"Cutting" Back

For those of you who don't know, my husband is very... frugal, yes frugal.  And with the prices of everything going up, from gas to rent to laundry, Nate is always asking if there are areas we can cut back.  Seemingly, this always affects me.  I am definitely the spender in this relationship.  I can admit that, but I have also cut back everywhere I can.
Well a few months ago I came up with a great plan to save even more money: I would cut Nate's hair.  Of course, whenever I brought this up, Nate would quickly change the subject.  After a lot of prodding I finally convinced him to buy some clippers.  

So last night, as our Family Home Evening activity, I gave him his 2nd haircut free of charge.   (Although I did try to convince him that I should be allowed to spend half of what we save each time, as a tip for my good work, but he didn't buy it.)  

Brittney Singer: Hairstylist

So normally when he gets his hair cut, he comes home, showers off and styles his hair, but when I cut it he stands in front of the mirror for 10 minutes examining it and pointing out areas that could be better.  It cracks me up.  I know that I am not a beautician, but my haircuts look so much better than when he has them done professionally.  

Finally after the lengthy examination he'll admit that I did a pretty good job... something that I already knew.

Nate's new haircut.  Looks good, huh?

Our monster tomato plant.

Our garden.  (No I'm  NOT pregnant!  It's just my shirt.)

Nate and I decided to plant a little garden this year in our "front yard" (a 12x5 foot section of dirt outside our front door.)  And since La Grande winters last as long as sacrament meeting on Fast Sunday (FOREVER), we didn't plant until June.  Despite planting so late one of our tomato plants seriously won't stop growing.  Okay so we planted two tomato plants.  The first one is behind Nate and runs to about the molding on the window.  The rest is our cherry tomato plant.  THE cherry tomato plant.  It measures a whopping 9 feet across and is still growing.  Unfortunately we are still waiting for the tomatoes to turn red and are hoping it happens before the first freeze!

Nate with the cherry tomato plant.

It's trying to come inside!  We close the door on it every day.

BYU Football: Like an abused spouse I am back again.

So, I just have to mention this after BYU's 58-0 win over UCLA today, why do they have to tease me so?  In 2001 BYU played well and was respectable, while I was freezing in the Great White North.  In 2002 I went to BYU and cheered them on to their 1st losing season in 29 years.  For 4 years at BYU I hoped for a winning team to cheer on and was disappointed time and time again.  Now that I am gone, I am watching and hoping that they don't break my heart again.  So with a little apprehension I say "Go Cougs!" 

Uphill Both Ways.

Brittney's Pic of the Reflection in a Lake.

So we finally decided to go ahead and start a blog.  I'm always the last person in the world to do things like this (IMing-- anyone remember that?, Facebook, etc.).  I still don't text.  I'm always about 3 years behind.   We'll see how we do.  We both start school in a few weeks and things might get a little crazy.  We'll post when we can!

So just this last weekend Nate and I decided to go hiking.  We're trying to enjoy our last few weeks of summer before the long La Grande winter starts... the winter that never ends.   I had all intentions of getting up and leaving by 8 in the morning, but I have a husband who LOVES sleeping in.  Now that he's a big boy with a big boy job he's always complaining about having to get up early all week.  (Sometimes after we say our prayers in the morning he looks at me with such contempt that I get to go back to sleep.)  The weekends are his one chance to sleep in and so we didn't actually leave until noon.  

We drove up to Anthony Lakes, which is a beautiful 40 minute drive.  And we decided to hike the 8.6 mile loop.  It was such a gorgeous hike (we counted eight lakes!) and I took so many pictures.  Nate's getting really good with the camera, too.  Sometimes I'll turn on my camera to find pictures that I wish I had taken.

Nate's pic of grass.

The view from what we thought was the top was seriously breathtaking.  And I was looking forward to the last four miles thinking that they'd be down hill.  Okay, so I love hiking, don't get me wrong.  I love the sense of accomplishment, the view, the being out in nature, the exploring, but the second half of the hike is so much more enjoyable don't you think?  So I was a little disappointed to find that most of the second half of the hike was uphill, too.  In fact, about all but a mile and a half was uphill.  The only thing that kept me going was the thought of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches waiting for us in the car.

So what did we do when we got back to town?  Got ice cream at Baskin Robbins, of course.  I guess it all evened out!