Bella Salon!

Some exciting news....... I MOVED TO A DIFFERENT SALON!!! HAAALLLLEEEELLLUUUUUUJJJAAHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Life is good let me tell you. So some of you know I had been working at Ensemble Salon for almost 3 years... and although I LOVE doing hair I, (and everyone else that worked there) really had a hard time. I won't go into detail.. but basically I was just so ready to leave. They were moving locations so I decided that at the same time I would go to a different salon.

My step sister Jonna has a sister-in-law named Da'Lynne that worked at Bella Salon, and had told me to get into contact with her. So I did. :) I met with the owner and that was that! I got hired! Now the difference between the salons is Ensemble was commission... and Bella is a leasing salon. Do you know how great this is? I am my own boss. No more dealing with cruddy bosses who never let me take any time off and never listened to me and 80% of the time didn't have color in stock. I don't have to deal with that BS ANYMORE!!! The transfer was pretty stressful. I had to get all my clients info and call everyone and send out postcards to everyone. But I did it, and last week was my first week at Bella! I love it. There's 13 stylists and everyone is super nice and all of my clients followed!

I feel like the biggest burden has been lifted off my back and now I enjoy working again. YAY FOR HAPPY JOBSSSS!!!!

Winter Madness.

This past month has been SO fun and SO nuts! We had so much fun over the Holidays. Lot's of family and friend time and lots of Holiday cheer! The month of December was pretty crazy and was just go go go.
Near the beginning of the month we threw a little Christmas party/Missy's birthday party. I made lots of food and it was DELICIOUS. We ate and watched Home Alone and decorated sugar cookies. We had a ton of fun and maybe we'll even do it again next year!

(the food was intense)

(Kyle & Kerri--newly engaged cute couple!)



(don't you love my candles??)

(Alysha & Justin decorating cookies. The best sugar cookie decorators)

Then Christmas started getting closer and Crystal came home!! My mom waited till Crystal came home so we could decorate the tree and we had a good time since Bobby especially always makes things wild and entertaining.

(this is one of those moments where I don't know if I want to claim him...)

(love these two chicks.)


(I was feeling left out being the only one without 4-eyes, so Chuck let me borrow his)

(we also went to "Peacock Lane" which is a famous street that decks out on xmas lights every year.)
sisters :)

(and then the weater got all crazy on us and SNOWED! We loved it!)
(we walked to my parents house and there were cars stuck EVERYWHERE!)

Then Crystal and Kevin and the rents took off for Idaho and things settled back down a little bit.. and 2 weeks after christmas my birthday hit!!! woot woot! Good ol 23. I love my birthday. Who doesn't love a day all about them? I like to tell Bobby that it's actually my birthday WEEK so I get whatever I want all week. Ok lets be honest... I get what I want pretty much always. But ESPECIALLY on my birthday.

(looking a whole year older--don't look to close to see the wrinkles ps thanks Crystal for the earings! Love em!)

(we went cosmic bowling the Friday before with a bunch of friends and had a blast!)

(two of my favorite people. Whit and Holly)

(that's my GQ man)

(priceless)

And then the BEST birthday present of all was the next day when Bobby took me to leavenworth, Washington! OH MY GOSH GO THERE!!!! I was in heaven. It's a little German town up in the mountains and we had the most relaxing time imaginable. It was so nice to get away just the 2 of us and it was so beautiful and magical. We only spent one night there but it was so much fun and we want to go back.

(the trees were beautiful)

(this was funny. Pretzels everywhere. We love German food)

(don't you love it?!?)

(don't worry it didn't stick!)

(we went to a German restaraunt and had a shnitzel!!! SO DELICIOUS!)

(Delicious nutella cheesecake. YUM)

<3

Crossfit.

I know I have much more catching up to do other than writing about our new(ish) obsession. We love crossfit. If you have talked to me lately you know what that is. I'm sorry if you're sick of hearing about it--stop reading as of now. :) Never heard of it? go to http://www.crossfit.com/. It rocks our world.

Bobby and I have been working out 5-6 days a week pretty consitantly for the past mmmmm 2 years? It wasn't till last January that I really got down on my eating habits and lost the pounds. My typical work-out consisted of a lot of running and weight training. Which would be the "Body building"weight lifting style that most people do in the gym. You know... 15 reps of x amount of weight 3 times. Rest in between. All that good stuff. Now this was all fine and dandy until we got bored and stopped seeing as great of results. I hadn't really lost weight since the wedding and I found that annoying. Bobby's a weight loss machine but us girls I think have hit harder.

So anyway, our friends Wade and Bethany (who Bobby lived with before we got married) have been trying to get us to do crossfit for... mmm a long time. We finally started a few months ago and we have already seen drastic changes in our body. It's crazy that I'd been working on my arms for such a long time at the gym lifting weights but never saw many results.. only in 3 months my arms have gotten so much more toned, including my legs, back, abs, butt everything!

Here's what it is. Crossfit is a bunch of affiliations around the US. It's not like a 24 hour fitness or a Golds Gym. They're personally owned, different costs to sign up at different crossfits. Most are a warehouse type setting, and when you get there there is a work out of the day posted on the board. Everyone in the class starts at the same time, and before you start you do a long warm-up and then the coach goes over what you're doing, and often times you work on specific body parts before you do the work out of the day. A lot of things we do are things you would do in gymnastics.. using the rings and pull up bar to do gymnastic type moves. These things do an all over body strength training. The work out of the day normally consists of 2 to 5 excersizes either doing repeated 3-5 times. The nice thing is it's different every day and you never know what you're going to be doing until you get there. The best part is having the coach/trainer watching you during the work-out, correcting your form and motivating you to finish the work-out. All work-outs are timed, and your time is scored on the bored at the end and you keep personal track so the next time you do that work-out down the road you can keep score of your progress. Many of the things we do are some of the best all over body movements.. things like push-ups, pull-ups, squats, sit-ups.. and then as well as running, jump roping, box jumping, dead-lifts, front squats, etc. A couple examples of these work-outs would be something like:

100 pull-ups

100 push-ups

100 sit-ups

100 squats

or...

200 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

400 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

200 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

I've never done the same work-out twice. We've been doing crossfit 3 times a week and I've been running on my off days. I highly recommend people checking this out if they're tired of their same ol routine, need something new and EFFECTIVE, or are just looking to get into really good shape. People who did sports growing up love crossfit because it can be competitive and a lot of things we do are very sports oriented.

Ok I'm off my soap-box now, but check it out! We love it!!!

here's some pictures to see what it's all about

ohhhhhhh the Holidays.

Things have been crazy lately. Loving this holiday season. Our house is finally all decorated which is great. It finally feels like a home! Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. My sister came home for a week and we were able to go on our shopping trip that we always do within a few days before thanksgiving with my mom, brother and sister. We like to go downtown to Pioneer place (even though it doesn't have the largest amount of stores or best deals, it's got the best christmas spirit). We road the lightrail down (always), and spent a few hours shopping. We had a lot of fun minus the 10 hour walk downtown in the freezing cold to find the stupid Ducks store (which we NEVER found). I thought I was going to freeze to death. Ok it wasn't THAT bad but we were all pretty pooped after that. That night we all went and saw "A Christmas Carol" in 3D and that was pretty fun. Bobby had never seen A Christmas Carol before! Can you believe that? He really enjoyed it and the animation with 3D was pretty sweet.

We left the night before Thanksgiving to head up to Seattle and spend the rest of the holiday with Bobbys side of the family. We stayed at his Dad and step moms house and had Thanksgiving dinner with them. Bobby and I got to cut the turkey for our FIRST time ever and can I just say we did a pretty dang good job. Bobby just started attacking it until I got there and gave him some direction. Boys with electric knives... yikes. (PS excuse my terrible camera)

(Do you see the look on his face?)

(We ripped that bad boy to pieces. Got every last bit of meat we could find!)

Bobby's brother came over with his fiance Alli and daughter Brooke. Brooke is a doll. She's 2 and at the stage where she is INTO EVERYTHING. It's hard to keep track of her. Bobby's sister Coley also came over, as well as Bobby's step brothers. There was a good amount of people and it was REALLY great to spend a holiday with Bobby's Dad. That evening we went with his dad and sister to go see "The Blindside" = AMAZING. Had to keep my family tradition going of seeing a movie on Thanksgiving. Normally on Bobbys side-- Thanksgiving is spent at Bobby's Moms mom--but that wasn't the case this year. His dad and step mom are so sweet and kind and we loved spending a couple of days with them.

(Alli and cute Brookie)

(always into something)

(ohhh just a little car shot)

(Brotherly love)

We spent the day after Thanksgiving with Bobbys Mom (for Thanksgiving #2). All the siblings came to this Thanksgiving as well. This was quite an event (as ones with Bobby's mom always are). Their oven broke so instead of having dinner at 3:30 as planned we had it at 6! Nonetheless we had a really fun time hanging out. It's always wild and crazy over there, lots of pictures were taken (not with my terrible camera sadly) and let's just say the mashed potatoes were amazing. After dinner we drove home and rolled in around 10:30.

Last weekend we went to Seattle AGAIN due to a hair class I had to go to. We stayed at our good friends Sara & Jasons and it was so much fun. Sunday night I had to go to this big demo debut that the Art Director of Pureology was throwing, and then Monday there was a 3 hour class. It was a good time although we didn't learn a whole lot of new stuff. All in all it was a good weekend--though I'm getting sick of sitting in a car.

We had a good time getting our christmas tree the other day. The original plan was to go cut a tree down (afterall it IS our first christmas as a married couple)..... buuuttt we ended up at Fred Meyer getting our ghetto ugly tree of which Bobby named Gilbert I believe? His exact words were "But Kayleen if we don't pick him no one else will". So I gave in and got an ugly noble. It was fun. We enjoyed tying it on top of my car in which we roped it through our windows which made it not possible to get into our car.... we thought about crawling through the window.. but instead we just re-roped it. Don't hate--we're newbies. Sadly I didn't get pictures of this event.. but I did take pictures of our decorated place (which have been long over-due to put up... but here you go Cara).

(heres wall #1)

(We painted the walls ourself... don't look to closely haha ps you can see crooked gilbert)

(I've been wanting a clock like this for a LONG time. Thanks Khols)
(love our wedding pictures!)

(our wonderful Ikea bookshelf in which Bobby put together wrong. :) )

(Last but not least our cute kitchen!)

The next few weeks are going to be crazy. We have Christmas parties, last minute shopping, and a crazy work schedule! I'm so excited for Crystal to come home. I love love love this time of year!!!! Merry christmas everyone and Happy New year!!!

Thanks.

<3 I am thankful for a Heavenly Father who loves me and is always there for me. For a Savior who died for me so that I could return to live with him--Which truly is the greatest gift of all.

<3 I am thankful for a wonderful family who loves me unconditionally. I am thankful for the relationships that I have with them and how as the years go by we get closer and closer.

<3 I am thankful for my husband. When I was 17 we would talk on the phone all day and all night and my mom just couldn't UNDERSTAND what was so great about this guy... It was all about the connection. I am so grateful for that connection that always brought us back to each other. He is my best friend, my soul-mate and the best husband I could ever ask for.

<3 I am thankful for my friends. Oh my friends. The ones that I always turned to, and always kept me hangin on even when I didn't want to. I have been so blessed with amazing friends throughout my life.

<3 I am thankful for good health. I've never had any serious illness, or even broken a bone.

<3 I am thankful that I have a job. And one that I enjoy. I love what I do and that makes things a lot easier and pleasant. I am thankful that Bobby has a good stable job as well.

These are just a few of the things I am so very thankful for. I love the holidays, and I love how it's a time we can reflect the past year and appreciate all the great things in our lives.

Dun dun dun......

Yes. We have the Swine flu in my home. And let me tell you. It's miserable.

I started to get sick a week and a half ago, but never got got a fever. It would come and go and I thought by the end of last week it was almost gone... well I was wrong! Saturday I worked all day and then took my niece Ellie out shopping and for dinner for her birthday and stayed out a little too late and ended up coughing all night. The next morning I woke up with a temp of 101.1. After taking Advil the temp went down and I thought I was good to go.. Bobby wasn't feeling sick so we ended up going over to my parents for dinner. I came home that night, went to bed and was up ALL night with a fever of 102. Nothing would make it go down. Oh I was beyond miserable. I finally woke bobby up around 5am and we called the ER at St. Vincent because I seriously thought I was dying. I talked to a nurse on the phone and she said it sounded like I had H1N1 and she told me to stay home and what I should do. Then I spoke to my primary doctor and she wanted me to come in. So we went in and I was feeling pretty freakin crappy and could barely breath. She made me breath into this thing that is supposed to open up your lungs.. didn't help too much. She prescribed me with tamiflu as well as a cough medicine with codeine that was supposed to knock me out since I hadn't slept in like 3 days.
After waiting in line at Rite aid for FAR too long I went home... tried to get some soup down although I hadn't eaten anything that day.. and took a warm bath for an hour. When I got out of the bath my body must have gone into shock because I started shaking really bad and turned blue. Bobby freaked out and didn't know what to do. I finally managed to get clothes on and crawl into bed in which I managed to make it to the bathroom in time to throw up the little soup i had eaten. At this point Bobby was downstairs while I was trying to sleep, he didn't know what to do so he said a prayer and his mom called him. After talking to his mom he got ahold of his Aunt who is a nurse in the ER and she told him to go get a humidifier, vapor rub, spray for my throat, crackers and gateraid. After all of this... I finally was able to breath and sleep.
I woke up at 4am so happy that I had slept 6 hours. I couldn't believe it! It had been so long since I'd really slept. Tuesday was quite a bit better. IB Profen seemed to be the only thing that kept the fever down... so i took that ever 6 hours. My visiting teacher brought us chicken noodle soup which was AWESOME and we had a 24 season 5 marathon. :) Sad to say, last night bobby was running a 100.5 temp. :(
So today we are both stuck at home. Sitting here... not doing much other than sleeping, and watching TV. I'm starting to feel better, the only problem is I can't breath very well. I feel like my oxygen level has been cut in half and nothing I do seems to make it better.
I'm really hoping I can be back at work by Friday... a good friend of mine is getting married and I'm supposed to be doing her hair!!!! aaahhhhhh!!!!
Amy our roomate has managed to stay healthy. She's pretty much stayed downstairs through all of this and when she does come upstairs she wears a mask. Smart move. I do not wish this flu on anyone! So everyone take lots and lots and lots of vitamin C and stay healthy!!!!!

I <3 Fall.

I LOVE fall. It is my most FAVORITE season of ALL the seasons. Fall is my favorite for so many reasons. I especially love Oregon in the Fall. I love the leaves on the trees changing color, I love the smell in the air, I love pumpkins, I love scarves and boots, I love that it's the beginning of the Holiday season, I love that all my favorite bands come to Portland in the fall, and I love love love the rain. Can we say I am a true Oregonian? yes we can. The rain is my favorite part of Fall. Ok ok... so after many consecutive days of rain of course it can get a little old, and of course when you're having a bad day grey skies don't exactly help. But I love dark dreary days. I especially love going to a concert on a dark night where it's pouring down rain, and I love driving my car in the rain listening to William fitzsimmons or some other chill acoustic music. Gaaahhh I love this season. It's time for new beginnings. For years and years I especially disliked September. My dad died September 30th 16 years ago and it was always especailly a hard month for me. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that for many of those years I was in school and school always started in September. The last "hard" September I had was probably when I first moved to Utah though--where I didn't have many friends and everything was new. But the last few years I've tried to make it a good month and not let hard memories affect my mood.

Things have been so fun and so busy and lots has been going on! At the end of September my best friend (the one that moved to Germany) Cara's little sister Amy moved in with us! I love Amy. Amy is like a little sister to me. Our place is so big... now let me tell you... you might be thinking that we're a little weird for letting someone moved in with us mostly because we're newlyweds. And I wasn't crazy about the idea for a little while but I wouldn't do it if our place wasn't so big. On the bottom floor of our townhouse we have a bedroom, a full bathroom and the garage. Second floor we have a big kitchen, big living/dinning space, and a half bathroom. Top floor we have master bedroom with a full bathroom connected, another bedroom, another full bathroom, and a den. Yeah... can we say MORE ROOM than we needed? trust me the only reason why we got this place is because we got a BANGIN deal on it. It was so cheap and so great that it was too great to pass up. ALSO I wouldn't let just ANYONE move in. Amy is such a good kid and like family to me. She's in school full time and works part-time, cleans up after herself and we really don't see her all that much. All we do is share the kitchen. It's fun having her around since she's the only one who will watch America's Next Top Model with me. hehe :p It's been great having her, and the extra 350 a month isn't bad either! Isn't she just a doll? lol haha


I've gotten REALLY into running lately. I've been running for a few years now, but I never really pushed myself. When I first started running about 4ish years ago I couldn't run a mile. I would run 7 minutes on the treadmill and have to stop. Well I worked my way up and eventually started running 20 minutes on the treadmill a few times a week, but still for a couple years never would dare push myself to go further. Then a few months ago I started going further (but only like.. once every 2 or 3 weeks) and worked up to 3 or 4 miles. Then about a month ago I went to the gym and it was a leg day for me... (which meant a lot of leg weight training.. which is exhausting).. and I told myself that if I could run for an hour on the treadmill I wouldn't have to do legs that day. HA! I did it!!! I ran 6 miles and I was so stinkin proud of myself. After that I was thinking.. yeah I'll probably never be able to do that again... And then the next week I did it again! And then a couple days later I did it AGAIN! So then Yesterday morning it was my late day at work (didn't start till noon)... so I decided to attempt running outside.... which I haven't done in at least a year... I was very nervous about this. I was thinking I'd MAYBE be able to run 3 miles... because running outside is so much harder than the treadmill.. anyway, I went for it and I ran 7 MILESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!! (CARA AREN'T YOU SO PROUD OF ME???) And I could have kept going except I had to hurry home and shower to get ready for work!!! I was so excited and I can't wait to do it again. After all this I decided I wanted to work my way up to run my first half-marathon... Well later that day my friend Sarah came in to get her haircut and she's been training to run a half marathon in 2 weeks and has only gotten up to 8 miles so far... a half marathon is 13.1 miles... She thinks I can do it and really wants me to do it with her. I am so nervous and haven't decided yet. I'm going to give it another week and we'll see... Her and I are going running next monday and if I can do at least 10 or 11 miles then I think I'll run it. If not I will definitely be doing one in the near future. Running outside is so exhilirating. Especially this time of year, when it's cool enough outside and everything is so beautiful. So we'll see how this goes... wish me luck!



So last weekend Bobby and I went with our friends Holly and Stephen to the Sauvie's Island SCCCAAARRRRRYYYY corn-maze. Let me tell you this was a BLAST. We get there and the parking lot is OUT of control packed.... We didn't know this going in.. but it ended up being a 2 HOUR WAIT!!! We almost decided to forfeit the 10 bucks a person and leave because it wa sso freakin cold outside and we were sick of standing in line... but once we got there... it was SO worth it.
Anyone that knows me husband knows he is ridiculous. He is HILLARIOUSSSSSSS. ESPECIALLY when he gets excited... the CHILD comes out. He's basically a big kid.. so much so that I can never get a normal picture out of him... hardly even a smile. This below is proof:



Anyway... Now that I got that out of the way... this scary corn-maze was a ball.. especially having my GOOFY husband by my side. I am the BIGGEST scardy cat. I'm a weeeeeny. And the scary people that jump out of you LOVE the scared ones... so I was followed QUITe a bit... Bobby just ate it up. Crystal I know you can picture him in this corn-maze... He screams like a girl, Like I'm not even kidding the octave of his pitch is out of control high and he gets all bouncy and giddy. We all had so much fun and it was worth every penny and every second of that long wait.

This is during our long crazy wait... Bobby is obviously not impressed.. and Holly and stephen... well it's self explanitory.

The end of the night.... SO FUN! (yikes! Where did my tan go? :( )



OH PS. I finally started decorating our place and I love it. Pictures to come soon. <3