St. Petersburg Montage

It took a while, but here are the pictures from St. Petersburg. Thanks to Gina, they are in a lovely montage, courtesy of OneTrueMedia.com. It took me a really long time to decide on songs, and even still I don't think I've got it totally the way I want it, but this will have to do for now.

The first song is very catchy...I think you'll have it in your head all day long. And you will thank me. I'm sure of it. ;)

Edit video online at onetruemedia.com

They're Finally Here...Pictures From Russia!

Yay! I know you've all been dying to see my pics from the motherland, so fear not dear readers, the wait is over. Of course I can't post everything, but I'll try to give you a good look at what we did, where we went, and what we saw.

This is us on our first day: St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow. It is my absolute FAVORITE building that we saw in Moscow and I loved it.













































I'm not sure what the name of this building is, but also on Red Square and it's very pretty too. It reminds me a little bit of a giant gingerbread house.

















Our good friend Lena is so nice! Without even having to be asked, she stopped to help this lady freshen up her lipstick.















This is at a park in Omsk. Me, Adam, Sasha, and Lena. They are our favorite friends in Russia. Hopefully they will be able to come America some day!















I love this shot. This is at a little park/amusement park/zoo thing and it is an ancient ferris wheel contraption. I wish we would have taken a picture of it from the ground so you could see it straight on because it really was pretty frightening, but everyone else rode on it and we didn't see anyone die while we were getting our tickets, so we figured, "Why not!"



















The view from the top...Does Adam look a little scary scared to you?
















We felt very patriotic here. This is also in Omsk at a World War II park. I LOVE the huge statues in Russia!




















I tried to get Adam & Sasha to be cool and pose like this guy, but they weren't very good sports about it.



















Here is Adam with his good pal Lenin in Novosibirsk. Almost every single city in Russia has a statue of Lenin similar to this one.




















This is a view of that same statue from the back. You can see the other statues beside it and get a better idea of how big they are.





















Yay! One of my favorite pictures. This building is a puppet house that was close to our hotel. How cool is that?!















I was so excited about this too....a pack of wild dogs who were running by in front of our hotel. There are stray dogs everywhere and they're all intermixed so you'll see a dog that has the face of a german shepherd and the body of a weiner dog...it's crazy.
















Here's Adam on our train to Krasnoyarsk looking very content reading my Us Weekly.



















You kinda have to look close at this picture, but it's really awesome. All the towns along the railroad have their own water towers, and this was one of our favorites.
























This cute little church is at the top of a big hill in Krasnoyarsk and you can see the whole city from there. It is a good hike, but very worth it.




















I hope I'm not incriminating myself by posting these pictures! I swear, we didn't take any and we only took the pictures...nothing more! Yep, it grows all over the hillside. The people we were with didn't even know that that's what it was until we told them. They just thought it was a wild weed. Haha! I guess they are right.































This is us hiking to Stalbuoy. It's like a state park and they have big rock formations and stuff. Let me tell you, this was no easy hike. It's probably about 3 miles to the top (where all the rocks are) and those Russians can hike! They walk super fast...all of them...babushkas, little kids, everyone. I had to tell our friends that I needed to take a break and they were like, "Yeah, we usually take a break up here a little ways." They are much more fit than lots of Americans because they walk everywhere all the time so I had to inform them, "No, I need to take a break now" and proceeded to sit myself down on a log. What is that you see in the picture you ask? Yes, that's snow. It's snowing. In the middle of August.














Finally, after more stops than any of the Russians had to make, we made it to the top! I'm kinda annoyed at this guy for messing up our cute picture, but he's our friend so we'll Photoshop him out forgive him.


















This family LOVES Adam. Ok, all the people there love him, but them in particular. He helped teach the wife (the husband was already a member) and she was baptized. He was able to confirm her and then they were able to go to the temple as a family and be sealed. They didn't know we were coming to Russia so when we showed up at church, they were so excited they invited us right over for tea and scrumpets!















This was in front of our hotel in Krasno. These are youth in the church (all about our age) who are good friends with Adam. Back row from left to right: Costia, Adam, Sasha. Front row from left to right: Lena, Olya, and Lena (Sasha's girlfriend). The statue is of Chekov, a famous Russian author.


















Ok, that pretty much does it for the first 4 cities. I wish I could post all of the pictures we took, but that would take me all night and let's face it, I've got to make brownies, so this is all I am able to do. We have TONS of pictures from St. Petersburg so I'll post them tomorrow in their very own entry. Paca!

Adventures in Hair Coloring

This weekend I decided it was time to highlight my hair again. The decision was a pretty easy one, seeing how my roots were about half an inch grown out. I wanted my hair to look pretty much like this:


(Not the greatest photo, I know, but you try doing a Google search on Carmen Electra and see how long you want to search through to find a decent one.)

My sister-in-law Trish is the one who colors my hair and so when I got to her house with the products, she warned me that this might not be the color I was going for, even though I fully explained to the lady at Sally Beauty Supply what I wanted. We did a small test strip on the underside of my hair and it seemed that it would be ok so we went ahead and put foils on top for blonde highlights and did the rest of my entire head with the color.

When she was rinsing it all out, she sounded pretty skeptical about the color and I was pretty worried myself. We decided not to fully judge until it was dry, but we didn't even need to get it all the way dry before we knew it was not looking pretty. I came out looking somewhat Strawberry Shortcake-esqe. My hair was this yucky orange-ish color with blonde highlights and my roots showing through still. You know when people who have black hair try to dye their hair blonde and it turns that brassy, NOT BLONDE color? Yeah, that was kind of what it resembled.

Luckily, she had some brown dye and I didn't even have to think twice about it. We finished drying my hair and headed directly for the kitchen again to re-color my hair. I've always wanted to dye my hair brown but I've always been too much of a wuss because I've had lots of blonde in my hair since I was like 13! So I figured, "No better time to go brown than when your hair turns orange!"

At first it was so weird seeing myself. I would walk by a mirror and think, "Hmm..who's that girl with the brown hair? Oh wait! That's me! And that's my hair!" It was an adventure, but I think it turned out really well, considering. I like it, but tell me what ya think.





(Pictures taken oh-so-professionally by me today in my kitchen)

Work Shmirk

Ok, so it has seemed like forever since I've posted! Our laptop is being totally revamped and it has all our pictures and video clips from Russia on it so I've kinda been waiting for that. It may be a while before you get to see all of our cool pics, but I'll try to update you on what's been happening since.

I have had such a hard time coming back to work! (can you tell, seeing how this post is being written at 4:00 in the afternoon?) Last week Adam and I just kinda spend time together and ran a few errands and the like. He decided to take this semester off since he missed the first 2 weeks of school and found out that his financial aid wasn't going to kick in unless he had a full schedule and he was only registered for 2 classes. It's not so easy to add classes two weeks after school is already started and some of the classes he needs for graduation aren't offered until next semester anyway. So he's going to work this semester and finish school in the spring. I don't really have an excuse for this week other than the fact that I really enjoyed not working for the past three and a half weeks! It's not that I'm a lazy person, because I really don't think I am; it's just that I like being able to get things done around here and run errands and spend time with my husband. I am totally hoping that I can quit once we have kids.

I think I'm a little frustrated with my job right now too though. I really like my job, and I am working in Salt Lake again which is great, but I am supposed to be selling my accounts from last year and we're 3 months early! I really don't think that people who advertised with us for the first time ever and signed up between December and March of this past year are really going to want to renew their contracts so soon. Plus, this book just barly finished distribution, which means that a lot of them haven't even had a chance to see their results yet. It is really making me feel very unmotivated.

On a side note, my mom called me yesterday afternoon and told me they're taking a little vacation and would love it if they could stay the night at our house. Yay! I visit my parents fairly frequently, but they haven't been to my house for almost a year. They left late and didn't get here until about 1:30 am and I wanted to stay up and wait for them so I was so tired when they got here! I have become such a wuss about staying up late! I need (and LOVE) my sleep!!! This morning we went to breakfast at about 9:30 and then they were on their way east to Nebraska and South Dakota. I totally wanted to go with them because I feel absolutely estranged from any work responsibility I have, but I knew my boss would kill me and that I need to at least try to make some money. Good thing it's only Tuesday.