Weekend Fun

It's almost the weekend but I wanted to make sure I didn't forget to blog about my fun weekend last week.

Friday night my sister in law, Margene, treated me to the Brad Paisley concert for my birthday.  We had grass seats at Usana and had a great time.  I've seen Brad in concert but it had been a while.  He gave a great concert and we had a good time hanging out on the grass before it started.  Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish opened for him.  He has turned country.  I loved hearing his songs. I like his country voice and music and he even sang his popular Hootie songs as well.  Thanks Margene for a fun night!

Saturday night was the Relief Society broadcast so my sisters, Lori and Michelle and sister in law, Whitney all met up for dinner at Rumbi's beforehand.  Randomly Michelle had never eaten at Rumbi's...what?  Then we went and found a stake center to watch the broadcast from.  The opening song was amazing to me.  It was 'Count your many Blessings.'  Usually not a favorite song of mine but hearing it sung and then singing along I was very struck by just how blessed I am and to know Heavenly Father knows me personally and blesses me with so much.  In fact I got a little choked up singing that song and never have really felt that moved by that song before.  It was good I had that experience because the rest of the broadcast was a little tough for me. 

My family all knows that if we go see a movie together, do NOT let me pick the seats.  I am CURSED when it comes to movie theaters and always pick the seats with someone talking, kicking seats, eating something with some loud wrapper or bringing a crying baby.  Well why in the world my sisters let me choose where we sat for the broadcast was beyond me.  Just after the opening hymn in walks these girls and one had her 3 year old toddler with her.  The rest of the broadcast was her talking and not just talking, talking loud and the mother was talking to her right along with her.  Then she started running up and down the aisle and the mother didn't seem to mind at all.  The entire time I kept thinking 'don't judge her Sheri, she wouldn't have brought her if she didn't have to' or 'maybe she really needed this time to come here' or 'maybe she doesn't own a tv so she couldn't watch it at home.'  Anyways, it took all my concentration off the broadcast and then I was feeling even worse when Pres. Monson got up and talked about not judging others!!  I was being tested!  Not sure I did so well on that test.  I felt a little better that at least I was trying not to be judgmental but obviously I have a long ways to go.  So the broadcast was good, the evening was fun and I'll make sure to read the talks again when they're published in the Ensign next month.

Sunday after Church Shane and I decided to go on a little Sunday drive to look at the fall leaves.  We drove up to Silver Lake (along with a lot of other people that had the same idea) and walked around the lake.  It was beautiful and such a pretty drive and walk.

I am LOVING this warm weather by the way.  I would love for it to stay like this until Thanksgiving.  At that time I give the weather permission to get cold, but please, please stay as long as you possibly can!

Family Dinner

Now that my parents are on a mission, we've had to come up with a schedule as to when we can all get together for family dinners. It used to be that my parents would have us over on Sunday's several times a month. We decided with them being gone that we would get together once a month for an official family dinner and take turns hosting. This month was my turn. I wanted to hurry and get a turn so we could use our big back yard that we don't get to use very often. So even though my birthday was one of the 4 we were celebrating this month, I hosted.

The 4 birthday girls: Jennifer, Ashlee, Me, Kayla


We had such a good time. We had chicken tacos, rice, chips and salsa, fruit and yummy cake. The bad part was my neighbor decided that the perfect time to seal his driveway and cement was 3o minutes before everyone came over. So it kind of stunk a little but we still had a good time.

We sat under the gazebo, the boys played soccer for a long time, and then bacci balls (is that the name of it?) and then sang and opened presents.





There was 2 things that happened that made me realize just how often we used to get together.
1 - Lori's 2 girls were both shy towards us when they first got there. Aubrey insisted she didn't remember anyone's name!
2 - Even though Ashlee's birthday is only 8 days after her mom's, she was a little insulted that we were making her share her birthday dinner with 3 other family members. Have we really always had a separate dinner for her? Jennifer told her that she had to do it her whole life since Jennifer and my birthday's are just 3 days apart. Ashlee handled it well and is so excited to be turning 12 and going into Young Women's this year.

We haven't finished one corner of our yard yet. We plan to put a small basketball 1/2 court but haven't done it yet. We have a big pile of dirt there to use if any part of our yard sinks. Well when Collin (Michelle's 2 year old) saw this dirt pile he yelled 'Mountain' and ran over to it, climbed up it, and spent at least 30 minutes on top throwing dirt off of his mountain. It was seriously so cute and so funny and he had dust coming off of him the rest of the night.





This last picture is just crazy. Apparently one of Jeff's friends got this Laker Poncho for him in Mexico. Jeff can hardly wait to go to the next Jazz/Laker game and wear this. How embarrassing! :)

Birthday Week

That's right, it was my birthday this week. Well technically it was yesterday (Sept. 7) but as many of you know, I tend to celebrate my birthday for a week. Shane didn't believe me when we were first married but it seems this year he has caught on. I came home from work on September 1 and found this scene in our entry way:



A present for everyday of the week leading up to my birthday. Yes Shane likes to put presents under the tree, it's not a Christmas tree fyi. The great news about this is I got to open a present everyday! How fun is that? I was so excited!! So each day I've been opening a present and here is how it went:

Day 1: 3 packs of my favorite apple, pineapple gum
Day 2: Candy Corns (remember how much I like Candy Corns?)
Day 3: 100 Grand candy bars
Day 4: Candy Corns (yes I was almost done with the first bag! oink, oink!)
Day 5: A new set of washcloths (I needed some bad and just never get around to buying any)
Day 6: Candy Corns (do you see a pattern?)
Day 7 : My actual birthday. This present had actually been sitting under the tree since the beginning of August. It came in the mail and Shane just wrapped it and stuck in under the tree to torture me for a month. He would give some hints but I had NO clue what it would be. So I finally got to open it up and this is what I see:



Doesn't it look like chocolate covered pretzel sticks to you? That was my first thought. Then I saw that it had a screw on the top of it and they bent in all sort of directions. Still had no clue what it was. Shane finally helped me out and it's a mini tri-pod for my camera. I LOVE it. I can't tell you how many times I am looking around for a place to set my camera to take a picture so both Shane and I can be in the picture. Now this will allow me to not only set it on something but bend and move it to make it just right.



I had a good birthday. I took the whole week off from work and have just been hanging out and relaxing. I read Mockingjay, Shane treated me to a manicure at Brickhouse retreat. We went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and a movie, Inception. I also got to go to Young Women's on my actual birthday and they were nice enough to get me a cake and sing to me. Everyone seemed to remember my birthday this year so it was fun hearing from old friends and getting caught up with people.

Happy Birthday to me, another year!