Feliz Cumpleanos a Mi

Dec 28th 11pm - Pre-Birthday YoZone Celebration

Dec 29th 12am - Airport pickup. So nice of Lindsay to fly home for the occasion.

1am - Gift unwrapping. Thank you Gracie for jumping your smelly body onto my bed and helping me unveil the ipod nano that Lindsay and Nikki had bought me. This was a one time thing dog, so don't get the wrong idea.

11am - Baptisms at the Draper Temple

7pm - Dinner at Happy Sumo

Mmmm...sushi... Notice I couldn't be distracted from my dinner long enough to look up for the picture.

8pm - Done with dinner and ready to watch Beauty and the Beast

Roommates, friends, and loved ones, thank you for helping me start year 22 of my life off right. It's going to be a good year for me, I just know it.

Happy Christma-hana-kwanz-aka!

Technically we only celebrate Christmas, but we wanted to be culturally sensitive to the many viewers of this blog who may be celebrating other holidays of this season.

Once again, the Barbers made me one of the fam for the holidays. They even made me a part of their gift exchange. The excitement of it all got to me, and I had to take a little pre-gift unwrapping nap beside my present. The box, not the cat. That's smokey and she's already got an owner.


My mom was kind enough to send me a bunch of packages so I would have stuff to open on Christmas. There was one package, however, that caught us all off guard. Nikki and my new toy cat were both puzzled by the box she labeled "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHRIST." Mom, is there something you're not telling us? Needless to say, the package remains unopened. I'm crossing my fingers that when the time does come to open it, it's a -get out of jail (aka hell)- free card.


And here we have our first family picture on our first Christmas Day. Please take note of Gracie's glowing eyes. I always knew that dog was possessed.


Can't wait till next year when Nikki is the one sending me packages with eerie messages about the 2nd coming and my face is photoshopped into our family picture.

- Coco Channel

Our First Christmas

So this year was pretty monumental for me in terms of the Holidays. Now that I'm a college grad and taking on my new role as a working woman, I'm learning that the real world is less lenient than BYU on two week holiday breaks and such. My job went ahead and booked me for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Eve. Thank goodness for Nikki's family taking me under their wing.

Nikki's grandparents' house was decorated so beautifully, it made it easy for me to overcome my homesickness and catch the Christmas spirit.


I'm not going to lie, this little train set did play a significant part in my enjoyment of the festivities.


My pseudo family for the holidays. We rocked that game of charades we played down in this basement, hunh Nikki? No cheating whatsoever...


Since living together, Nikki has been kind enough to share her grandparents with me. It's a good thing she's so generous with them because I've grown sort of attached to these two people.


Nikki's grandma has formed a similar attachment. No, not to me...to her new can opener.


Thanks again Barbers/Ovards, I have you to thank for a tear-free holiday season.

- Courtney Barber

Gingerbread Temple

What is that? You say you're not familiar with the "Gingerbread Temple" practice? You mean you've only made houses and little stick figure men out of gingerbread!?!

Well, in all honesty, that is what we set out to do.

Except, instead of gingerbread we used graham crackers. Though the dedication was there for us, the execution of our blueprints did not go as smoothly as planned.


After numerous attempts at various home-like structures, we concluded with something much better. Much, MUCH better. A Gingerbread Temple! Complete with a sourpatch kid Angel Moroni and all.


Naturally the sugar filled activity led Nikki and I into a frosting fight. I mean, really...how couldn't it?


Despite my pleas to keep the frosting out of my newly shampooed hair, the results were messy. We're still finding hidden globs of frosting in random spots of our apartment.


All in all, I'd deem this one a ginger success.

XOXO Courtney -the Cooh-Kong- Lisonbee

Living the high life in PC

So naturally as all couples have to do, we have to take turns spending time with each others parents. weekend with the in-laws continues as court and i went up to spend the weekend in park city with my family. My family found this amazing deal at this unbelievable hotel...we definitely didn't fit in there but we didn't mind. we had a great weekend full of snowboarding, eating good food, and of course playing yahtzee and doing puzzles with the family.

So here is some of the amazing food i mentioned... sadly, most of it was gone by the first night...mainly thanks to court and me (except the wine in the corner, we did not contribute to that...)

picture of the loby... livin the dream baby

The whole fam damily

In the loby they had these crazy deer statues. naturally court and i decided to ask some random lady to take a picture of us imitating the deer...perfectly normal. remember what i said about fitting in?

so this was the best part of the whole weekend. as we were getting on the gondala, we were reading the sign on the door warning us about getting extremedies stuck in the door. we laughed at the thought, wondering who would have to worry about that...

this picture speaks a thousand words. mom i love you. and no this was not on purpose.

Morman Tabernacle Concert with Natalie Cole

Back in salt lake the next morning... court managed to hook us up with tickets for the motab concert (she knows some people in important places)... ya... anyways the concert was amazing and of course we got to experience utah weather at its finest (wet sleeting snow), doesn't get any better than that.

happy to be here...will be happier when we are inside...

I love the conference center. i feel like im in a giant space ship...like star trek...ok im weird. ps: Lary, loved the christmas tie!

"What will i ever do with out court? good thing we will live together forever and be crazy cat ladies..." these were my thoughts at this point in time. little did i know what was in store for me in the next few months...

Weekend With the In-Laws

Courtney's parents were coming to town and we were both so excited! we had all of these fun activities planned...one of them was to take them to temple square to see the lights. we were running a little late that night, and to make things worse we got stuck in traffic in salt lake. the lights turn off each night at 10 pm and lets just say we had a few minutes to get there, park and walk around... it was an intense few minutes. we ended up dropping her parents off (aka telling them to get out of the car in the middle of an intersection while traffic was waiting for us) and then court and i went on to park illegally, sprint through the streets of salt lake, and get to temple square with only a few minutes to spare and see the lights.

victory. it was a lot of work... why is it that we are training for a marathon and still feel out of shape?

people thought we were so weird when we asked them to take this picture. they had no idea what we had been through...

courts parents didnt believe us when we were complaining about how cold it was in utah. now they did...

"the morning after" its not what you think people...

So just as Courtney mentioned we had to rise and shine bright and early the next morning to run our half marathon. here we are before the race, still feeling sleep deprived and somewhat nauseous from all the junk we ate the night before.

6am....what were we thinking again?

aside from the poor preparations the night before we not only did it but completed it in a very good time! especially court and ash considering they had never ran in a race before. very impressive. the best part of the day was yet to come however...when we all limped back to the apartment and crashed in front of the movie hocus pocus (again...)

finally, this post wouldn't have been complete if we didn't mention our running mate/driver (who might i add drove us all the way to redwoods mall in the dark with no lights) Brett. But we forgave him for risking our lives....in fact a small part of us was probably hoping we would crash so we wouldn't have to run the race... we couldn't have done it with out you buddy...ok we probably could have but it definitely wouldn't have been the same!

-Niglet

____________________________________________________________________

Since Nikki made an addition to her my post of her first marathon, I thought I'd give my two cents on her post of my first half marathon...

Nikki and I came in together at 2 hours 2 minutes. That averages out to be about a 9 minute mile which I hear is pretty good for your first half. I don't know if I would have done so well if it weren't for Nikki. She's the one who inspired me to run in the first place, convinced me I could do a half, and then somehow motivated me to sprint the last mile of the race.

Thank you roommates for helping me accomplish this task I once thought to be impossible...half down, whole to go!

- Cooh

Black Widows - metaphorically, of couse...

This year Nikki, Ashlee, and I waited until a couple days before Halloween to decide on our costumes but our final product was well worth the wait. Last minute Nikki was inspired with the idea of black widow spiders and, with her brilliant brainstorming and my crafty creativity, we put together (as in hand made) the following outfits:

Thats right, we busted out the needle and thread for these babies and I'm sure you'd all agree that it was time well spent. Don't worry about the pose...it's a spider thing...


We treated our guests to a little pumpkin carving, sugar cookie frosting, Hocus Pocus watching, and, in typical 141 fashion, lots and lots of sweet consuming.


Some of our favorite lady friends were there helping us celebrate.


As was our favorite guy friend. He's the only man with guaranteed immunity from our "black widow-effect." We love him too much to cause him any harm. Can't say the same for the rest of the male species...


It was all fun and games till someone busted out the can of Raid.

Socially, it was a success - tons of people, treats, and dancing. Physically, it was a disaster. We loaded ourselves up with junk food and partied until 1am when we had to be up at 6am the next morning for a half-marathon. Oh to be young, single, and completely irresponsible :)

- Cooh

Apparently Nikki would like you all to see this lovely photo as well seeing as she added it to my post...

A Little Inspiration from Hocus Pocus

Lets put it this way...our favorite Haloween movie was Hocus Pocus and we will not mention how many times we watched it. so when the chance came to dress up like witches we jumped on it. every year Gardener Village hosts its anual "witches night out" party. everyone dresses up enjoys shopping, eating, dancing and of course attempting their best impressions of a witch cackle. we got a big group together and first went out to cheesecake factory before hitting up the big party.

Aren't we the most adorable set of witches you have ever seen? but don't be fooled by our charm and good looks...

Clearly possessed in this picture...no other explanation. this kind of thing happens at "witches-night-out"

here we are trying to see who has the best looking/most witch-like tongue... clearly ashlee's is the pointiest but we are not sure if thats an advantage or disadvantage in this competition.

Being witches is exhausting..and can sometimes make you a little crazy to say the least...you gotta love us though.

-Niglet