Making THE Cut!

So some of you may already know that my dear, sweet cousin Tiffany was diagnosed with cancer at the young age of 18 early last year. Growing up I was always pretty close to that side of my family and Tiffany had spent a lot of time around my family so I wanted to do something for her but I could never really figure out what. I was at a complete loss, does she want visitors? Or is she too sick to see anyone? Does she want to be distracted and entertained? Or does she need someone to listen to what she is going through? I really didn't know. The only thing I knew I could do is donate my hair to locks of love in her honor and show support to the whole community of people who have suffered at the hands of cancer. Unfortunately I had a wedding comming up and I had always pictured my hair longer for my wedding day, and the only way I had enough to donate was to go to a pixie cut. So I waited until after my wedding... but it still wasn't quite long enough! I waited, periodically going into the hair salon and having them measure my hair. Finally in December they said it was long enough, but just barely. To be on the safe side I gave my hair one more month of growing time so that my hair would look decent (I still have to be presentable to go to work, etc!). This last weekend was the end of that month, and it was time to make the cut! For the record, yes this is the shortest my hair has ever been, yes I'm cutting my hair almost a year after my cousin was diagnosed (who is in remission and looking more beautiful than ever in case you wondering!), and yes I love my new do! It so easy to take care of, It takes about 2 seconds to style, my hair already looks perfect when I wake up, the wind can't mess it up, I can head bang to my favorite songs without worrying about tangling my hair and I think it's a great cut for my face shape! I hope someone enjoys my old hair as much as I'm enjoying my new hair!

Front view of my hair

Back view of my hair

Trying to swish my hair and
strike a zoolander pose, I guess
I'm not model material....

Whipping my hair around for the
last time... at least for a while!

Holding my Locks of Love
donation

My stylist making the big cut..



The final product!

This last weekend was also a fun one since it was my best friend Sarah's 23rd birthday. You know we had to celebrate in style! I got to get all dressed up (and show off the new hair). We started out at Wild Grape Bistro for dinner and pre-party cocktails. The food was AMAZING! I got the filet mignon, and it practically melted in my mouth, and Bob thought the mushroom stuffed chicken was to die for. After dinner we went to Keys on Main, which is cute little piano bar located right in the heart of down town, for more cocktails and lots of dancing, laughing and hanging out with some great friends! I really enjoyed myself and hanging out with such great people! I hope you had an amazing birthday Sarah, and that we get to celebrate many more happy ones with you in the years to come!

My Dinner

My sweetheart giving me some love

The girls!

Me and my boo at dinner

The birthday girl and her main squeeze!

The boys (minus my hubby)



Us girls again!

Lovin on my man




 

Going full metal...in our PJ's!

So this is a pretty silly, non-sensical post since our lives have been pretty uneventful this week. Some of you probably already know that I don't play video games.... EVER! One of the very very few exceptions to that rule is Metallica Rockband/Guitar Hero because I love Metallica and I like having an excuse to listen to their music and dance around like a crazy person. Unfortunately my copy of the game is for a PS3 which is a game consol that Bob doesn't have, so I have been left without the only game I actually enjoy. Bob being the amazing husband he is, and knowing I missed playing my game, surprised me last month with a copy of Metallica Rockband for the X Box (which he had to track down and have shipped all the way from St. George's Game Stop), which is a consol we do have. He is just THAT sweet, he wanted a game that we could play and enjoy together! Just our luck though, the guitar controller we had, hadn't been used in a long time and no longer worked.... So now we had the consol, and the game but no controller! Lucky for me, my husband pulled through once again, and he was able to find a controller at a pawn shop for me so I can play my new game. Needless to say I think I have played every day since then! Here's a few rockin' pics of us cute little metal heads!



Smiling for me in between songs

Bob trying to concentrate

Trying to concentrate on the game
instead of Bob holding the camera

Bob chillin while playing

Posing with my new guitar

Rockin' out!



Bob's "just because I love you" gift

Happy New Year!

Bob and I had a really great year in 2012. We got engaged in February as well as we adopted our little cuddle bug Jazzy. I finally made it to the color festival in March. We had a few stressful months of wedding planning before tying the knot in September, doubling the amount of family we each had and allowing me to finally have the title of Aunt to 13 beautiful nieces and nephews. Tessa was also able to adopt Braxton in September making him an official member of the family (though in our eyes, he had always been a member). We took the vacation of a lifetime to the beautiful island of Cozumel where we swam with dolphins, ziplined over the rainforest, pet monkeys, scuba dived and snorkled with stingrays, sea turtles, sharks and thousands of different fish, snorkled in a Cenote, went repelling, made a lot of new friends, relaxed on the beach and spent a lot of time having fun in the sun! We then spent our first Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas together as a married couple.

While 2012 was an amazing year, we are so excited to see what 2013 has in store for us. It started off great! We rang in the new year surrounded by Bob's side of the family including Ana and the kids who came all the way from Washington to spend time with the family. (Anyone who knows Bob and I knows that there is a special place in our hearts for Ana's kids!) I was so happy to spend time with all the nieces and nephews as well as the in-laws, I feel like every time I spend time with them we bond a little more! Unfortunately I have been sick and miserable every day since then! This year has been a roller coaster of good and bad already, so we will see how the rest of the year goes...


Me with my nieces Mimi and Lauren

Me and cute little Mimi

Lauren insisted on a niece pic with her dog

The only pic Ryan managed to
take of himself instead of the
ceiling!



Me and Lauren

Me and my nephew Ryan







Bob and I waiting to ring in
the new year

Our new years kiss










The Boys, Bob and our nephews David
and Russell



Lauren holding Cleo on New Years
Day before the drive back to
Washington










Most of our New Years party crew

Lauren holding miss Cleo



This is where Jazzy lays so no one will
take down her tree...

Our First Christmas (married)!

Sorry this post is a little late! Bob and I had a wonderful first Christmas together as a married couple! Bob's parents were in Idaho with Grandma Malan so we spent most of the holiday with my parents and sisters as well as Ricky. We were spoiled rotten! We got a lot of the things we wanted and some things we didn't even know we wanted. Bob loved all of his 12 days of Christmas gifts and can't wait to cash in his day of snowboarding! Bob gave me a real set of pearls with earrings, a bracelet and neckeless, as well as The Walking Dead book, some wonder woman undies, and a couple new posters. Unfortunately my camera is broken so I didn't take any pictures, but then a week later at Merryim's birthday party I remember my phone has a camera so I was able to take pictures of that! For her birthday we went downtown to look at the lights, and we went to Golden Coral for dinner. Ana and the kids were also in town so they were able to join us! It was so much fun spending time with my nieces and nephews, I just love them more each and every day! This past weekend we were also able to spend some bonding time with our good friends Jill and Brad with a little wine and beer pong. Sunday we rounded out the weekend by going to my best friend Chelsea's baby's blessing. Benton was so good and quiet throughout the whole prayer and boy is he getting big! I saw him only a few weeks ago and he felt like he was twice as heavy!

Bob and I on our way to Benton's blessing

Merryim while we looked at lights

Bob and I at dinner for Merryim's birthday

Me and the birthday girl, Merryim!



My adorable nieces Mimi and Lauren
while out looking at lights

Mimi opening her birthday present from Bob and I

She was so happy about her colored jeans!

Holding up her new outfit. We gave her the matching
hat too.

Preparing for Christmas

Hello Everyone! With only a couple days left until Christmas, I'm happy to say Bob and I have finished all our shopping, and all our gifts are wrapped and ready to be handed out! It's probably best that we don't have the stress of fighting the Christmas crowds right now since we are both fighting off some nasty colds. Bob started showing symptoms first but by Wednesday we were both laid out! We had congestion, headaches, runny stuffy noses, achy ears, the sorest throat I've ever had, coughing, sneezing, body aches, stomach aches, and chills. If you can think of a bad sick symptom, one of us had it! Bob was able to make a trip to the store and buy us the strongest cold medicine they had (He went for the behind the counter remedies) and of course he stalked up on Dayquil and Nyquil. He also made a trip to Zupas to buy my favorite soup, before coming home to cuddle up with me, thoroughly drug ourselves up and try to sleep the sickness away. I want to say it worked since I'm feeling better today, but I still feel miserable so I'm not out of the woods yet! Bob seemed a little better this morning too, but it's hard to say since he's been at work all day.

On a brighter note, I got to experience what Christmas with neices and nephews is like for the first time on Sunday! Bob's family got together last Sunday to celebrate Ricky and Dani's birthdays, but since most of the family was heading out of town for the holidays, Bob and I decided to hand out the neice and nephew gifts as well. Before we handed out the gifts however Bob and I looked at each other and realized that we didn't think about getting a gift for Tessa's new foster daughter. She has only been with them for a few weeks, and I didn't even meet her until after I had bought all the gifts already. Luckily Bob had wrapped a new, amazingly soft blanket for me for Christmas, but it didn't have a tag on it. After consulting with me to make sure it was okay, we decided to give it to Kari. I wasn't sure she would like a blanket, instead of a toy and candy like the rest of the kids, but her face lit right up when she opened her gift, and I don't think I saw her without the blanket for the rest of the night! The other kids seemed to enjoy thier gifts as well! I got lots of hugs and thank you's, and a couple kids were so happy that their hugs felt more like tackles, LOL! I hope everyone enjoyed their gifts, I did the best I could on a limited budget! It was definately the highlight of my week (I should have taken pictures, but I forgot!) and I'm so excited to spend so many more holidays with these kids!

12 Days of Christmas

So since Bob doesn't read my blog at all, I think it's safe to share his secret present with you! The other day I got to work and my co-worker Teresa was working hard at planning the 12 days of Christmas for her husband. I thought it was such a good idea, that I stole it and decided to plan my own 12 days of Christmas for Bob! Here's what I'm doing for him:

Day 12: 12 Chocolate Chip cookies (his favorite)
Day 11: 11 Reason's I love you (framed with a picture of us)
Day 10: $10 Gift Card to Scheels
Day 9: 9 "coupons" for a back massage (from me without complaints LOL)
Day 8: An 8 pack of crayons with a Batman coloring book for us to color together on cold snowy nights
Day 7: 7-Up ( A 2-liter so he has plenty to last him thru a late night game night with Ricky)
Day 6: A 6-pack of his favorite beer
Day 5: A 5 blade razor (this may be a gift to me as well since his skin will be so smooth!)
Day 4: 4 energy drinks (he buys them before work almost every day)
Day 3: Menage A Trois
Day 2: A new pair of gloves-extra warm and waterproof so he can wear them snowboarding
Day 1: A snow board day, my treat (it may turn into a ski day if I hate snowboarding since I know how to ski)

Since Day 1, is the best gift I'm doing the gifts as a countdown to Christmas. Day 12 will be on the 14th, so I'm almost there!

Other than the Christmas shopping this week has been pretty mellow. I went to UVU to talk with the financial advisers about paying for school. They were extremely unhelpful. They pretty much told us that as long as we live with Bob's parents, they won't give us financial aid because we might get money from our parents. I explained that both of them are retired/unemployed and therefore don't make any money to give us. She simply shrugged her shoulders at me and said that sucks, guess you'll have to find another way to pay for school. I then asked her about student loans, she said she won't be able to get me a student loan until after the tuition deadline, so I would either need to pay tuition and use the loan as reimbursement or I would have a sizable late fee. Both sounded like ridiculous options so I asked her about payment plans. Unfortunately to get a payment plan we would need to pay a large portion of the tuition as a down payment to get on the plan, and we would have to do it before Friday (we don't get paid in time for that) Anyway, long story short, Bob and I can't afford to go to school this semester and we are really upset at the hoops UVU has made us jump through to be admitted, then to sign up for classes and now to pay for school. Bob is going to look into trade schools and community colleges, and start saving money to pay for school, and I'm going to look into other schools and other career paths as well. Hopefully we will figure out where we are going with our lives soon! Wish us luck!

The Boring Life of Bob and Brittney

So there really isn't much that happened with Bob and I this last week, but I told myself I would try and update this blog once a week so I'm writing anyway. My last post I talked about my concern and frustration with signing back up for school. In order to fix that frustration I went and talked to an Academic Advisor about my concerns and he gave me a list of options that don't require anymore math but still give me a bachelors degree. I think I have decided to master a couple languages. I will probably major in Spanish, minor in French and get an "Interpreters Certificate" in ASL as well. I have always wanted to know another language, and I want to travel so I thought, why not? The only problem is I haven't been able to sign up for classes or been able to see what financial aid is available to me because the school put an academic hold on my account until I see and academic advisor...they put this hold on my account after I saw my academic advisor! I don't know what their deal is, but if I don't sign up for classes soon, there won't be any classes still open for me to sign up for and I won't be going to school in the spring after all.

I also received a bit of news this last week, both bad and good. The bad news is one of my close relatives is getting a divorce from her husband. I don't know if this is an announcement just meant for close family and friends right now, so I will keep her anonymous for now, but it's a tough situation since they had kids together and now there is the question of how is she going to support her family, where is she going to live, where is she going to work, and most importantly what happens to the kids. Bob and I are going to help as much as we possibly can, but unfortunately with both of us trying to work and go to school while supporting ourselves and the animals that we have taken responsibility for, we are in a tight place.

On the bright side, one of my best friends Chelsea let me know this week that they have found a house, and may be moving in this month! I'm so excited for them since I know they have been feeling a little bit cramped living in one bedroom at her parents house with their newborn baby and their dog. Now they will have more rooms then they can even furnish! Plus, since she was living with her mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law, there were lots of built in baby-sitters, but now I might have a chance to have some bonding time with my honorary nephew while Chelsea and her husband go out on a long deserved break/date!