Christmas & The Month of December

December was full of some cool stuff to get us in the festive mood yet relax and enjoy life as it is. 

I won tickets to see 97.1 zhts Frankies 20th Anniversary Live Broadcast. I took Lars and it was way cool. I love that show. It was neat to put a lot of faces with names and voices I wake up to every morning. 

I really wanted to check out some Christmas lights. We drove down to Utah County to help my parents and tried to see some around there. We went to Salem Pond and then to Spanish Fork but the line was super long there so we drove home and on the way stopped at The Tree of Life in Draper. It was beautiful. 

Salem Pond

We went and saw Star Wars 8 a bunch of times. I LOVED IT!

We put up our Christmas tree. This tree is small, simple, and humble and I really like it. It was Grandma and Grandpa Anderson's tree. I feel like they are here with us each time we put it up and decorate it. I love that our kids are at the age where they are mesmerized by Christmas decorations. 

Liv is like a cat. She jumped in every box I emptied and claimed it as her playhouse. 

I have this silly tradition where I give a gift with my face on it for our work gift exchange. This year I have away place mats with my face replacing the Charlie Brown Christmas scene. 

Our wonderful friends Nate and Tiffany where in town from CA. We ate sushi and celebrated silly stories of parenting. 

Cute winter dress

My parents had a ukulele concert around Temple Square. We went and saw them and then checked out the lights. 

Liv had her first train ride. Shje kept asking me to make it go faster. I love that kids think I can control everything from the song selections on the radio to the speed of public transportation. 

Christmas Eve we went to Lars brother's house to make our annual Christmas roll and hang out as a family. Lars sister, Sarah and her family were visiting so it was extra special. 

 Hitting the nog with Uncle Dave

Assembling the roll was awesome especially with all the opinions and critiquing from and to each other. Good thing this family loves each other. LOL

Roan loved having his cousins to wrestle with. 

Liv's pants roasting by an open fire

Ginger snaps homemade

Beautiful Christmas morning sunrise

The kids loved their toys from their cousins

Christmas morning we had breakfast with Lars family and then dinner with my family. Liv got a nap in between at home which was nice to take a breather between each family. 

Liv blocking the stairs

For dessert we had chocolate fondue. My nephew had the right idea to just fill up his plate with food then put the chocolate over the entire plate. 

A top view of my Mom's annual grandkid picture. 

Roan made me this darling calendar and ornament from school. 

Breakfast with the Barlows/Madsens

Oh man this food was delicious

A nice light snow to bring in Christmas. It was mostly melted by the afternoon

We had the kids open presents before we ran around to our families. They loved it. Its was a tradition in my family growing up to have your pic taken in front of the tree with what you got that year. 

We had the rest of the week off of work so we stayed home and played a lot and tried to see movies or hang out with family. 

We got to try out some of our new games and toys. 

We hung out more with Sarah and Dave

Cool homemade candy from Glenn

Josh and Lori and their family stopped by for a few hours. The cousins LOVED playing together. We loved seeing them. :) 

The art of selfie's and showing Roan how to photobomb. 

Life fathers like sons

All in all Christmas vacation was way fun. The kids drove us crazy here and there but it wouldn't be Christmas without a little bit of that. :)

Barlow STARS 2017

A long time ago in the year 2017…
The force is strong in our family but with any force there is a balance between dark and light.

Dark:

• Flooded basement
• New pipelining on main sewer line $$$
• Liv’s allergic to amoxicillin broke out in hives and blew up like a balloon EEK!
• Liv got a toddler fracture, full leg in cast for 6 weeks

Light:

• Reorganized the basement and de-cluttered
• New sewer line to poop in YAY!!!!
• Liv learned to walk again
• Roan started Kindergarten and thrives in his learning environment
• Roan learned to ride a bike
• Lars got an electric bike
• New furnace. YAY Efficiency!!!
• Family camping trip to Lava Hot Springs
• Stephanie did her 2^nd triathlon
• Stephanie was in a Benefit Musical Theatre Concert
• A new Star Wars Movie came out

Life’s ups can outweigh the downs.
Have a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!!

And MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU…ALWAYS!!!

Love,

Lars, Stephanie, Roan, & Liv Barlow

A slideshow by Smilebox

Begin Again-Share Benefit Concert

I haven't done much with Theatre stuff for about 7 years. With the exception of Halloween make up. I love theatre. I got my associates degree in it. It is just very demanding of time and in my current season of life its just hard to figure out how to do it. (small kids and figuring out how to balance the Mom hat with working and keeping a healthy marriage etc) Some people have it figured out and I think that is great but I am a different person as we all are. 

A few months back my friend from college Ashley put a feeler out for a benefit concert she wanted to put together for a non profit called SHARE. This organization really helped her during the loss of her daughter and she wanted to use her talents of acting, directing, and producing to give back. I raised my hand and said pick me please! I am extremely passionate about awareness when it comes to miscarriages having had 3 of my own. I didn't know SHARE existed and I think it could have helped me so I want to make sure we spread the good word so it can help others. 

I auditioned and I got in. I was ecstatic but also a littler nervous. I hadn't done Theatre in so long I wondered if I would be up to the task and be able to keep up with the more seasoned and current performers. I decide early on that if I was going to do this I needed to go into with a fun attitude an completely let lose and put all my cards on the table. No diva attitude or nerves so bad that I was going to talk myself out of it. I will be honest when I did theatre heavily I totally wigged myself out of things because I got nervous OR on the flip side I auditioned with pieces that I wasn't passionate about but I did it because I thought that's what the director wanted. But here I really had nothing to lose and my time is so valuable so gosh darn it if I am going to do it then I needed to be ME and be all in as ME. 

So at first I really struggled. Even though the director told us we were selected specifically I still struggled with the confidence that I was enough and that I could deliver not just for their expectation but for my own. (I am super hard on myself at times if you can't tell)  I had discouraging moments but I stuck with it and did my research and practiced to get better on the parts I felt I was lacking. This is still my craft and I needed to work on it.  I tried to focus on why I was doing this 1) For fun, 2) to share my talents 3) to share my story. I prayed a lot. I prayed in gratitude for being able to do this and to share my own story of loss and hope. I prayed for strength to be able to memorize and dig deep into my parts to perform them well. My prayers were totally answered. Things may have been really tough at first (mostly from self infliction) but in the end this experience has been one of the most awesome things of my life. 

It brought back a lot of emotions from my own loss. Grief has many stages and I think they all come at different times. Even though my losses happened about 2-3 years ago I feel like this event really helped me finish digesting those emotions and helped me feel okay still keeping those lost babies in my life. No one is alone in grief of any kind. Things suck at times. Hope does come and it is beautiful. I never wish what I experienced on anyone. I am still learning and growing from it and for that I am grateful. 

Okay enough with the mushy wushy stuff. On with the show. The show featured various broadway songs, scenes, and monologues. The director put the show order together to take you on her own journey of grief. Many of the songs were funny, some emotional, and some very happy or hopeful. I loved being apart of it. The talent was amazing. Ashley, the director, had such a magical way of getting us to grow and own the characters we were playing.  This was just an amazing thing to do. I can't say that enough. I learned that I can do hard things. I still have an actor inside me who loves coming out to play. I learned that my mind tries to limit my ability and in those cases I need to be brave and listen to my heart more even if I am failing boldly. It was nice to just do something for myself. I love being a Mom and working and all that entails but doing this reminded me that it is important to take care of me and that its okay to take a break from those things to still do stuff that I am passionate about. Even Lars recognized that I seemed more mentally balanced and it ripple effected in a positive way to the rest of my roles in life.  

I must also mention that there is no way this would have happened without Lars and his support. Usually shows have 3-4 months of 2-3 nights a week rehearsals. We put this show on in 6 weeks with only 2 nights a week of rehearsals. The final week leading up to opening was an every night thing. He is a great husband and a wonderful father. He took on some of the Mom duties during this and I really can't even begin to express how grateful I am for his support on this. I wanted to be apart of this but really I think my soul needed it. 

In the end I meet some amazing people I hope to see again. The organization raise more awareness and more funds for their support. My life has been touched. I am happy to say that they are working to make this an annual thing. YAY!! I plan on auditioning next year. YAY!!! 

Here is the program. 

Enjoy some pictures from the show and at the bottom there are a ton of videos. 

My costume for one of the songs

I bought new make up. The make up I was using was probably 14 years old. EWW and yes it did make me sick when I wore it. HOORAY for letting go of expensive old make up and bring in new make up. 

Just Another Day

9-5 Scene

Coffee Break

Money Money Money

LUV Monologue

Life is Pandemonium

Skid Row

I Will Never Leave You

For Now

Final B

In the final song we all carry a candle and a pic of our loved ones gone to soon.

The cast minus Jared

Make up all washed off and feeling so grateful

We went to Leatherbys for the cast party. I really work up an appetite from performing. ;)