4th of July

This 4th of July Landon had to work the whole weekend and I magically had three days off in a row. My parents were heading out to Strawberry to go camping with some more of my family on that side of the family. I felt bad leaving Landon behind, but I decided that I desperatley needed some time away or I was going to lose my mind. So we left Thursday morning and came home on Sunday. I didn't realize how much I had missed my family. I had a really good time. I brought one of my books and just got to hang out with fam, ride wheelers with my little bro, and be a book nerd. :-) My mom, me and Tim went out on the lake to do some fishing. I don't have a fishign license so they were the ones that were fishing, but I liked being along for the ride. They both caught some pretty good sized fish. Unfortunately most of them we had to throw back because they were either too big or too small, but it was still fun. I missed my hubby the whole time, but I loved getting to spend some time with my family. Plus, absense makes the heart grow fonder, right? ;-)

Timmy and Momma

Me, cousin Landon, Uncle Lane

Bringing back my PAZAZZ

About a month and a half ago my dad's girlfriend, Audrey asked me to help her with a hair show she was asked to do. She needed me as her assistant and to use me as one of her models. They needed her to find a few different models that she could cut and style with the product they were doing the hair show for. So, I am not sure all of you remember, but I have been growing my hair out for about the last year and a half. It had gotten to past my shoulders. Audrey found a funky cut that she wanted to do on me. It was going to bring my hair to just above my shoulders. Well, lets just say that PART of it ended above my shoulders. lol There is only one way to explain how it looked. Audrey did a great job with the cut, of course, but I did look like Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch. I won't lie that I cried a little afterwards, but I do feel like I got back a little bit of my pazazz. :-) I am enjoying the short hair for summer, but I will be growing my hair back out again. Check out the pics!

Jessi was one Audre's male model. He was pretending to be my stylist lol
Audrey did great with my make up!
Hair after hair show

Two other models from show

Playing Catch Up

I finally put some time aside for me to get caught up on our blog. I don't have much time so I will just give you one of the fun things that has happened. More to come!

In May my aunt Monica came and visited from her wonderous hometown, NYC. She came up to our place with my dad, Audrey and Korey to play some texas hold'em. I, of course, won. lol She set aside a day for just her and I in her busy schedule of visitors. :-) I loved getting to spend some time with her. We went to this cute little tea shop in Farmington called Tea's and You, which I recommend to all of you. They had many delicious tea's to choose from and you got to do it in style! They have a special room you can reserve ahead of time that has a bunch of princess dress up clothes for you to dip into. We didn't reserve the room, but the ladies said it was okay if we wanted to go in there after we were done with our tea to take some pictures. lol So fun! Then we went to the Gateway and did some shopping. We walked and talked and just had a lot of fun catching up. Landon and I are hoping that we will be able to make it out there next year for our big trip we have planned. We are planning on going to Georgia to visit his hometown where he grew up and then to NY to enjoy it's pleasures. I think will be exactly what we need before we start a family. One big trip to spend some quality time together and enjoy two beautiful places. Both beautiful in it's own way. :-)

Union Station Photo Shoot Extended

Here are some of the pics I took of my friend Heidi. Isn't she a natural? Beautiful friend! Love ya!

It Only Took Five Years!

As many of you know I went to cosmetology school while I was in high school. I started my sophmore summer and went into my senior summer. Two weeks before I graduated from West Jordan High School I graduated from SLCC with my Applied Associates Degree of Science (provided through the school I was taking cosmo, JATC). Then only a few weeks after graduating from high school I finished my 2000 hours for cosmetology. It took me two full years, but I did it.

Five years later.......STILL HADN'T TAKEN MY TEST!!! I know, I know. What was I thinking?! As I thought about how much time I had put into cosmo school I decided to see if they would still let me take my test. I figured there had to be some kind of a time limit on these kinds of things. Well, I called the state and they said that as far as the rules go now there was no limit. So, it got me thinking. I thought, what the heck. Lets get it done! I called my old instructor from the sandy campus at the JATC and told her my situation. She told me that she was just starting up a stateboards prep class that next week that would go for a month and a half. She was going to be teaching the girls each procedure for stateboards every Monday and Tuesday from May to the beginning of June. Classes were held from 7:30am-8:30am in Sandy!!! Yes, that is a 45 minute drive for me. Yikes! She told me that I could come sit in on these classes to get a refresher so I would feel more prepared. I figured that I might as well take advantage of her offer because she was going to let me do it for free. So, I went back to beauty school. It was crazy going back. There are only a few instructors there that were there when I went to school, but it was fun to see the few that were. Most of the girls there were juniors or seniors in high school so it was funny to have a flash back at what all us girls must have been like. I ended up going to all the classes but two because we were out of town. All along the way my instructor was a HUGE help to me. She let me know what I needed for my kit (supplies for the practical exam) and even supplied me with lots of stuff for it. The last Monday I was there she told me that the stateboards were going to be requiring two extra procedures for people who take their test after June 15th. The two extra procedures were going to be a facial and acrylic nail! :-Z I wasn't even sure I could do the stuff I already had to do let alone do two things I really hadn't done for 5 years! lol So, I got on PSI to see if by any chance they had any openings for the practical exam before the 15th. There are three testing centers for the exam and the only one that came up with anything before the 15th happened to be the closest one to me. But, it happened to be WAY sooner than I was expecting. It was two days from that day!!! I ended up taking the rest of that day off to study and then prepared myself the next day as much as I could after work. I didn't end up getting to bed until about 1:30am and woke up at 5:30 because I was so nervous I couldn't sleep. I got to the testing center early and studied as much as I could then headed in to put my skills to the test. There were 5 other girls there that day. They had us all sit in a room and wait for about 15 mins until they finally came and got us. They took us in one by one to let us know where our set ups would be. There were two ladies in the room with us. One was the speaker who would explain each procedure before we did them and the other lady, the one who was grading us, didn't say a word or even break a smile the whole time. She would just walk around and look at what you were doing through each procedure. The exam was 4 long, hot, nerve racking hours! None of us were aloud to talk either so you can only imagine how you could cut the tension with a knife! lol After we were all done they had us go back to the same room to wait for our final scores. They brought us each in a piece of paper that, under the fold, would say if we passed or failed. Each of us opened ours up one by one. I was honestly thinking that I had messed up too many times to have actually passed it. And the whole time I was thinking, "If I don't pass it this time I just won't take it again". I opened my paper and saw the best word of my day PASS. I did it!!! I passed it even though it had been five years! I can't even tell you how excited and proud I was that I was able to get over my test anxiouty and actually pass one of the hardest tests I have ever taken. It felt pretty dang good. :-) So now I just need to take my written exam, which compared to the practical will be a cake walk. After that I will be a licensed Cosmetologist. I didn't realize how much I have missed it until all this. I have done it off and on throughout the years, but never felt like I wanted to put full effort into it knowing I still needed to take my test. I will still stay working at Verizon of course because it really is a great place to work. But, I may start doing this on the side more now. Maybe I'll get a part time job in a salon to build some clientelle and then maybe after I have kids I can continue that part time. It just makes so much more sense to have all this finally behind me. Yay for passing tests!!! See you all for those new do's! ;-)

Union Station Photo Shoot

As you all know I have a passion for life through a lens. I love getting to help capture those special moments for people. My friend Heidi also shares the same passion. We have both been wanting to get together and take some pics together to bounce some idea's off each other so we finally did. We went out to the Union Station in Ogden. I just got a new point and shoot digital camera and wanted to try it out and she has her Nokia SLR that her dad gave her. I was unaware that my new camera wouldn't let me adust apeture or shutter speed so unfortunately my camera wasn't taking the best pictures with the lighting. We ended up using Heidi's camera the whole time to take turn taking pictures of each other. We wanted to practice different poses and figure out how to use the natural light. We had a lot of fun and they actually turned out pretty good. We both thought it was easier than we had anticipated. I think one of the hardest things about photography is knowing the right poses. I think some of the best pictures come from candid shots. Heidi is putting all the pics we took on a CD, but she emailed me a few so here they are.

Caineville 4wheelin' Trip

This weekend we FINALLY took some time off for a small vacation. We planned a wheelin' trip with our friends Mike and Hilary. They invited some of their friends to come too. We made the four hour trip to Caineville with mine and Hil's quads and the guys dirt bikes. We stayed in pretty much the only hotel in Caineville. Me, Landon, Mike and Hil all shared a room and the other guys shared one next to us. We left early on Friday morning so we had some time to ride when we got there. We dropped our stuff at the hotel, got our riding gear on and headed for the dirt hills. It took me a while to get used to riding the wheeler, but once I got the hang of it there was no stopping me. LOL We rode until there was not enough sunlight to ride then headed back to the hotel for some grub. The hotel had a grill so we were able to bbq some hot dogs and hamburgers. We were all pretty exhausted from waking up early and riding in the blazing heat so we headed off to bed. We woke up pretty early the next day to get a full day of riding in. We woke up to a little friend hanging outside our doors. There was a baby deer that is apparently known at the hotel as Fresco. He was coming up to us wanting us to pet him. He was acting like he thought he was a dog! lol After all the fun with Fresco we packed up lunch and chairs and headed back out to the hills. We all rode our hearts out! All of that suddenly came to a hault when Landon and I returned from a quick ride around the hills around us. He had noticed that one of the wheels on the 4 wheeler was wobbling. When we looked at it we were surprised that the wheel was even still on at all. The bolts on the rim had shredded almost all the way to nothing. We drove to the only place that may have something for us to fix it and they couldn't do anything for us so sadly I was done riding for the trip. :-( I had Landon drop me off at the hotel so he could head back out with everyone else and get a few more hours of riding in. It wasn't so bad. I got to take a nice long shower, get in a little nap and some time to relax before they all got back. Plus, I had gotten in a good day and a half in of riding so I was happy. Once everyone else got back we headed into town to have dinner at one of the only restaurants in Caineville. After we ate we all headed back to the hotel and just relaxed and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and some of us went out and rode and the rest of us got everything cleaned up to head home. We were sad to have the trip end so quickly, but it was nice to be back home in our own bed. Today Landon and I had the day off together so we went and bought some rims for the wheeler from a guy off KSL so we'll be ready to get back out on the trails. Then we went to see the movie Fighting. It was okay. I probably would wait for it to be out on redbox. We had a really fun weekend. It was relaxing and fun. And it's always nice getting to spend some time together away from our crazy jobs. We're hoping to get back out on some trails soon!