Return to Littleton

Quick shoutout to my roomie Christie. She inspired me to not do my homework and finish writing this blog. Props to ya! It's a good thing she did though..this post is way outdated!



A few weekends ago I got to go HOME! Seriously, I was so excited. Daniel wanted to go home to visit his friend, so I tagged along because, I miss my family lots!!! We left on Friday about 9AM (yes...I skipped classes! haha)





The drive is always kind of boring, but it went by pretty fast! I mentioned to Daniel that several people have told me that we look alike, and neither of us could see it, so we took a picture. Pretty sure the only thing we share is being incredibly photogenic, which is plainly demonstrated in this next picture














So the car we drive, a 1997 Toyota Corolla...Well, it gets great gas mileage in the mountains, and is pretty sturdy, but boy it has NO power. Actually, I lied. For most of the trip, we could go at a pretty decent speed. But once we hit vail pass? Oh man...I thought we might get hit by a semi truck. Scariest moment of my life. Okay, maybe not my life, but at least my week!
This is how fast we could go (it usually dipped down lower though)














We arrived in Littleton around 4:30. My dad was heading out on a camp out with the boy scouts right then, so we stopped by the Church to see if he was still there..and he was! It was nice to say hi to him really quick :) After that we went home! Brandon was there, which was fun to see him! My mom made these really good brownies, and I hate to admit that I ate way too many over the weekend. They were so good though! I'll definitely be getting that recipe :-)

That Friday was a very exciting day besides us coming home because...High School Music 3 came out!!!! I actually saw it at the midnight showing with some people, but Diana invited us to go with her and her family...And who would pass up an opportunity to see Hottie Zac Efron again?! Well, by the time we headed to the movies, I had not yet seen my nieces or nephews. Diana and I decided that I should surprise Alexis and Tori about coming home! So Diana and Brandon thought up a plan where Brandon would come in one side of the theatre and distract the girls with popcorn and me and Daniel would come in the other side and surprise them. Great idea, right? Heh, well, I go up behind Tori and I am like "Can I sit here?" She looks back at me with a look of complete confusion and is like "My mommy is sitting here..." She didn't recognize me for some reason! Alexis then saw me at that point and was like "KATIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Tori then realized that it wasn't some creeper trying to sit by her!
We were at the movie like an hour early (good thing, that theater filled up FAST!) So there was plenty of time for pictures! Tori is so cute, she loves taking pictures just as much as I do (which, let me tell you, is quite a bit, if it hasn't become obvious yet). Everytime I take a picture of us, she either goes "oh that is so cute" or is like "I really don't like that, let's take another". She is so cute and funny, I totally miss all the cute and clever things she says!






While Tori loves to take smiling pictures with me, Lexi more enjoys the silly pictures. It usually takes several tries before I can get her to actually smile. It's fun though, I have many funny pictures of us! During the movie though, Alexis just about made me cry..don't worry, not for something bad ;-) Every five minutes or so she would put her head on my shoulder and be like "Katie, I love you so much". Talk about heart melt! At one point she said "Everytime I go to your house I get so excited because I think I'm going to see you, but when I get there I realize you aren't going to be there. I miss you so much".


















High School Musical was even better the second time around. Seriously, loved it! The music was great, the story was great. I'm not gonna lie, I cried at one point. I'm definitely a really big sap. I was glad to hear Diana got teary eyed as well :-D My favorite character in the movie is Ryan...He makes me laugh!

After the movie...we went home. And really, I can't remember what we did. I probably ate some of my mom's delicious brownies! I actually went to be kind of early that night..like 11ish! It's basically a record for me. When I went to my room, I was taken back by how low to the ground my bed was compared to my bed at BYU. CRAZY! What also surprised me was just how incredibly comfortable my bed at home is. Before I came to BYU, I thought it was the worst mattress ever and I hated it, but that first night home I slept so good, it was so soft and comfortable!! haha..Shows how crappy my BYU bed is :-D

Saturday..hmmm..well, I slept in a little bit. Which was nice. Then I got up and went to the gym with Daniel. I don't have a gym membership, obviously, since I use BYU's fitness facilities, so I searched online for a free 24 hour fitness pass, which is where Daniel has his membership at. Alas, I found one! It wasn't even 10 minutes after I printed it off that I received a phone call from 24 hour asking me when I was going to come in and redeem my pass. They sure don't waste any time! Anyways, we went there for about 40 minutes, which was fun. Then Daniel and I went to Deseret Book because he needed to buy some things. Seriously, favorite store ever! I'm such a nerd, but I totally could spend all day in that place :) Then..we went home. Kristalyn and Diana came over with their families, which was way fun! After visiting for awhile, the guys went somewhere for the lunch, while Kristalyn, Diana, and I went shopping...at Goodwill! That might sound a little silly, but seriously, they got some good stuff there. And they were having a 50% off sale. I got two cute sweaters, and had lots of fun looking all the stuff they had there. My sisters dropped me of at home and I just relaxed for awhile, until my mom asked if I would like to go to Target with her to get some stuff for dinner that night! Couldn't pass up an opportunity like that because I hadn't been in a Target in like 2 months, so I went. That was exciting. I love Target. Almost as much as I love Deseret Book. I noticed the Photography studio there was hiring. My mom thought it would be funny if I went over and was like "Hey, I'm here, You can give me my job back!" (that's probably only funny to those who know about that brief stunt I had there during the Holiday season last year!). Anyways, bought some stuff there. Went home. And we began preparations for..The Barker Annual Halloween Dinner! I was so excited to hear that my family was having it a week early this year, so I wasn 't going to have to miss it this year!

Alexis had asked my mom if we could have some games at the party, and of course we can never say no to her, so I thought up a couple of fun games. Before they got there, I made a few games (I'll write about them later on in this post), and seriously, I had way too much fun making them!

My brother Michael wanted to make some creepy decorations for the table, and boy, he sure did! This is me being grossed out (or something, I'm not really sure what my face entails) about his "eyeball in a glass" concoction. Yuck!

This is a weird picture. I don't know why I'm posting it. Maybe cuz it's the only one I got with my mother. haha. As you can tell, I get my mad dancing skills from my madre.

This picture has kind of a funny story that goes with it. Levi went inside and shut the door. Here's what went down afterwars:

Me: *Ring the door bell* Trick or Treat!

Levi: Sorry, we have no candy. Bye

(shuts door)

haha. it was funny to me! Guess you had to be there...

My little brother got a turtle a long time ago, and my little nephews love it! Tonight they were particularly fascinated with something other than the turtle..there was a cricket in there! They had so much fun just looking into the cage and giggling. They are all boy all right! Mason was so cute, he came over while I was eating dinner and was like "Aunt Katie! Turtle!" grabbed my hand, and brought me to the cage.

Annual Barker Family Halloween Feast! Seriously, I look forward to this meal every year. We had a few additional items added to the menu this year... Corkscrew salad and Mummy Noses (aka, pasta salad and Bacon Wrapped sausages). Everything was a hit, especially my mom's famous chicken wings and breadsticks (breadsticks were provided by Diana!)

Carter is so incredibly cute! He smiles so much and is just a total joy! He got so big since the last time I saw him (yes, two months makes a big difference!) Kristalyn said he liked when a ball was rolled to him, and he'd catch it, so that's what he was doing in one of these pictures. He's so cute!!!!

Like I mentioned earlier (at least I think I did), I made a fun little treasure hunt for the kids. "Jack-o-skeleton" stole all the candy and left a note telling them they could only get it back if they followed all the clues! The kids all had a really fun time trying to figure out all the clues so they could win back all the candy! They were always so excited when they found the hiding place of another clue! It was fun to watch them!

Some of the other activities we had were "pin the nose on the pumpkin" and the classic "put your hands into a bowl and guess what the gooey icky object is" game. Tori and mason refused to wear the blind fold, so needless to say, they got pretty close to the exact place the nose should be on the pumpkin :-D The other game was fun to watch as well. Especially when David put his whole entire hand into the yogurt, not realizing it was something that would get his hand all sticky and messy. Hehe. We also had a dance competition. To spare the embarassment of my parents, I will not post of the videos, but if you'd like to see them, let me know--I'll hook ya up. haha.

Overall, it was a really fun night (I'll post a bunch of these pictures at the end of this blog!). It was really great to just sit around and visit everyone, and it was definitely realy hard to leave them all again! At leaest I'll see them all again very soon at Thanksgiving :-D 13 days!

The next day I went to sacrament meeting of Church. It was pretty good. I decided I prefer sacrament meeting in family wards opposed to the student wards at BYU. The student wards are wayy to quiet. I mean, I know we are supposed to be reverent during Sacrament meeting, but like seriously, it's way too quiet. I feel like I have to hold back a cough or a sneeze, or even a shuffle of the feet or I'll get in trouble! Ha ha. It was nice to be back in the good ol' Clement Park Ward though!

After Church, I went back home and me and Daniel prepared to go home. We decided to wait until eleven cuz we were really tired...So then we left. We stopped at Glenwood Spring, because we were both EXHAUSTED. Like, neither of us could keep our eyes open. We slept for an hour in a Qdoba parking lot. Seriously, if we hadn't done that, we would probably have driven off a cliff, and I would not be here writing this blog.

Daniel is really cool. Especially when he wears my awesome sun glasses (that I forgot I even owned haha)

About 2 hours outside of Provo, this is the only radio station we could get. Supposedly it was country music. And I guess it was. BUT it was just that old gross hick stuff that gives country a bad name. Me and Daniel were slowly dying as the music played on. The cd player in the car is really weird, and the ONLY CD it plays is a Chris Daughtry one. Weird, I know. And as much as I love Daughtry, we listened to the CD oh...a 100 times over the course of the trip? So our choices were definitely limited! Ha ha. We got back home around 8ish. Woo Hoo. But yeah, it was such a fun trip and I'm so glad I got to go home! I can't wait for Thanksgiving.. And now for just a bunch of pictures from the trip!

To see more pictures go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001770&l=4c69c&id=1078170155

and http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001770&l=4c69c&id=1078170155

I don't think you have to be a facebook member to see them!