Hair Cut

Tonight is a milestone in our marriage. . . I successfully cut Jared's hair for the first time ever, and it actually looks pretty good! We were both a little nervous that he might have to buzz it all off if I butched it bad, but luckily it turned out okay!

I think he's pretty cute . . . just sayin :)

Chili, Date Night and other Randomness

A couple of weeks ago I was at church and they sent around a sign up sheet to bring food to a relief society activity. Well I, being the unsuspecting and naive young girl that I am, had no idea that in family wards, they are hardcore about their relief society food.  I was totally willing to make a dish and take it, ya know, like rolls, beans or some other easy side dish, so when the sign up sheet came around I put my name on it. Then I watch as the girl next to me lift up the sheet I had just put my name as she signed her name on the "Side Dish" list. How am I supposed to know that family ward relief societies are much more organized than student ward relief societies, not only do they pass out sign up sheets. . . but they pass out individual sign up sheets for A) Main Dish B) Salads C) Side Dishes and D) Desserts and that I am supposed to lift up the front sheet marked "Main Dish" in order to sign up for something less important?! I swear they do this on purpose, put the main dish list on the front page to catch unsuspecting people like me off guard. I probably could have grabbed it back from the girl and erased my name from the main dish list, but then I would have looked like an idiot for not having read the dang sheet more closely! So I was stuck with the task of having to make a main dish. Now this had to be good people, this was my first family ward RS activity and being new in the ward, if I made something crappy, all the old ladies would probably label me as "that sweet thing who attempted to make a main dish. . . " This is a little traumatizing!

So I decided to make some Chili. When we first got married my sister gave me this really good recipe for Chili that I've made quite a bit the past couple of years, so I thought it would be the easiest, fool proof thing to do in this situation. I figured I'd make quite a bit because other people were smart enough to figure out that they needed to sign up on the "side dish" sheet if they wanted to actually make a side dish, so there weren't too many of us who had signed up for the main dish. The night before the activity I made 1.5 batches of the stuff, which is quite a bit for this recipe. The next day rolls around and this lady calls me up to remind me to bring a main dish. I made the mistake of asking her how many people to plan for, she says "Well, there were only a few people who signed up for the main dish and you were the only one who didn't have a question mark by their name. . . so plan for 24." Oh boy, it took all my power to restrain from yelling, "What the crap woman, you make a main dish to serve 24!!" I held my tongue and then proceeded to text Jared about the crazy RS lady who wants me to make chili for 24 people! So I ran home, got more ingredients for the chili and made another whole batch of the stuff. The whole time I was thinking, "First of all, we'll be lucky enough to get 24 people to this activity and second of all, these ladies probably eat like birds so we're probably going to have chili coming out of our ears after this!!" but I was faithful in my sign up and I made more chili. Haha it would have been pure comedy for you to watch me try and lug all that chili into the church building, but I did it. I was right on all counts though. Less than 24 people showed up and the ladies ate like birds. . . so I came home with a butt-load of chili. I'm never signing up to take food to a RS activity ever again!  But this randomly brings us to the awesome date night we had with our friends Maddi and Alex.

Maddi let me know that her and Alex got tickets to go see the play Sleepy Hollow and they wanted us to go with them. We decided that sounded like fun, so we got tickets as well. A few days later I had the chili fiasco, so I called Maddi up and asked her if they wanted to come over before the show to have chili with us because we had A TON leftover. They agreed so we made a pretty good dent in the leftovers before going over to the show. It was cool because the play was at an outdoor amphitheater in Provo. I had no idea that this amphitheater existed but it's pretty sweet, it's a replica of a castle, so it worked out well for the play. I had never seen Sleepy Hollow before, I was somewhat familiar with the story, at least the Headless Horseman part, but this particular version seemed more like a love story to me than the scary story I was expecting. It was still good though. . . other than the part where I we sat on hard rocks (this is a "castle" amphitheater mind you) and I couldn't feel my butt by the end of it. . . that wasn't too fun :)  After the play we went back to Maddi and Alex's apartment for hot chocolate and to watch the new X-Men. That movie is really good, we highly recommend seeing it! I stole this picture of all four of us from Maddi's blog.

Check out the kid in the skeleton 

shirt behind us. . . baha

I found some random pictures and videos on my camera when I went to pull some pics off of it. We'll start with the pics. Jared and I watched our nephew Drake every once in a while when my sister and her husband were living in Orem this past year. One night he decided that he wanted to play hide and seek. So he made Jared "hide" with him while I tried to "find" them. His favorite places of choice 1. On the other side of the bed, 2. Underneath the coffee table (totally hilarious to watch Jared try to "hide" underneath the coffee table haha!) and 3. Underneath the pillows on our bed. Here was the usual dialouge as I went to "find" them.

Stacie: Walking around the kitchen "I wonder where Biggie went. . ."

Drake: "I'm right here!!"

Stacie: Looking underneath over by the bed "Is he under the bed??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Walking around to the far side of the bed "Is he on this side of the bed??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Swinging the bedroom door "Is he behind the door??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Jumping on the bed and smashing him with the pillows "He's under the pillows!!"

Drake: Screaming at the top of his lungs, then "Do it again!"

And the process would repeat several times until Jared and I told him we were too tired to play hide and seek anymore (ha hoping this excuse will work with our own kids, likely it won't, but we can always hope right?!). One day when my parents were in town we were all over at our apt. and Drake wanted to play hide and seek, so him and Jared went and hid under the pillows in our room. Haha, we snapped a few pictures and Whit recorded Grammy (my mom) finding him, so funny!

His little feet sticking out, too priceless!

Hiding with Bah

Drake keeps telling Grammy to "get away!" in this video :) maybe it's the cackle that scares him?? Haha love you mom!

The other videos I found on my camera were from a few months ago when our niece Halle and little nephew Cole came and had a sleep over at our apartment when Jared's parents were in town. Only two main reasons why Halle and Cole wanted to sleep over, first because Grandma and Grandpa were staying at our apartment too and second. . . they wanted to play our Wii  (Jared and I probably came in at a close third haha) The kids love playing Mario Kart and it's pretty entertaining to watch them! They would start out on either side of the TV and by the end of the race Cole was usually on the other side of the TV and/or two inches away from the screen, pretty hilarious!

Jared and I have some pretty dang cute nieces and nephews, we love hanging out with them!

Another STG Weekend

Jared and I went down to STG this past weekend to hang out with my family for conference. We had a really fun time and I actually took pictures and videos, so I'm steppin up my game with this post! We couldn't leave Provo till about 7 pm on Friday night because Jared doesn't usually get back from work till then, but we packed up the car and cruised down the I-15 in the Subi. The minute we walked in the door we were greeted by Biggie (my sister's little boy Drake) who wanted to fight Bah (Jared) with his foam sword. So funny!

The next day Jared got up early to go on a bike ride. When he got back from his ride, Drake decided that he wanted to go bike riding with Bah too so we went out in the driveway for some biking. Haha Drake is wearing "unders" now that he's been potty training, and he had no problem wearing his Dash unders to go biking with Bah.

Here's a video from the sword fight and bike riding...

 

We watched the morning session of conference and then we decided that we would go over to this trampoline jump warehouse place in STG with Whit, Drake and my little brother Wess (aka Snipes, ya know Wesley Snipes, well Whit starting calling our brother Snipes a few years ago and the nickname stuck). Whit had taken Drake to this tramp place before and I guess he likes playing there. It was also really fun for us adults and we had a good laugh trying to do tricks on the tramps and doing our best "ugly poses." Jared definitely wins the contest for ugliest pose (see video below), we all got a good laugh from his rendition of a salmon trying to swing upstream haha! Snipes move was "the pencil" and Whit did a pretty sweet running man!

Biggie thought it was pretty cool to "bum it"
That's Snipes in the background doing backflips... nbd

 Trying to climb up the slide

Don't know what was going on here, but 

I still thought it was a pretty cool pic!

Later that night when the boys were at Priesthood, I went and hung out with one of my best friends Nikki who just had the cutest little baby girl a few weeks ago. It was fun to catch up with Niks and to hold her cute little girl! After we all got home we decided to make a fire, which consisted of turning on the gas fire-pit that my parents have on the back deck haha, much better than getting all smokey and gross! Drake loves to "make fire" and cook. . . correction, burn. . . marshmallows so Jared and I humored him until we had burned through most of the bag of mallows. 

Doesn't look like there is a flame, but there totally was!

I guess the flash on cameras does some trippy stuff or somethin

I love this little grin, so cute

Progression of the Burn. . . 

(These were taken with Jared's phone, so it's got a weird haze goin on!)

Shove the mallow in the flame

 After mallow catches fire, fling stick high into air

Yell at Bah to "BLOW IT!"

Replace charred mallow with a fresh one and start cycle over!

Sunday consisted of conference watching and pigging out on chips and homemade salsa, we loved it! Now it's back to the real world, kind of a bummer but it was fun to get away for a couple of days. 

Today I graded the first exam that my students took this semester. Overall it was less painful than I had expected, only took me about 4 hours instead of the 6-7 hours I was planning for. I'm still loving my class and being able to teach although half the time I leave class with a whole list of things I wish I would have done differently, but I figure that's just how it will be for the first few years of teaching in general so I can't worry about it too much! 

A New Toy!

We successfully made our first major purchase tonight, found out we both have really good credit and fulfilled Jared's life long dream. . . we got a new (well technically "certified" used according to Jared) car, and not just any car, but a Subaru!! We've made it two and a half years with only one car but now that Jared is commuting back and forth to SLC everyday and given that we'll need another one when I start teaching full-time next year, we decided now was a good time to start looking for a deal! We found the Subi (like Sewbee, pretty original nickname eh?!) this past weekend at a dealership up in Salt Lake, it's a Subaru Impreza Wagon. We both like the look of the hatchback, plus it'll give us more room for all of Jared's mountain man gear. He also likes it because it is a stick shift and he thinks it's pretty cool to go fast through roundabouts and sharp corners, figures. . . Anyway, here's a few pics.

 This is the face you get when you 

ask for a "cool guy" pose baha

 He's so happy!

Demonstrating how the trunk cover thingy works

Ha, this is fitting, we just watched a commercial about a guy who talks about how his Subaru "saved his life" blahblahblah, so Jared looks at me and says, "It's perfect, his Subaru loves him like our Subaru loves us!" haha what are the odds?!

Cute Video

Wow I've been on a bloggin roll the past couple of weeks!! I was on campus today and I walked passed a little toddler that looked so much like my sister's little son Drake. Whit emailed me this super cute video of him the other day. He's about 2 1/2 years old now and he's been working on saying all of his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles "real" names because he's called most of us by our nicknames. I've always been "B" to him and Jared has always been "Bah" (originating from Whit always calling Jared "Jare-Bear" or just Bear) Anyway, he knows that my first name is Stacie and I'm pretty sure he knows "Bah's" first name is Jared, but he thinks he's pretty funny in calling Jared "Bear" as well!

The beginning of the video is him telling us that he calls their dog a sneaky bugger, haha and that dog totally is a sneaky bugger, pretty sure my bro-in-law wants to drop kick him off their deck!

Today I got observed by my "mentor" faculty lady while I was teaching my class. She's super nice and I really like her, but it's a tad bit intimidating having somebody there watching your every move and you can see her scribbling crap down on her notebook out of the corner of your eye! And my lesson?? Totally did not go how I was originally expecting. Gotta love those times when you have absolutely no idea what the students are saying, I probably looked like an idiot up there but oh well, that's teaching for ya haha!

Another funny note. . . Jared told me that he dreamt he was Harry Potter last night, baha! He went on some mission to kill bad guys and right before he woke up he heard a voice (his reenactment made it sound like a mix between Dumbledore and Snape) say "Well done Harry Potter." haha, so random but hilarious at the same time!

Workin Man

Jared had his first day of work today! I probably should have packed him a lunch, but lets face it, I'm not a morning person and I had to get to campus early to prep for my class this morning! He had to do some sort of new employee orientation thingy for a while but then got to spend the rest of the day designing, so it was a good day overall. We spent the entire evening filling out a bunch of paperwork for taxes and insurance, but it's kind of fun to do it when you know you will actually be getting steady income from now on, it's pretty awesome! 

 First time ever having to fill out a W-4 for a real job!

The cool garage clicker he gets so

he doesn't have to pay to park

We got a nice little surprise tonight. We got a check back from SRAM (the company in Colorado Springs that Jared interviewed with) and they reimbursed us $630 dollars for our gas and milage from when we drove out for Jared's interview!!! We had only spent $170 dollars on gas and stayed with family the whole weekend, so we made out pretty well with these people! I might feel about 2 seconds worth of guilt considering he didn't take their offer, but if they're willing to give us that much for driving out there, then I'm more than willing to swing it by the bank and make a big fat deposit into our account. Ha, Jared asked if he could buy something with the money and I said no way considering we are now responsible for paying back a fairly significant amount in student loans, but oh well, at least we don't have to worry about 630 dollars of it!

Some Great News!!

No people I'm not pregnant let's just get that out of the way right now :)  But, we do have some really great news to share. This. . .

 Nose Picking. . . 

 Tent building . . .

(in the family room no less!)

 Lego Loving. . . 

 Hardcore Hiking. . .

Super cute 

(I kind of like this picture, so I threw it in there)

dude just accepted his first "real man" job (I like to call it that because it sounds cool)!!!!! He'll be working full-time as a designer at a advertising/design firm called Axis 41 up in SLC. We are seriously so excited and relieved that it all finally came together. This summer has been a tough one for us, we've learned a lot about patience and faith through this whole job hunting battle, but we are grateful that everything always has a way of working out in the way that it needs to. Thank you to everyone for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers, you don't know how much we appreciate it.

For now we will be staying in our apartment here in Provo because I have to be on campus to teach and we only have one car, but we'll probably end up moving further north in either December or the end of the school year.

In other news, teaching has gone great so far this semester. I was super nervous for the first week, but now that I have gotten to know my class it's really been more fun than anything else! I teach a math class that Elementary Ed. majors have to take, so all of my students are girls. I honestly feel more like their friend than their teacher because I'm only a few years older than most of them, but I think I've done a pretty good job in helping them learn the concepts they need to while keeping class enjoyable at the same time.

Anyway, just wanted to fill everybody in on the good news! :)