Some other random things...we made a delicious dinner on Sunday!  This spinach lemon tortellini stuff with cooked zucchini.  SO GOOD!

We had a guy from our ward over for dinner too and he was telling us how he used to be in a band and play the drums.  I told him that Billy plays guitar and so he offered to let Billy borrow his nice guitar to play on!  That's been fun for Billy since his guitar strings are broken.

Other random things:

-I took the Praxis exam today!  It's the exam to make sure you can be a teacher.  It was pretty hard and I really hope I passed!  It covered tons of Biology topics.  Like everything I've learned in my college career.

-We deeply cleaned and organized our apartment today!  It was really fun actually to throw so much stuff away!  We did it so people could come look at our apartment (!) I'm going to announce that news later though once we have more information!!  (I'm not pregnant just in case anyone looked at the word "news" and automatically thought that)

-I've been observing in a 9th grade Biology class twice a week for this semester.  Me and my friend Katelynn taught them the other day!  We stood in front of all of them and taught them about the periodic table!  Crazy I know.  And we are teaching them again this Friday!  Wowza it's scary.

-I wanted to do "No sugar November" this month because I have been eating really bad and I was inspired by my cousin Kim to go a whole month without sugar (you're awesome Kim!).  As November was coming up I kept thinking about how sad I would be if, after a long day, I couldn't come home and eat a cookie haha.  Soooo I decided to make it "No soda November" instead! :)  Soda is the main thing I have been wanting to cut out of my diet because I always feel so gross after I drink a lot.  So it's been 3 whole days of November and we haven't had soda yet!  YAY!  We are awesome.  We decided we would only strongly enforce this new rule until Thanksgiving just in case we got around family and couldn't resist...:) Maybe someday I will be able to go a month without any sugar at all.

I guess that's it.  I can't believe it's November already!  Time is flying!  I can't wait for this week to be over...it's going to be a crazy one.  And then I can't wait for Thanksgiving! 

Halloween Half Marathon!!

I did it!!  13.1 miles!

I really love half marathons I decided.  They are hard enough that you really have to work to get ready, and you feel so accomplished when you are done.  My mom says that every race has its own "labor and delivery" story...and its so true.  I've never given birth but I have heard many a story.  So now I am going to share mine...feel free to not read it.  Haha.

In the morning before the race last Saturday we had to be at the buses at University Mall by 6:30.  Laura and Beau picked me up at 5:45 and we headed over there (thanks SO much again guys!!).  We got right on a bus and then drove up to Sundance.  We got there probably around 6:45 or 7 ish.  And the race didn't start until 9!!  So we had to sit around and be freezing FOREVER.  They had a big tent set up with heaters though.  Luckily we ran into Danielle and Brother and Sister Hoopes!  Yay!  So we hung out with them too which was so fun.  We chatted, listened to the awful music they were playing (what's up with that?), asked random people for chapstick when our lips were burning off (ok that was just me), and went potty several times.  When 9 oclock rolled around we were ready to go!

The race started off with a super steep hill for like 2 miles.  I was running with Danielle and we were running super fast.  Then once we got to the main road, I lost Danielle and them (sorry!) and started running solo.  I was feeling awesome!!  Mile 4 rolled around and I was like "what?  This is going to go by so fast!"  Then mile 5..."yep feeling great!"  Then mile 6..."what that was ONLY a mile??  I need to pace myself better" And then I didn't see any mile markers for forever.  I tried to eat my shot blocks I'm guessing around mile 7 and they were FROZEN!  So they were SO hard to chew!  So I was like choking.  At mile 8 ish I ate 2 more shot blocks as fast as I could because I didn't want to walk too long.  This is about when my right calf started tightening up all weird!  I had been running way too fast in the beginning haha!

I kept cruising along...pretty dead tired at this point.  My calf was hurting and I had listened to all my new music I had bought like a million times already so I couldn't use that as an extra boost.  I saw mile marker 11 and I was going to cry.  But I trudged on.  When I saw mile marker 12 I was REALLY going to cry.  Still a whole mile!  My calf was going crazy and I was so tired.  But I kept running and finished!  Yay!!!!  Once I finished I put my medal around my neck and saw Billy taking a picture of me.  I was annoyed because I was tired and I thought he had just gotten there and that was the only picture he took.  He had been there forever though and the camera had magically turned off when he saw me come around the corner, so he only got pictures after I finished.  So I was wrongly annoyed, but we still only got a few pics sorry!

There were some pretty great costumes.  Lots of Captain America's and Batmans.  I was a loser and didn't dress up though.  Mickey Mouse...

The Pope...

Me just finishing (I look fat because I had tons of stuff in my pockets...gloves, shot blocks, phone)

Soo tired!

(I look really big in this picture too...not sure why.  Maybe I really am big but just think I'm not haha. Oh I think the truck behind me is morphing with my body and making me look wide)

I finished in 1:55!!  13 minutes faster than my last half!  But that hill in the beginning gave me a way head start.  And I was running way too fast.

Well, that's the story!  Sorry it's so long!  It was a super fun race despite how stupidly I ran it :)  I wish I had my fav half marathon running buddy to run it with me (Jessica!)...I felt so great after the Salt Lake one!

Sentimental

Billy was being really nice to me today.  Saying really nice things and stuff.  He said he is feeling really sentimental today and he doesn't really know why.  I'm okay with it though.  I just wanted to write down one thing he said so I don't forget...and I didn't know where to write it so I am putting it here ha.

We have been trying to work out our Halloween costumes for a while now.  We don't want to buy anything but we suck at making stuff.  We went to Michael's today to get some feathers so I can be an indian, Pocahontas specifically.  We randomly saw a crown there and Billy was like "I could be a King and just wear this styrofoam crown" and I was like "yeah and I could be a Princess!" and he was like "yeah but you wouldn't need to dress up for that".  Can I get an AWWW!!  So sweet.  A lot of the stuff he was telling me today was pretty sappy, so I'll just leave you with that one haha :)

P.s. Something freaky happened to me today.  I was putting on mascara when all of a sudden.........an eyelash (with full mascara on it mind you) went onto my eyeball!!!!!  It stung like crazy and I was trying to get it out then started blinking like a madman and then......it went BEHIND MY EYE!  Not sure what happened to it but if my eye falls out soon...well now you know why.

P.p.s. I am SO SORE today from my half marathon on Saturday.  I will hopefully blog about it tomorrow but I was like a blind grandma today with my eyelash eye and not working legs.  Pretty funny sight to be seen.  Good thing Billy was being so nice so I didn't feel like a total freakazoid.

Fall funsies

Hey ya'll.  And by ya'll I mean guys.  It's late right now but I feel like blogging.  First things first, I used to be so funny in my blog posts!  I just spent forever reading old posts and I was so funny.  I must be super lame now because my number of comments per post has dramatically decreased.  From like 3 comments down to 1.  Super dramatic.  Haha jk. 

So we have been doing some fun stuff lately!  Last week's date night was Billy's to plan.  He planned some awesome stuff!  First, we went out to eat.  Then we went and got some supplies at Michael's that we needed for our evening.  Then we came home and first...made caramel apples!!!  Yummmm!

They definitely did not turn out looking this good...the caramel actually wouldn't stick to them at all so we just had to cut up the apples and dip them.  Still delish!

Then we painted pumpkins!!  Billy got the idea online and it was so fun.  They look like this:

I will take a picture of ours and post it on here when I'm not so tired.  But they look lots like this!  This is the actual picture Billy got the idea from!  It was super fun and they are fun decorations.  We also watched the movie "Wait Until Dark" which we have owned for a while but never watched.  It was great!  So suspenseful!  Super fun date night!

Then this week, Nu Skin gave us tickets to go hear Aron Ralston speak on Friday night.  He is the guy who cut his arm off when it got stuck by a falling boulder.  So we really wanted to go to that so date night was cancelled this week.  But on Wednesday we went to Costco and after I thought it would be fun to drive up to Sundance and see all the changing leaf colors.  So that's what we did!

Here comes a lot of nature pics.  I LOVE FALL!  Notice all the little yellow trees that look like they are glowing.  Pictures don't do it justice unfortunately.

Our feetsies...

Not sure what that 23 is all about... I loved the colors of this tree.

One of the "glowy" trees.

Anyways, that was magical.  After our little drive I mentioned this idea I saw on a blog- eating doughnuts and drinking cider while watching a fun Halloween movie on October 1st.  It is a tradition in their family and I thought it sounded so fun.  Billy thought it sounded great too... it did involve doughnuts after all!  So we decided we should do it that night!  We headed to Target, bought Hocus Pocus and some cider, and went to Krispy Kreme and picked up some doughnuts!

Can you tell which doughnuts are mine and which are Billy's?  Mine are the fun ones...his are the boring chocolate ones.  Haha :)  YUMMO!

It was kind of rainy-ish and was the funnest night EVER!  Well, maybe not ever, but it was super fun!  New family tradish!  I said to Billy "what if we forget about this tradition next year?" and he said "we won't.  I'll put it in my Google Calendar."  Oh phew.

We decided that would be date night for this week.  So then Friday rolled around and we got to go listen to Aron Ralston!  It was super coolio!!  It was part of the big Nu Skin annual convention, so they had a whole bunch of awards and speeches about Nu Skin first, which was crazy.  I got so pumped about Nu Skin!  I want to start selling it!  Haha not really but kind of.  Then Aron came out on the stage...claw hand and everything!

In case you don't know who this is...he is the guy that this movie is based off of...

I read on Wikipedia about him that he makes $15,000 for each speech he gives.  Crazy sauce, am I right?  And he makes like $40,000 for international speeches. 

Before the speech...

Super excited!!!!!!!!

Anyways the speech was awesome.  He told his whole story.  And I almost vomited.  Especially when he told about breaking his bones and cutting through the nerve...yikes.  He told his story like it was the best thing that ever happened to him because it made him realize what the important things in life are.  It was actually really inspirational even though I think he is stupid for going out into the desert alone without telling anyone where he was in the first place.  Just don't do that.  He said he lost 40 pounds over those 5 days...he thought he was really going to die right there.  It was crazyyyyyyyy cool.

After that we came home and ate popcorn and drank lemonade and watched Gremlins.  Haha I was so scared to watch it because I saw like 10 seconds of it in 5th grade and have had nightmares about it ever since but we bought it for 5 bucks and decided to face my fears.  It was actually super funny and we really enjoyed it.  It was a good Halloween movie :)

Anywayzzzz that's all I have!  Next week is going to be crazy school-wise for me.  Billy has been so great and helpful.  He is teaching my Sunday School lesson for me tomorrow!  Bless his heart!!!!!!!!!!  Ok bye.

Oh p.s. here are 2 random pictures of Billy taken this week:

At work...Billy's coworker took this of him and I think it's cute haha :)

Hahaha and Billy texted this picture to me one day and said "what do you notice that is different about this picture?"  It was that he got a haircut.