Dear Carter

I got some disturbing news today as i was talking to Leandra via Facebook IM. Carter had told her that he would stop reading my blog, or assume that i had quit blogging (or something like that) if i didn't make a post soon. I didn't want to lose one of the few people that still checks my blog so i thought i should give him a shout out and explain myself a little.

The reason for the lack of blogging is merely the fact that i have been really busy. Since graduation, i did 7 sections and 3 tests for an independent study class in six days (i took two of the tests on my anniversary), Aaron and i drove across the country, had a car break down (which has since been sold), i started a new job, a new diet, got a gym membership (and actually go), and i've been helping my sister and my mom with carly and taylor. I don't think that i have ever been this busy in my entire life. I'm really sorry for the serious lack of blogging but i hope that you can understand. I'll do my best to be better about it!! So Carter, don't give up on me!!

Minus being super busy Aaron and I are loving it out here. Its nice to spend some time with my side of the family before we move 3,000 miles away from them. I wish that Ashby, Ryan, and the girls hadn't gone to Arizona, but business is business. I'll give more details later about my job, and i have tons of pictures that i can post.

Side note: for those So You Think You Can Dance lovers... my top three at this moment are:

Kherington and Twitch
Chelsie and Mark
Katie and Jason

(and should we talk about Chelsie and Mark's hip hop dance tonight? I submit that we should!
IT WAS AMAZING!)

Happy 2nd Anniversary!

I can't believe that two years ago today Aaron and I got married. I remember counting down the days until our wedding, praying that they would go by faster so we could finally get married. It feels like yesterday when we went to our rehearsal dinner and instead of wearing black church shoes i wore my rainbow sandals... i guess i was so excited for the next day to come that i lost my mind. Thankfully Erika realized my insanity sacrificed her own fashion so that my shoes would match my outfit (thanks Erika!!).

Anyway, so many things have happened in these past two years and i'm so grateful that we've been able to do them together. Aaron, thanks for being my best friend and making me smile every single day. You really do make me whole i can't wait to spend the rest of eternity with you.

Aaron's Graduation

Yesterday Aaron's family and i made the trek up to Salt Lake so that we could watch Aaron walk. It was really fun to be on the other side of the graduation and i was so proud of Aaron (who graduated with honors and summa cum laude... yes i'm bragging)!! Afterwards we celebrated by going out to Tucanos at Gateway which was delicious!! Here are a few pictures:

Congrats Aaron!! all of your hard work finally paid off!

Graduation Extravaganza

Well it finally happened, I GRADUATED!!! I swear two years ago i never thought that i would graduate, i couldn't imagine having two years left. A bizillion classes later and a large increase in my GPA (from the first two unfortunate years) i graduated from college. Its a little bitter sweet due to the fact that technically i'm not done. I still have an independent study that i need to finish, but i should be DONE done with that on Tuesday WAHOOO. Its after that class that i'll really feel like i'm done. But last weekend i got the chance to walk for graduation.

My head is spinning a little bit from everything that has happened in the past couple of weeks. You can tell a lot happened by the sheer volume of pictures on this post! But all the madness was worth it!

First there was commencement on Thursday. Originally i wasn't going to go, but my brother talked me into it and i'm really glad i went. Elder Bednar spoke and i got to sit next to Matt and Jillian, which always makes for a good time. The most unfortunate thing was the fact that it was FREEZING outside and it started to SNOW, yeah thats right SNOW, when we were walking into the Marriott center. Thankfully after commencement it warmed up and the sun came out so we could get a few pictures.Off to the real world!!
Commencement was on Thursday and the actual graduation for my school (Family, Home and Social Science) was at the buttcrack of dawn on Friday morning. The program started at 8am and the graduates had to be there at 7am. It was rough just getting up that early, but the worst part was that we had to stand outside in the FREEZING cold weather for and hour. My hands and feet were so cold that i literally felt sick to my stomach. When we were walking into the marriott center i couldn't even feel my feet. I was stumbling around.. but so was everyone else. The program went by fairly quickly but it was the announcing the graduates names that took forever and unfortunately Sociology was at the end of the list. Thankfully i was sitting next to Jillian and Whitney and we had a great time just laughing and chatting.I love this picture!! Sorry Jillian i didn't crop the guy out. I love the fact that we're dying laughing because the lady said my last name wrong even though i wrote it out phonetically on the little name card i handed to her, i wrote it out BARNERD, and the lady said BERNER.. how she got confused don't ask. But we thought it was hilarious. Love you Jilly!! Graduating with you was the best!Whitney (We had a bunch of classes together and she's Jillian's cousin), Jillian, and MeWith my ParentsWith my Parents-in-lawMatt's graduation was at the EXACT same time as mine, but his was a lot shorter so my parents were able to go to both. It was only after the fact that we realized that we could have walked together... oh well! Here is Matt with his FIANCE!! They got engaged the night before, we're SOO excited for them and we all absolutely LOVE Rachel. They are perfect for each other. We think the wedding will be around August 30th but nothing is set in stone. On Sunday we went up to my Aunt and Uncles house for a family get together to celebrate our graduations. Aaron is actually going to graduate today!! A new post coming soon! We had an oh so delicious Costco cake, i requested getting a flower but i was unsuccessful : ) haha.My parents went into Salt Lake for the Jazz Game so Aaron and i got to hang out with Stacey and the kiddos. It was so much fun having them here! We even watched the entire Spongebob Movie, and i hate to say it but i thought it was actually quite funny.
This is the "not so good picture" of us but i had to put it up cause i really liked it. Love you Stace!
On Monday the girls went shopping at the Park City Outlets, it was fantastic. You can't go wrong with shopping and hanging out with the girls. We also SLAMMED this evil Kettle Corn that my mom had. It was SO dang good you just couldn't stop. By the time we got back to provo there was popcorn everywhere. Thats why it made it into the picture with us.
Later that night my parents, aaron and i, aaron's parents, and matt all went out to dinner at goodwood. I had no idea their food was so good.Before the family left on tuesday we all got lunch (cafre rio and zupas of course) and brought it back to our place. It was really fun to hang out with them before they left and we're really going to miss them.We had to say goodbye before they had to leave because we had to go to a wedding for one of Aaron's good friends. I tossed this picture in here because i liked it. And i want to say Congrats to Brandon and Christina for tying the knot!! Now you need a blog!

A Few Crazy Happenings

There have been two things that have happened lately that i find shocking. The first and most obvious one is the fact that it has been SNOWING in Utah. Wait a minute, i thought it was the middle of april. What happened to spring blossoms and warmer temperatures? What about my visions of summer coming out of hibernation from the winter that seemed never ending? These dreams have been shattered this week. I can handle rain. April showers bring May flowers. This doesn't mean snow showers. Snow showers keep May flowers in the ground. Today i wore shorts and flip flops to class and i was having great thoughts of finally getting to experience one of the seasons that i love the most, Spring. I came home and took a long and much needed nap (I was up until about 2am doing homework.. see previous post). When i woke up i seemed to have traveled back in time. When i fell asleep it was April and when i woke up it was January. I felt like i was on a terrible episode of the Twilight Zone... it was SNOWING yet again the same day i had dusted off my flip flops. UGH!! Utah owes every person living here a really nice spring and summer that lasts for a very very very long time.
The second shocker of the semester is Aaron's law class up at the U. In order to major in Accounting you have to take a business law class. Aaron's class was extremely strange because he would work his butt off in the class and get about 30% of the points that the assignment was worth. The weirdest part though is that his groups 30% was the highest grade in the class and some people didn't even get points. All of his assignments turned out this way and Aaron would freak out because he had no idea if he was going to completely fail the class or get an A in the class. Plus, the teacher told the class that their grade is only slightly based off of their assignments and more heavily based off of how hard the teacher thought they were working. In essence the teacher would just pick what their grade should be. Poor Aaron was always so stressed out about this class. At one point someone in the class sent out an email saying that all the members of the class should go visit the Dean of the business school to complain about their class. Aaron and i thought that was a stupid idea because students can complain and complain about a class and the school normally never does anything about it. Two weeks ago aaron went to his law class. The night before he had stayed up to the wee hours of the morning compiling yet another assignment for this ridiculous class, 140 pages that probably would get him only a small percentage of the points. As he is sitting in class ready to turn in his homework, the teacher walks in and says "The class is canceled. We're not collecting anymore assignments, the class is officially over. Everyone gets a B but if you feel that you deserve an A you can come petition to me during my office hours." WHAT?!?! Aaron came home completely shocked and not quite sure what had happened. I have never in my life heard of a class being canceled in the middle of the semester. I also never thought that the school of business would side with the students rather than the teachers. That must have been some good complaining they were doing!! So Aaron's work load just got a lot lighter and he has one less final to take. Seriously though, how crazy is that?

School

Hey, do you remember me? I used to write posts on my blog all the time. The past month or so, not so much, but i hope that you will accept me once again onto your screens and into your hearts. Some of you have asked if i'm still alive, which would be yes i am, but there were days that i felt like i wouldn't survive. I never knew that four classes could get so busy so fast. The beginning of the semester was a freakin cake-walk compared to everything that has been going on lately. I remember reading books for fun because i had so much time on my hands. In March i devised the brilliant plan of scheduling assignments into my week that weren't due right then and there but would eventually be due. So everyday i had an assignment and this was supposed to keep the end of my semester pretty relaxed. Boy was i wrong. There are always little things that come up, and things that you thought would be easy to do but ended up being absolutely insane. This is why lately i have been feeling like this:Most of my time during the month of March and into April has been spent working on a research project for my Sociology of Work and Occupations class. It is a 10-15 page research paper that if you worked in a group you would have to make a study and actually do the research. I figured that since i hate reading research articles that i would prefer to work on the actual research itself, so while the rest of our group worked on the front half of our paper, Brad, my fellow researcher, and i worked on data collection. To make a long story short, i have never spent so much time in the sociology lab (it turned out to be about 30 hours total) and i have never felt so confused in my entire life. We had about a month to do the research and put it into our paper along with graphs etc so we could make a poster for the Mary Lou Fulton Conference on April 4th. After some serious computer issues our poster and research for the conference was submitted.

At the conference we had to stand by our poster and explain to the judges and random passersby what our study was all about. We got a few characters that asked questions, and a few people trying to challenge what our findings were saying, but it turned out just fine. We got to attend a free lunch (which is what i was most excited about), and they announced the winners. There were three winners for every discipline in the School of Family, Home, and Social Science (Economics, psychology, sociology etc). As they were saying the winners for Sociology they began saying the names of the members of our group. I almost fell over due to complete and utter shock. We won 3rd Place!!!!! I know that third place isn't as good as first place, but you have no idea how proud i am of myself. I never thought i was academic by any stretch of the imagination but because our study involved a regression analysis of the data that Brad and i compiled we stood out from other groups. I know that i'm totally bragging right now, but its only because i never thought i was very good at the whole school thing. Here i am standing next to our poster:Me and Ally by the poster looking sexy.

Book Tag

The instructions for this tag are as follows:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages)
2. Turn to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog
5. Tag 5 people

Okay, the 5th sentence wasn't very good, so i'm going to steal Ashby's idea and include some of the surrounding sentences.

"Jop was supposed to be back by the 7:00pm curfew. Seven came and went. Perhaps he had been delayed and would return in the morning."

The Hiding Place is my new favorite book right now. The funny thing is that i usually don't like reading books that have been assigned in class (we were assigned to read it in my HFL class). I actually ended up reading it a month before we were even supposed to start it. Which is amazing in regards to my track record with school assigned reading. I HIGHLY recommend it. It really is one of the best books that i have ever read. Plus its a true story which makes it that much better. It starts a little slow for the first chapter but after that its fantastic!

Now I tag: Rachel, Tiffany, Jillian, Chelsea A, Leandra