My New, Cute Haircut

My mom, who is an amazing hairdresser, usually cuts my hair, but due to an unfortunate amount of distance between us, I have had to choose between having a "random" person cut my hair or just not cutting it. My choice=no haircuts in over a year! However, after getting a beautiful haircut from a "random" guy name Kenny yesterday, I think I will be able to handle future haircuts from "randoms" . . . but hopefully I will be able to stick with my new friend, Kenny, for a while.

Ryan's Birthday

Ryan's birthday just happened to coincide with his 1st day back to school after Winter Break. Unfortunate timing, but we made the most of it. I got a fancy, little cake & put a tea light on it for him to blow out. Kind of lame, I know, but the cake was quite good & the tea light prevented wax drip on the cake.

I decorated the house with streamers, which Ryan wouldn't let me take down for a week in order for him to fully enjoy them. Party in the house!

We also went to the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma for "Zoo Lights" the Saturday before his birthday. It was amazing to see the profusion of lights all over the zoo grounds!

We thought these big spiders looked pretty creepy floating in the air. Yikes!

My favorite light feature was this huge rainbow.

This tree was another favorite. It was much more impressive-looking in real life. It was absolutely covered with lights!

Christmas in Vista

We flew down to Vista this year to spend Christmas with my family, which means we left all the snow behind. We spent a wonderful six days celebrating Mike's homecoming, having all sorts of family parties, eating good food, walking along the beach, and just enjoying the time together.

Mike is Home!

My brother is back after a two-year mission in Mexico City!

It was great to see him and to remember what an awesome person he is! He is a little different though since now he loves Mexican food, speaking Spanish, . . . and Mexican wrestling masks, like the one modeled by my dad below.

Our 4th Anniversary: 2nd Big Snow Day

We were planning on going out for dinner to celebrate our 4th anniversary, but due to another day of snow, we opted to stay home and make one of our all time favorite meals: spaghetti! And since we just moved and the dining table was buried, we set up this "fancy" meal in the living room.

We did venture out into the beautiful winter wonderland to make some snow angels and write our traditional R+D=(heart) in the snow . . . in the past we have usually had sand to write it in.

And here's our cute new residence. Look how deep the snow was on our front steps!

Seattle's 1st Big Snow Day

Record snows came to Seattle this winter. It was beautiful and fun despite being incredibly inconvenient and dangerous for our not-so-snowy city. My work was cancelled for 2 days since the driving conditions were so bad downtown. Lucky for me! My first "snow days" ever!

The 1st day it snowed and stayed, we thought we would have so much fun playing in it. Ryan is making a snowball in this picture. We decided to walk over to the park with our neighbors, but we were freezing by the time we got there so we didn't stick around to play much. You must not get as cold in the snow when you are little. It is so much more fun as a kid!

Allison's Puppies

A few weeks ago we went to visit Allison's puppies before they were sent off to new homes. There were 13 puppies: 11 yellow and 2 black labrador puppies. They were all over the place! It was awesome to see them flock to their food dishes and spin in a circle around the dish as they all fought to eat in the crowd. They were so cute all squished up inside their doghouse too.

Ryan's Haircut

BEFORE---------------------&----------------------AFTER

Look how much happier and how much more fit and coordinated he looks AFTER having his hair cut. It was quite long for him, just over 4 inches. I liked it, but he wanted it cut for some reason so I finally gave in and cut it. Too bad. He might have been on his way to an afro, like the one in the pictures below!

Happy Halloween!

I dressed up like a witch for Halloween at work, but I was totally outdone by Julie's wig!

Since it was soooooo cool, we all tried it on . . . including our fish!

  

P.S. The coolest part of my costume was the tights & another cool thing about our Halloween night was our meal: jack-o-lantern pizza.

Our Future Dog

Ryan & I helped out at an auction where this cutest-puppy-ever was an item to be auctioned off. He was such a snuggly, fluffy, happy Golden Retriever puppy. I wanted to keep him! Maybe someday...

My Favorite Cousin Came to Visit!

I am so lucky that my favorite cousin, Rachel, married someone from Washington! She just came up to visit her in-laws last weekend, so Ryan & I met up with her and her cute family for a huge-portioned dinner at Claim Jumper.

And, yes, we did eat all of this cake aptly named "The Motherlode."

Making Apple Cider

This weekend, we got together with Ryan's family for the age-old Barrett tradition of making homemade apple cider. We enjoyed every stage of the process, which started with picking apples in their orchard.

Some of us were hoisted up to the higher branches in the tractor bucket, which was quite fun! Ryan really enjoyed being the driver and bucket controller. The Ross kids sure are fast apple pickers!


Then, we helped wash the apples before sending them through the crushing and pressing machine.

I hadn't seen a real pear tree before last Saturday, so I took a picture of these beautiful pears hanging like ornaments. I kept looking around for a partridge . . . maybe it will show up in a few months.

Overall, the cider making was a happy and tasty experience for everyone!