Friday Date Night!

  Caitlin and I had a fun date night last night!  We decided to take turns planning a fun date night each Friday and it was Caitlin's turn yesterday.  Usually Caitlin makes the blog posts, but I was pretty bored at work today so I'm making this one.

  So Date Night started out with going to Smash Burger for dinner.  I think it doesn't sound very appetizing, like if you eat there your burger will smash you, or they serve you smashed burgers, but it's actually really good!  I got the Beehive burger and Caitlin got the Smash Classic burger.  We also shared sweet potato fries YUM!

  After dinner, we drove up the canyon to Bridal Veil Falls and walked up the trail to the waterfall because Caitlin loves to see the changing color of the leaves during Fall.  Here's some pictures

 

Here's Caitlin posing naturally in front of the fall colors.

That's me, looking at the leaves... yep.

There's the waterfall. There was also a section all dammed up on the left that had fish. It was pretty neat. Caitlin was telling me about how she was the only person in her bug class to fall in the water here when they came up on a field trip to catch bugs. I wish I could have seen that!

On the walk back to the car we took a few more photos and here they are -

Leaves

Nature

Artsy fartsy

Okay, so I have some explaining to do on this one.  I started walking down the path and turned around and made a scary face since I had been thinking about Halloween all evening and Caitlin laughed and said I looked like a demon.  So I held the scary pose for the photo, but then Caitlin told me to smile, so I started smiling and now looking at the photo, I think I look kind of like a demon that's happy because my eye is all crazy, but I also look like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.  Caitlin laughed for about 10 minutes after taking this photo.  We sent it as a picture message to some people after without any explanation and we thought that was way funny, but all the people who got the picture probably just thought that was weird.  Sorry!

 

Mr. Burns

Me

  On our way back home, we stopped at the Riverwoods shopping area because they have a big Halloween store there.  We wanted to see all the Halloween stuff and also get some inspiration for our costumes this year.  It was pretty fun seeing all the Halloween stuff, but we're still not quite sure what we want to be this year.  We're thinking about being Wolverine and Jean from X-Men, or Eric and Donna from That 70's Show, or a prison inmate and a prison guard.  We had some other ideas too, but I can't remember what they are right now.

Eric Forman

Me

Some people say there is a resemblance, but I don't see it...
 
  At the Riverwoods, there was also a farmers market happening (which wasn't that great) and we stopped at a boutique which had some neat girl and baby stuff so Caitlin really liked it, and we went to the toy store there.  Caitlin found these stuffed animals that she loves and wants them for when we have kids.  I think they are pretty cool too.  There was a red dinosaur that was pretty awesome.  Here's a picture -

  After the toy store, we got back in the car and headed home, but we made one more unexpected stop when Caitlin said, "I wish we had rocky road ice cream from the creamery so I could eat it whenever I wanted to..."  So my brain translated that to "I want some ice cream."  That sounded pretty good to me too, so we stopped at JCW and got the chocolate/vanilla twirl cones.  They really piled that ice cream high!  Check out these pictures -

I guess I was into looking creepy last night with my demon eye...

Thanks for the awesome date night Cait!  It was super fun!

Bruce and Karen come to town!

This past weekend Bruce and Karen drove into town to attend Bruce's uncle Rex Ashdown's funeral in Ogden.  They drove through Provo on Thursday night and we went out to get milkshakes and fries with them.  So fun!

Saturday we drove up to Ogden to attend the funeral.  I've never been to a funeral for a family member before.  I actually can't even remember the last funeral I went to...which is lucky for me I think.  It was a beautiful funeral.  I got to meet lots of family members I hadn't ever met before.  I could feel the love everyone there had for Uncle Rex and for each other.  It was wonderful!  There was an amazing spirit there!

After the funeral we went to the cemetery.  I've never been to the cemetery after a funeral before.  It was really neat.

After the cemetery we went back to the church for a luncheon where I got to meet more family members!

After, we went back to Bruce's cousin Rex' house where Bruce and Karen were staying and chatted and ate snacks (including homemade caramel apples...yummmm!).  They have this little play area under the stairs downstairs where they painted a carriage on the wall with windows...so me and Billy posed in it!

We went outside and fed the horses and played basketball which was great.  I showed my awesome basketball skillz off...not really.

On our way home we stopped in Layton to eat at Brick Oven with some of Billy's aunts and uncles.  It was a blast!  Then we drove cousin Neil and Hannah home with us.  The drive home was so fun!  Billy has some great cousins!  It was a super great weekend.

Lagoon!

Nu Skin Lagoon day was September 14th!  As we were walking in...we saw Hayley and Dan and Johnny walking in right in front of us.  What?!  So fun!  Apparently Dan works for Nu Skin now!  So we hung out with them all night and it was so fun!  I only took 2 pictures but they show perfectly how cute Johnny and Billy are.  Johnny loves Billy.  Johnny was so fun at Lagoon!  He made it so much more fun!

We rode so many rides and had a great time!

Jayson's Baptism

A couple weeks ago, the weekend of September 8th, we drove down to California for Jayce's baptism!  We drove down on Thursday and spent the night at Jenny and Jason's.  Friday we went to the beach with Jenny and the girlies!  It was a blast!  Sierra and Whitney are the cutest little girls ever.  I need to get some pictures from Jenny because I didn't take any.  It was so fun though...we collected sand crabs and jumped over lots of waves and chased lots of birds.  Whitney was so scared of the sand crabs...it was funny because she is usually a little dare devil!  After the beach we got milkshakes from Ruby's on the pier.  Delish!

After the beach we got showered and then drove down to San Diego to go to a family fun center for Jayce's birthday party!  It was a blast!

Here I am zooming around the corner in my go-kart.  I'm awesome.

Here are my wonderful Barrow grandparents who flew in all the way from Texas!

Being crazy while mini golfing...

 

 

Billy wanted me to mention that he is super tan in this picture.  He tans really easily...its kind of unfair.  I got super burnt because SOMEBODY sprayed me with sunscreen but didn't rub it in.  Haha jk it was fine.  I kind of liked the feeling of being burned...am I crazy or what?!??!?!?!?!

Dallin zooming in his kart...he dominated the last round even though Dad took him out a few times haha

The bumper boats were by far the funniest thing to happen that night.  Too bad we don't have pictures of that.  Dad got so soaked...it was hilarious.


Saturday was Jayce's birthday AND baptism!  What a day!  He opened one present early in the day...

A bow and arrows!  All the boys were loving shooting it at a tree and a trash bag full of sticks.

The baptism was great.  My Grandpa Barrow gave an awesome talk relating the gospel to a fishing line.  Grandpa Sutherland gave a talk about the Holy Ghost.  Grandma Sutherland gave Jayce the same baptism bag that she gave me when I got baptized.  It was a great day.

Dad baptized Jayce...isn't Jayce a cutie?

The whole fam...and Erin (Dallin's girlfriend) who doesn't look very happy but I think she was...

Grandparents

Jayce with Derek's missionary plaque

All the sibs... (my shirt makes me look like a black blob but I promise I'm not)

This picture is so awkward for many reasons...can you spy some?

After the baptism we went back home for dinner and cake and presents!

Sunday my mom made us a delish breakfast because she is the best :) and then we had to fly back home.  We left the Mazda at home for my parents to sell!  Pretty sad...but also very relieving.  That car has caused nothing but sadness.  Haha jk that's dramatic...it was a great car until it started breaking all the time.  We loved being home and seeing family if only for a short time!

Labor Day Luau

It is tradition for me and Billy to go to Thanksgiving Point gardens every Labor Day and walk around.  We have had so much fun doing this over the last 4 years now (crazy!!)!  Every year we see them setting up booths and food for a big Luau thing.  This year we decided to go to that instead of just walking around the gardens!  It was SO fun!

First, we had to make a very important stop.  Steven and Katie had their baby early that morning!  YAY!  We stopped at the hospital in American Fork to hold little Kelly for a bit.  It was magical!  She is so sweet!

Congrats Steven and Katie!

Once we got to Thanksgiving Point, we had to wait in line for a while and became friends with an old lady waiting in line in front of us.  She was super nice and seemed super hippy-ish which was fun.  We shared life stories with her and became BFFs...until she disappeared once we got in there.  Sad.

The food was AWESOME!

And yep we did finish almost all of our food...we were very full after.

After eating, the real luau started.  They started with showing some of the clothes they wear in the Polynesian Islands.  Then they had a hawaiian music band play some songs and all the kids came up and danced.  Then they had all the traditional dances from all the Polynesian places.  It was awesome!  I didn't take very many pictures because my camera wasn't getting good ones and I was just enjoying it with my eyes.

Then once it got dark...the FIRE DANCERS!  Soooo cool!

It was an awesome labor day to say the least!  It was just a bummer we didn't get all of our traditional Thanksgiving Point pictures :(  Oh well!

Rough day

Today was rough.  School is hard, being a TA is hard, trying to become a teacher is hard (and SO expensive!), and having the face skin of a 15 year old boy does not help at all.  Wah wah I know poor baby Caitlin.  Good thing I came across this picture...

I don't think I have ever LOL'ed at one of these pictures-with-words before, but I did at this one!  SO FUNNY!  And so true.

Tomorrow I turn in my student teaching application!  One step closer to graduating!!

AND tomorrow is Nu Skin Lagoon day!  YAY!

Just registered...

...for the Provo Halloween Half Marathon!

I'm really excited.  Now does anybody want to do it with me?  I feel like a loser signing up without a friend to do it with...but that's how much I wanted to do it.  It's going to be so fun!  As it says on the website: "The most fun you can have in Provo without getting arrested!"  Sounds like a party!