Tuesday, June 23, 2009

June Happenings

Children's Art Festival:
Each year for Springville City Days, they hold an awesome children's art festival. We usually invite a friend to come along with Emily, more fun for her. They have around 20 booths, all with a different craft for the children to make. Each craft is made with a different form of art, so they're learning while they have fun.

Olivia and Emily showing off their face painting

Parade fun:
Since I marched in parades for 8 years while growing up, it wouldn't be summer without parades. It's tradition to attend our little city parade each year. Even when we're few in numbers, it's still fun: the excitement, the patriotism, the floats, the bands, the horses, watching the children run to gather candy that's thrown, getting cheap hot dogs at the Chevron station, and more. Just love it! And being held in June, it's just the right weather.

Emily's school always makes an appearance in the parade. Last year she wanted to be on the "float", but decided to wait because Caitlin wasn't here to see her. So this year, with Caitlin home, she chose to be a part of the parade instead of sit with us. She was SO excited! Here she is on the Reagan Academy "float". She has just spotted us as they go by.



Check out a closeup of this picture. Love her expression - pure joy!

No kiddies watching the parade with us, so strange!!
9th Wedding Anniversary!
That's right, June 16 Dave and I celebrated 9 years of marriage. Oh, where has the time gone? First thing in the morning, my sweet Dave surprised me with this:

A beautiful fresh bouquet of flowers from our garden!

To celebrate, we wanted to do a little shopping and go to dinner. Caitlin was my personal beauty consultant. She lent me her clothes, shoes, earrings, and did both my hair and makeup. She was amazing, and I loved being pampered!
Happy Anniversary! Love you forever!!

Pictures with more of my favorite people:
Swim lessons:
Our own little fish
Father's Day:
It was wonderful to have all our children who live nearby, come for dinner for some of Dave's favorites: Enchilada stacks, corn on the cob, and strawberry shortcake. Nicia and Jordan - we missed you!! And Dave, you are an amazing husband and father! We love you!
The kids always come up with great cards, sometimes pretty funny ones - this one had Homer Simpson, need I say more? :)

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Birthday Surprise

Happy Belated Birthday to Emily who turned 7 on May 30! First she received this:







Then the big surprise:

And was she ever surprised:

A pretty happy child I'd say!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Air Show

A couple of weeks ago Caitlin, Emily, and I drove up to Hill Air Force base for the air show. When we arrived, the Thunderbirds were doing their show in the air - hard to get pictures of, but very cool.






We took a tour inside a plane - that was fun:

ready for take-off


When the performance in the air was over, we went inside a hangar to see the famous "Tops in Blue" show. Outstanding talent - a carefully selected 30 or so air force people who learn a 1 1/2 hour show with music, singing, and dancing from every type of music from easy listening, to jazz, to country, all kinds. Very impressive, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute.


It was fun to spend some time with just the girls!


Sunday, June 7, 2009

Extreme Makeover!

I feel so blessed. Just want to share something else wonderful that happened recently. On Friday, May 29, Caitlin and Nicia knocked on our bedroom door and informed us that we needed to leave our bedroom immediately.
(A little background: several months ago I had seen pictures of how my niece, Rachel, had redone her bedroom for almost nothing in cost. I had mentioned to my girls that if Rachel could do it, perhaps some time this year I might like to try and do something with my almost unbearable bedroom. But then with the finances getting tighter and tighter, I had put that thought to the back of my mind.)


So because I had mentioned something to them earlier, I thought maybe they were having us leave the room so they could put new bedding on our bed. That was the extent of what I thought might happen. We were obedient, though, and grabbed some clothes and toiletries and headed out of the room. We were not allowed back in all day long!


Jared and Becky came for awhile, and Justin came later in the afternoon. Even Caitlin's boyfriend, Ben, was up there helping them. We heard banging, comotion, and more banging. We just stayed downstairs working in the office, playing Ticket to Ride, etc. Around 11:00 at night, we were finally able to go up and see our surprise, a very unexpected birthday/anniversary present:





The temple picture replaced the ugly big wall-mounted t.v. with the dresser crowded under it

A large treadmill took up this whole corner where the dresser and window are

(it's just a shadow the mirror on the door
is casting on the wall to the right)

The picture of Dave & I is one of our favorites at the beach. The black shadow boxes
on either side will have sand, shells, and my sand dollar collection in them.

I was overcome with emotion.....

All of my adult life, I have never decorated my bedroom, ever. Those of you who have seen my bedroom know how bad it was. This is a project that I know for sure would never have happened if it was left up to me. Closet doors put back up (with knobs too!), treadmill taken out and t.v. taken down (I would have Never have been brave enough to do that!), room painted a gorgeous toasted almond color, new drapes, new pictures on the walls, new bedding.....It's beautiful, and I am in heaven!!!
Without a doubt, I have the most amazing, loving children in the entire world. This was one of the main reasons Nicia had come to visit. Truly this was a labor of love by all that means so much to us and that we will remember forever. It has been such a lift for me. As we were all commenting, our bedroom is a beautiful sanctuary now, and I love to spend time in there now. Thank you, thank you, thank you a million times over to all of our children. We love you all infinity much!!!

Dinner for Two - Just Because

A couple of weeks ago Nicia and Alyssa were here visiting. (which we always love!) One afternoon Dave asked me to go out with him in the late afternoon. Kind of strange, since it wasn't Friday night, but we decided to go geocaching. I was thinking the kids would fix dinner while we were gone, since Caitlin and Ben had said they'd cook one night. We'd been gone about 1 1/2 hours when they called us and said that they had decided to go geocaching too and had found a geocache they wanted us to come and see. I didn't really think too much about it - just thought they had dinner done and decided to kill some time geocaching while we were still out. They told us where to go to meet them - on a road up on the hill overlooking Springville. As we drove along the road, I realized it was going to deadend into a culdesac. As we approached the culdesac, tears filled my eyes as I realized my children had not been geocaching afterall:


There in the middle of the culdesac was a table and two chairs, all set up for Dave and I to enjoy a full fledged homemade Italian dinner, served directly from the Car Trunk Restaurant! It was a beautiful spot overlooking the valley.


Ben, our waiter, served us a delicious chicken fettucinni dinner, complete with salad, amazing green beans, fresh homemade rasberry lemonade, breadsticks, and cheesecake for dessert! (my favorite)

They had music playing from the car, so we danced a little. So romantic!!

Emily and Alyssa had fun just playing around the culdesac:

As the sun set, Nicia, our awesome photographer, took more pictures:


The fabulous "Car Trunk Restaurant" crew

Nicia took a few more pictures as the sun went down, and we left our memorable dinner spot to head back to the house. After they had cleaned up the kitchen, the kids left to spend the night at Grandma & Grandpa Bascom's so we could have the house to ourselves for the night. The fabulous dinner wasn't the only surprise they had for us. When we got up to our room, here was what we saw:



Music playing, candles burning all around, rose petals everywhere. So fun, and so romantic! We have the most thoughtful, amazing kids - they thought of everything! And did all of this, just because...... Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all you did to help us to share a beautiful evening together. It was much needed, and we appreciate this sweet surprise so much!! We love you all!