For Stephanie

I dare you to eat a banana right now.

Animal lovers

Micah and I are animal lovers. Well, I am at least.  Micah just likes the weird/freaky animals.  Like this:

It's adorable, right?

And Micah wouldn't even be allergic!



These are a few of my favorite things

Ok maybe a little more than a few.  Try DOZENS! And this isn't even all of them; I have many more in the laundry basket. 

The point is that I love socks.  With a passion. 

You see, I have chronic cold feet syndrome.

Never heard of it? It's becuase I just made it up. 

But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Especially for me.

Anyway, I diverge.

Back to socks.

Anyone who knows me well, knows I love socks.

My roommates used to give me socks on birthday every year.

My mom used to put them in my stocking every year. Now it falls on Micah to do the same (and he did not fail this year).

My mom even sent them in a random package a few weeks ago.  It made me SO happy.

Socks are the go-to Christmas/Birthday gift if you want to get something cheap and easy for me.

A word of advice: Target. $1 socks. My absolute favorite kind.

Now go, stock up. Buy all you want and give a few pairs to me every year on my birthday.

I will be absolutely thrilled if that was all you got me.

It can be any type of sock.

I am no respecter of socks.

I like...

Black socks, white socks

Striped socks, dotted socks

Star socks, heart socks

Socks with bows

Or socks with RAINbows

Mismatched socks are completely fine

Boy sock are sublime

Socks with moons

And ARGYLE, yes argyle.

My personal favorite.

Sparkle socks for fancy events

Socks of all sizes

Knee socks, tall socks, medium socks, ankle socks, and short socks.

My choice today? Why the mismatched puma socks, naturally.

I remember the day I bought these. Who I was with, what the weather was like, what other things I bought along with these.  Yes, it's a little crazy, but I love these ones.

And I love ALL my socks. It pains me to throw away socks that have served me so well just because there is a hole. Or when I lose one! Oh, the anguish!

Well, I'm guessing you all are a little socked out for today.

Now don't get me started on BOOKS.

That's another post for another day.

Till next time...

Emotions

                                                  

This picture, in addition to being humorous (to me at least), shows 4 common emotions people feel.

Since I'm cool that way, I decided to recreate these pictures. Enjoy.

I don't know what it is...but lately I've been very emotional. Most of the day, I'm perfectly happy.  Then as the day wears on, I become overcome with emotion.  This tends to happen when it's dark and Micah is either gone at work or asleep (which is ALL. The. TIME.)

Anything can set off the tears.  A song from the Glee soundtrack. Jane by Design, the juvenile TV show about high school drama. A memory about some good friends.

I probably look like this when the emotion takes over:

Oh, wait. I do (see previous picture)!

I hope nobody is concerned about me. The emotion isn't really sadness. It's just...overwhelming.

When I get this way, I feel melodramtic. And the truth is, I kinda like it.  Sometimes I'll go to the piano and play a really sappy or melodramatic song and really get into it.  I feel like I am in a movie when I do that. I feel inspired by my emotional break down.

This isn't new. A few years ago, I was reading in the Book of Mormon about Captain Moroni on the bus on my way home from school. When I got home, I was bawling. My roommates asked what was wrong and through the tears I said, "Captain Moroni is just so AWESOME!"  They looked at me like I was a crazy person (seriously, I was crying pretty hard....not normal).

Sweet, well that's me.

Finally, finally, finally!

Micah applied for a new job as a reseach assistant and HE GOT IT! I wasn't surprised at all.  He is a good person for the job.   This means that Micah gets to put in his 2 weeks notice for his newspaper job.  Hallelujah! I will have no more nights of being alone in our apartment, which I am SO excited about.  Micah won't be tired every waking minute of every day.  He will get paid more.  We get FULL benefits.  He gets basically free tuition.

The list goes on and on and on.  I think I'm more excited than he is.

In other (less exciting) news, I have a job too.  Data entry for sign makers isn't that cool.  And the pay is equally uncool.  BUT I do have a little extra money to make Micah's next birthday awesome.

For Matt

So a few weeks ago my brother Matt and his girlfriend, Brittany, came to visit us (since when did hanging out with his little sister become fun?)! Well it was fun!  We went shooting and we went to see the Titan Missle Museum.

Matt was really anxious to have a blog post about him. I wonder why....

Look how cool the Barney siblings are.  If I don't look like I'm aiming, it's becuase I'm not.  I figure I have just as much chance at hitting the clay pigeons without aiming as I do with aiming.

(*since this trip, Micah and I have gone shooting 2 more times.  I DO aim now & I can hit the pigeons!!  Just do not ask me to shoot a rifle with a scope.  "I had a bad experience!" 10 points to the person who can name that movie.*)

Aww...how cute.  Matt and Brittany.  Isn't the hard hat lovely?  Matt, remember that one time you didn't think you'd need a hard hat, but then you hit your head (twice) on the door frames in the building? Good times.

I can never take pictures without me barely making it into the lower right side of the picture.

The missile. It's huge!

How cute.  Matt and Micah are BFFs.  They even like to take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other.

Down, down, down we go!

That door is 6,000 pounds!  I think.  Anyway, it's heavy.  Brittany is the hulk- she opened it with ease.

The control room!

The missile!

Cute couple. 

Matt and Brittany, you are welcome to come back any time! There are lots of things to do here.

That goes for anyone reading this, too. Come visit!!! (Samuel, Stephanie, and Hannah- is there a trip in the works? I heard rumors, very exciting rumors)

I have trouble taking pictures.

For Adam

This blog post is long overdue.  In December, Micah's brother Adam came to visit for a week and a half.  Since  Micah has a really stupid job (that he get's to quit after his 2 week's notice he puts in next week--YAY!!!!!!!!!!!) Adam and I had some really great bonding time.  We baked, we cleaned (thanks for the help :), we watched Psych, we played games, AND he was basically Santa.  He brought all the presents that Micah's parents had for us.  It was great!

We did do some really fun stuff with Micah despite his crazy schedule.

TOMBSTONE GRAVEYARD!

CAMPING!

Yeah so this is the only picture we got of camping, but we thought it was funny.

Camping was...interesting.  It was pouring rain and making a fire to cook our dinner was difficult.  It was pretty fun still.

MEXICO!!!!

The line of cars to get back into the US.  I'm so glad we weren't in that line.

So after we had our share of Mexico, we walked back across the border. No big deal.  We hopped in our car and 10 miles down the road was a border control check point.  There were dogs sniffing each car to see if they had drugs.  Micah said " Oh man, I hope they don't bark at our car."  Cue the barking.  That dog was going CRAZY!   We had to get out of our car and wait on the side of the road while they drove our car away and checked it out.  Adam got yelled at for looking at his phone.  It was great fun.  Luckily they didn't find anything that had been planted in our car, but when we got back in the car, there was dog hair and slobber over everything. Gross.

THE BIOSPHERE!!!!!

The Rainforest

I think this was the Savannah, but I could be wrong.

The ocean.

The desert

The long hallways we walked through

The lung! The coolest part.  I don't really want to explain it here. Talk to Micah about it if you are interested.

The ocean again. Adam likes the fish.

The kitchen where the people cooked when they were sealed in the Biosphere for 2 years.

A cook rock.

It sure was fun to have Adam in town.  We would have never done half of that stuff if he hadn't come and given us a reason to do those things.