Dear Ashley,

Remember how I never learned to do my hair? And remember how we thought I could handle it? We were half right.

See how cute I am?

But then there's this side....

And I can't get that wonky curling business on the left side of my face (in the photo...it's really my right side)  to do what is should, add one widows peak and I look exactly as frumpy as I always do. *sigh*

I wonder if I'll ever grow up.

Love,
Amy

PS I've had nothing but compliments since you did it - THANKS!

new hair again

Lookit! I got another hair cut. 

You like?

Sometimes Dad bathes Thomas and does his hair:

Baby's first mowhawk

 And sometimes Mom bathes Thomas:

Cutest little man on the planet

New hair

Before:

Cute earrings huh?

After:

That's a good 10 inches off (her measurement, not mine).

After a lengthy discussion with my hair lady about bangs and my irrational fear of them extending back to 5th grade (it wasn't pretty) and her study of my lovely cowlick....I went without. While I stare at my forehead thinking "cover it cover it cover it!" I think it was the right choice.

It's still long enough to pull back, but it's much shorter, and I like that about it.

You know you need a haircut when

The end of your hair doesn't fit in the same picture as your head.

I'm totally scared of the mom haircut because I'm just not good at short hair (my face is not the right shape). But today is the first time I have done my hair since....OK I honestly don't remember when. And that's because it's too long to "do" and it makes me crazy!

So the uber-long hair has to go. I'm thinking maybe bangs of some sort....and at least having it brought up to my shoulders.....any suggestions? The appointment is tomorrow so speak now or deal with my ugly hair for another 6 months....

It's out there...

I can feel it getting closer and closer. It's lurking in the shadows. Maybe it will come in stealth mode and I won't really notice, or perhaps there will be a grand entrance. I just have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to take over my life.

The mom haircut.

Now that Thomas thinks grabbing things is the coolest thing since sliced bread - actually he doesn't think sliced bread is that cool. He thinks it's the coolest thing since bottles full of formula and because of this new love, I've stopped wearing earrings and I know the mom haircut is just around the corner.

I'm just not so sure I can rock that look....

I’m VERY LDS.

I often wonder what people really think of me. I mean the truth. What was your first impression of me? Am I quiet? Nice? Scary? Loud? Funny? A geek? Smart? Naïve? Clumsy? Sophisticated (ha!)? Lazy? Bored? Maybe a little “rock star”?  I probably spend entirely too much time thinking about it, but I really do want to know. The problem is, I know that nobody will ever tell me the truth on this one.

Not even Josh. And he NEVER lies to me. But when I ask him his first impression with me he always takes the opportunity to say something incredibly sappy and kind like “I thought you were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen and I couldn’t wait to marry you.” Given that we were 17 years old, at EFY and he had girls crawling all over him, I kindof doubt that, but I’m OK with him saying it anyway. That’s just the kind of generous person I am.

 So, last week when I heard myself talking to the nice lady doing my hair, I realized just how Mormon I sound. Really.

It was just polite small talk, but everything about me, my entire life experience, shouts “I AM A MORMON!!!!”

Where are you from? Utah County.

What do you do for work? I work at the Church Office Building.

Where did you go to school? LDS Business College.

Where did you meet your husband? EFY. Summer camp for Mormons.

What’d you do last weekend? Prepared my lesson and taught Relief Society.

Everything. All that I am is wrapped up in the church somehow.

It’s not that I think that it’s a bad thing, or that I’m embarrassed to be a member of the Church, I’m not. In fact, I’m quite proud of it and I certainly wouldn’t have it any other way.

But it seems like when I’m talking to somebody who is not a member, they (and probably I) immediately rule out any possibility of common ground. Those who are not members of this church talk about different things.

What’d you do this weekend? Me. Went to church. Her. Partied and got too drunk to remember.

Remember that one crazy party in college? Me. No. Her. No. But for different reasons.

Don’t you hate it when your ex-boyfriend calls to tell you he has an STD? Me. Ummm…..we don’t say S.T.D. in my house. Her. Yes! But that hasn’t happened to me for like a year. I’m pretty lucky.

You know that club downtown? It’s just down the street from where you work…. Me. Don’t know, don’t care. Her. Oh. It’s the best one so if you ever decide to go clubbin' start there.

I know it isn’t fair to assume that all people who are not members of the church lead a lifestyle involving drinking and an indefinite number of sexual partners, but really my life is different in a lot of ways because of the church. I happen to think it’s different in a very good way, but once in a while I’d like to say “I grew up in a family, I have siblings, I’m married, my husband and I enjoy being outside, playing games, seeing movies, and traveling. I lived a life that isn’t that different from yours, and you and I can have a conversation that doesn’t end in the baptismal challenge.”

When it really comes down to it, we’ve both felt happy and sad, we’ve had good haircuts and bad ones, we’ve probably lost someone we loved and found the love of our lives. Chances are that you have a family and so do I. I’ll bet you slid down the stairs in a sleeping bag, but not as fast as I did because I am the undisputed champion of that game and I have the scars (emotional and physical) to prove it!

Why is it that in Utah of all places, I feel so different for being a member of the Church? How is it possible that I suddenly feel so uncomfortable when the person across from me has clearly decided that the two of us have nothing in common. I know better. One thing is for sure, I don’t want to be the one assuming that we have nothing in common based on one tiny (or gigantic) aspect of a life.

I'm brown.

I think as a general rule I communicate pretty well. Like when I say something to someone, they nod and look at me like they understood me. I speak English. I don't mumble. I listen well. But, for some reason, everytime there is a reason for family pictures in the Reilley family, I go get my hair done normal, and I wind up with a drastic change.

I was done with having blonde hair, so I asked the nice lady to dye it the same color as my natural hair. This is what I look like now.

Forgive the unflattering picture, it was taken in the car on our way out and about.....

I'm learning to like it, but when I first came home, it freaked me out. Fortunately Josh still loves me, and he even told me that he likes it better than he thought he would.

Anyway, sometime I would like to speak the apparently foreign language of "hair lady" so that I can properly communicate to these people what I really want. I'm tired of coming all freaked out and scared of what I look like. If anybody knows of a class I can take or something, I'm VERY interested!

Rags

OK I blogged about the Legacy I think I left in good 'ol Lindon 1st Ward. And here is what I mean when I say I had a real live fro.


This is me and Carly - after you take the rags out, you come out with these cute little ringlets (this is usually the second to last day of girls camp - that way your hair is all tied up and out of your way while you're camping, which in theory is the whole point). THEN......


Heather, Megan, Carly and Me. We're superheros. Heather and Megan have plastic bags on their heads because we were going swimming, and they needed to keep their hair dry or it would lose the curl. We wore bags too, but the camera didn't wait for me and Carly.


Once I got home, we took pictures of the fro. And yes, that is my real hair.....and my real nephew too. :) I think he was scared of me, but he's a good sport, so he smiled anyway.


yep, there I am in all my girls camp glory....dirt on the hoodie I probably wore for 3 days straight, then rolled around in the dirt when we took down camp. I came home and immediately went to the kitchen to eat. :) And yes, I'm still in my pajamas.....oh this picture makes me happy!

The hair

So, here's my new haircut, you'll have to ignore the weird thing it's doing on my right side....part of the joys of weird wavy hair. :) So yeah, that's it. Blond and SHORT!

New hair

Over the weekend our friends Ashley and Jake came over to play games. Ashley looked at a picture of me and Josh that's on the wall in our living room in which I'm VERY blond. It was after a particularly bad highlighting experience, and I HATED being that blond. It takes too much maintenance, and it feels too fake for my taste.

Ashley took one look at the picture and dropped her jaw. "Oh my gosh you're blond!" which was pretty much my reaction, when I saw my hair too. Josh got a big goofy grin on his face, "Nice huh?!" (he has always maintained that he likes me best as a blond) and I got a depressed look on my face, "I hated it. I'll never do it again."

Ashley, politely told me she liked it too. I still don't like it, but now that Josh is out of school, he'll be looking at my hair more than I will. Combine that with the way too many makeover shows I've seen while he was in school, and I truly don't believe there is such a thing as bad change....a dangerous belief. So on Saturday I decided I needed a change and went to get my hair cut and dyed.

I now have short blond hair. I guess I shouldn't say short - because truthfully it still hits my shoulders, which by many people's standards is long - but when the hairdresser tells me she'll be taking "about 4 or 5 inches off" that translates to a big change for me.

I'll post pictures later, but for now, I'm going to enjoy the fact that Josh is home, it's only 10:00 and we could go to bed right now if we felt like it.

Temples shall dot the earth

Last night I drove to American Fork so my sister could dye my hair (thanks Sarah!) for free. I have to say I believe it is well worth it because every time I go to a salon I get grumpy. One time when I lived with Chelsea at the Business College we went to fancy place in the mall to get our hair cut because she knew somebody who worked there and it was going to be super-cheap and we were poor. We went to this place, and the girl that cut our hair was just getting back from doing a live makeover on the news. She was all pumped and "LOVING" the makeover she just did.

I am a generally easy person to get along with, and I'm really not over-protective of my hair. Usually when the hair stylist asks what I want I say "it's just gross on the end, so just a trim, maybe some layers, whatever works." and then they use their creative genius and I look beautiful (using the term loosely) at the end of it. So, this time when she asked I did the same thing. "I don't really care, it's just long and gross and needs to be cut." Keep in mind I look like....well...me. I'm pretty sure I was wearing a skirt (I had to go straight to work), and a sweater and I looked like a nice little relief society lady. This girl has SHORT (like boy-short) blond (white) hair with some hot pink streaks in it and a nose ring. Now I'm not one to judge a book by it's cover, but I should've thought this through.

"Ooooh....this will be fun! I just gave this really cute haircut live on TV and it was amazing, and she looked like a rock star after! It's amazing and you have perfect hair for it. Can we try something new?"
"sure." I responded, I'm not one to disagree or argue unnecessarily, and truthfully I could probably use a little more "rock star" in my life. So I went with it.

Little did I know that "rock star" in her book was "mullet" in mine! This woman seriously gave me a mullet! She cut this top layer really short, and left me with a long ugly tail - then styled it with bangs coming all to one side (I believe she used the term "swooping"). Oh it was ugly. SOOO ugly. And she put lard in my hair (read: palmade) and it was so gross I wanted to vomit. Anyway, Chelsea got a haircut that wasn't quite as extreme as the mullet, but she wasn't really pleased either. So much for our fancy salon experience! I went to work and pulled it up (as much as possible, but the short part of the mullet wasn't long enough to tie up - so I had a mullet in a pony tail) until I got home. At which point I made Chels cut it off with kitchen scissors. I felt much better, it was still mullet-y, but much better. Since then I've learned my lesson - it's better to have an untrained roommate/sister you trust do your hair than a trained psychopath rock star. Thus the trip to American Fork.

Since I was so close to my parents house, I stopped by for a quick visit and to drop off some stuff. On my way home. I realized that driving from my parent's house in Lindon to my house in North Salt Lake, I see 4 existing temples (Mt. Timp, Jordan River, Salt Lake, Bountiful) on the way. That is only a 40 minute drive! That means that there is a temple roughly every 10 minutes along I-15! If that isn't dotting the earth (or at least dotting Utah) I don't know what is. With the 2 in Draper/South Jordan under construction we'll have 6 that close together. And it's not like you have to drive far to get to others.

Last night happened to be creepy and nasty and the air was smoggy and red and weird - but on a clear night, you see every one of those temples from the freeway. It's not like this is news, or anything, but it kinda hit me last night that we live in the last days, and we are incredibly blessed to live in Utah in the last days. It's just not like that everywhere.....Yet.