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!

Summer = St. George

What would summer be without at least one trip to St. George to enjoy a little 110 degree weather! Sadly, I think this is going to be my last Summer = post...summer apparently is ending and fall is upon us! :(

However, a few weeks ago we were able to do just that. Brigitte and Tyler invited us down for the weekend. We stayed in Tyler's family's condo and had a great time. My car had been in the shop a few times over the last month so we left a little early thinking that if my car happens to break down that Brigitte and Tyler would be behind us and could pick us up. Well just as luck would have it, our car worked just great. However, about the time we got to Cedar City, Brigitte called to say their car broke down in Scipio. Luckily the other couple that came down, Kim and Milan, were close enough to turn around and go get them. So we all made it down there.

So what did we do...what else do you do in St. George, we shopped, ate, hung out, saw a movie and slept. It was a great weekend, it went by way too fast, and luckily we all made it home without any more car problems. Thanks Tyler and Brigitte for inviting us, it was a great weekend!



I didn't realize Brigitte and I were so matchy match...and still not sure why Brigitte was trying to hit me in the leg?


Milan, Kim, Brigitte and Tyler

Summer = Girls Camp

I have officially attended my first Girls Camp since I was 14 years old. Yep...I rebelled and never went after I was 14. I am NOT a camper and back then Girls Camp was always just as it reads...camping. This year it was more along the lines of a Girls Retreat. It was just our ward so we were lucky enough to use someone's cabin in our ward. Lucky us!! We had 32 Young Women and 7-8 leaders. The cabin was down by Scofield Reservoir and it had enough bunk beds for all the adults to use. Then the girls 'camped' out on the carpeted floor for the very few hours they were asleep.

We had a great time...we went on a 'hike' (it was more of a walk.) Right as we were about to start back it started raining and coming down pretty hard. We were all soaked by the time we got back and pretty muddy. We played some games based off of the 'Survivor' theme and the girls all had to eat some interesting things. Love being a leader so that I don't have to participate in those things, just watch and take pictures. We made some camp journals, had a few speakers, played lots of card games and ate and ate and ate. The food was delish.

It was only 2 1/2 days and just as everyone was getting really tired and probably turning cranky and emotional, it was time to clean up and come home. It was so nice, there was no drama and fun was had by everyone there.

Here are some pictures from the week:

All the YCL's or as I call them 'My Laurels'


For you Emily...I told you I was going to post it, you blog creeper!

Summer = Bugs?

Ok seriously I still get the shivers just thinking about writing this story. So last night about 10pm I was in Shane's office chatting away and I decide to go to the kitchen to get a snack. As I am walking by our front door on our wood floor, I am about to step down when something just under my foot starts moving.

I freak out!! Scream!! Run!! And yell at Shane to get out here!! We flip on the lights in the entry way and this is what I see crawling across the floor, well crawling pretty fast:



Seriously, the body itself was easily 1.5 inches. So what does Shane do?? He brushes it out onto our porch and closes the door...like well that's the end of that. OH NO!!! I was NOT about to just let him brush it outside, so I ask him why he didn't kill it? His response? It's Sunday! Seriously!!!???!!! And he just goes about life like nothing has happened. Meanwhile I'm still totally freaked out that maybe it's going to crawl back in...what if it had babies, maybe our house is infested, etc. etc.

I think Shane finally realized I was NOT going to just let this drop so he went and got bug spray and went out and sprayed it (why couldn't he just smash it I still don't understand?) So it was doused with bug spray and brushed into the bushes. Oh great, so now it's in the bushes mating with his friend producing more.

Ok I know I'm being overly dramatic but when I finally sat down to eat my bowl of cereal, I started gagging thinking about it and couldn't finish. Ok I'm a freak, I admit it.

I thought it was a cockroach but consensus at work today says it's some type of beetle. I haven't seen anything this big since my mission in Australia where I had to kill cockroaches this big on a regular basis. Hint, put bowl over big cockroach, wait overnight, remove bowl and it's dead. They crawl up the bowl, fall over on their back and die. I LOVED learning that on my mission, that I didn't have to smash them.

PS I do have to give Shane credit for taking care of the problem, as I don't know what I would've done. I was paralyzed with fear. I love being married!!

Summer = A busy blog slacker

I'm still here! Did you wonder where I was? Yeah, it's summer and my sit inside and work on the computer knack has gone away. Probably because I've been busy enjoying summer.

So I'll get you all caught up in the next several posts of Summer with a promise to try to post more often so I don't get behind.