Ferocious Beard...No More

I mentioned a little in the Halloween post about how much Sarah liked my beard.  One of the first conversations we had about it after she got back here went a little like this:

"Why don't you trim your beard a little?"

"Why do I need to trim my beard?"

"Well, for one, it looks un... how do you think it looks?"

"Ferocious.  Kind of like a lion.  What were you going to say?"

"Unkempt."

"Oh."

"Do you think you could say that it's ferocious instead?"

(This led to multiple jokes about ferocity over the next couple weeks, one of them being the fact that Sarah actually used the word ferocity in conversation.)

Then, I convinced Sarah that I couldn't trim my beard until after Halloween because we all know that lumberjacks don't trim their beards.  However, once Sarah returned from Pittsburgh, the day of reckoning had arrived.

(For some reason, Sarah didn't like the fact that when I smiled, my mustache covered part of my teeth.)

 

  

(Or that I would occasionally comb out my beard.)

I was, however, able to convince her to cut my hair before I would trim my beard.

 

 After she started, she wanted to take a picture to show how long my hair was.

 

I don't know how many of you have seen this picture floating around on Facebook, but I definitely felt that way with my beard.

 

  

  

 For those of you wondering what my beard looked like from behind.

I then started progressively trimming my beard, taking occasional pictures for your enjoyment.

(I even got Sarah to take a couple of her favorites.)

 

 

 

 

 

 For those wondering which one was Sarah's favorite, it was this one (above).  We almost went and bought something at Walmart when it looked like this, just to fit in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Sarah kissed me after getting back from Utah.

(Once I had shaved the beard, Sarah changed her opinion of the beard from "unkempt" to "you looked like a hermit."  I guess once it was gone she felt she could tell me how she really felt.)

  

 I almost feel like I was on the biggest loser. 

 

And this is all that remains of the ferocious beard.

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Halloween

I've been growing a beard ever since Sarah left to go back to Utah to finish her experiments.  Once Brandon got back from visiting us and had actual evidence of my beard, my mom decided to post about the familial facial hair on her blog. Unfortunately, nobody voted on her blog (probably because they couldn't decide), although Brad did complain that he wasn't given enough time to fully participate in the competition (not to mention the trouble he would run into with the Honor Code).  Luckily, Ben posted a link on Facebook, where some voting did occur:

 

I don't want to point out who got the most votes, so I'll draw your attention to the comment from Michael Lundberg.  Now you can see the inspiration for my Halloween costume.  I told Sarah that I would love to trim my beard for her, but it just wouldn't be quite like a lumberjack to have a well kept beard.  Although neither of us wanted to, we decided to let my beard keep growing.  

The night of a friend's Halloween party arrived and we were finally able to show off our costumes:

Lumberjack and his beloved tree.

(We were going to do Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, but we were afraid someone would accuse us of copying them.)

  

 (Our friend Tyler went as a pinata that he made out of party streamers.)

  

 On Halloween day, Sarah dressed up as a researcher who was presenting to her sponsors at a conference in Pittsburgh.  I thought she took it a little far with actually buying a plane ticket to fly all the way out there.

 

I dressed as a lumberjack on that day as well, though people weren't sure if I was in costume or if I just normally wear those clothes (welcome to Oklahoma).

 

Unfortunately, my excitement for trick-or-treaters was for naught as zero came to our apartment that night.

However, I think I know a lumberjack who won't mind a little extra candy.

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