Dad's Day

Sunday we were able to get together as a fam to celebrate Father's Day. We were a week late since us girls were in St. George but also, my dad now works in South Dakota for the time being and he was home this weekend - so it worked out perfect!

It was such a nice evening once the sun went dow so we spent it out on the porch after we ate our meal. We shared many funny stories and reminisced about some crazy stuff that happened when we were all young. We enjoyed homemade peach icecream (my favorite :) and my dad's favorite cheesecake dessert.

Then he opened his cards and presents. He is listening to my Hoops & Yo Yo card here:



Amber gave him True Grit with a bag full of traveling goodies for his ride back to S.D. The bag was of the Green Lantern and came with a mask - now that he has the mask on, you could never tell it was him, huh??

I'm excited he comes back so soon for the 4th of July. I hope this weekend rocks!! I have lots of stuff planned - yayyyy!!

4-H

Once upon a time, I used to do 4-H. Four of the five of us did actually. I did it until my freshman year when I could go into rodeo and I left the show biz behind for the fun stuff :) It's been about a gazillion years since then (seems like) and my niece decided that she wanted to give it a go. Imagine how weird it is to get back into something like that...it is very nostalgic for sure. So a lot of my time has been spend riding my horse, trying to train him even further and training Bronsynn on all the stuff she needs to know. She's a first timer and BJ, the horse, will be first timer for this so it was new for both of them.

I was up at 5:30 Saturday morning so I could get over to the padre's house and get the horse all washed up and trimmed and polished. We got over to the arena where Bronsynn, looking fabulous as shown below, went off to take her test:


While she was testing, Amanda and I put the finishing touches on BJ. Here he is getting baby powder put on his white stripe so that it will stand out more:

Isn't he pretty???

This horse did very well for his first pampering. He was shampooed, combed, trimmed, sprayed with shiny stuff, baby powdered, baby oiled, and painted!! Here he is pretty much all done, right before I painted his hooves black. He cleans up nice, eh??

It's a day long event so we set up shade and get the coolers out and we camp out at the trailer unless she's up.

Bronsynn got a red ribbon (2nd place - not second out of the whole class but each person is judged individually) on her two first show events, which was great considering this was a first. She almost got a blue ribbon (1st place) on this event (Western Showmanship), but she broke gait once and so she had to go home with a red. Still very stellar!:

Unfortuanely the speed events didn't go as well. BJ uncharacterstically bucked Bronsynn off during her run so she had a no time, and then that made her miss Scurry, which was a shame because that's a fun race with jumps in it that she rocks at. And Poles was done alright but she was a little nervouse after the Barrels and I couldn't get her to go any faster. She has one more show this August and I think it will go even better....we shall see. But it was a re-learning experience and she did really well. Fun day :)

Beauteeeful Fairies

I think my ward has some creative people in it! I love the parties I get invited to - this last one being a Fairy Party!! A real nice lady I know LOVES fairies and dragons...which, coincidence!!!, so do I!! When she found out I wanted to do a girl's nursery in fairies, and then my baby boy's nursery in dragons, she told me about her fairy party and I got a cute little invitation not too long after!





A lot of work goes into a little party like this, there are so many fantastic details, such as her table and all the flowers, fairy quotes, china and party boxes.






It was so much fun watching all the different fairies arrive. Our hostess had pretty dragon fly wings and a homemade costume to match. As you can see from the fairies below, there is a Japanese fairy in her kimono, a punk ballerina fairy, a flower fairy (who won the Best Costume prize! - if you look super close you can see all the flowers in her hair and on her wings) and a stylish fairy in turquoise:



The only wings I could think of that I had access to were my sisters black fairy wings from a Halloween costume several years ago. So I borrowed them and dressed my eyes and hair up rock n' roller style, grabbed my studded heels, 'leather' leggings, a skull n cross bones tee, my long black feather earrings and some hardware on my wrist and I went as.....something. I dunno. Naughty fairy, Punk fairy, Evil fairy...whatever works. But I had a lot fun with it. It's been a long time since I have been able to get dressed up - and I love dressing up!!!





My wings are kind of hard to see but the curl up at the tops and also down below. I like them:

When the party got started we all had to sign into a guest book and then pick up the 'program'. Inside was some trivia games, a fairy search game, insturctions to awarding the best costume and making fairy crowns. The fairy search was really hard!! She had figurines like this places all over in her garden and flowers and we had to try to find them. Not. Easy!! I don't know how some people found so many!!! The most obvious ones weren't even on the list to find!!! LIke this knight:


And some were very camouflaged or very VERY tiny and very well hidden!:

After a fine feast of a delicious spread of food, our hostess read a fairy tale.

And when the sun finally went down, it was the perfect setting for chatting and laughing with good friends! I had so much fun sitting with the girls at my table. Jill and I played with some camera apps and we came up with some silly pictures:

You will never see a sexier lady than me:


And me and Teresa (who went as a shimmery little elf with awesome purple eyelashes) looking a little twisted:

See!!! Told you I get to go to some fun stuff 'round these parts. I love it!!

Tuacahn

I took me a little vacation over Father's Day weekend with the girlz in my family. This trip has been planned for several months so to finally be off having some fun in the sun was super great! My sister Amanda ended up not going so her daughter took her place. It was me, my mom, my sister Amber, and my sisters-in-law Xannie and Sam. Amber has a time share so we were able to chill in St. George at the condo which has this awesome pool that is only two feet away from our door:

We spent an afternoon there after arriving and checking into the condo. Then it was time to get ready so we could grab some grub and head to our first show - The Little Mermaid!!

Tuacahn has some beautiful scenery - I really loved that we were surrounded by these ginormous red cliffs. The weather was hot but it wasn't horrible and there was a breeze so it was so nice there:

Bronsynn is super excited, can you tell?

The Little Mermaid has some super fantastic special effects. That's what made it cool for me because other than that, it had a tendency to be off-the-radar corny and mushy...two things I don't do well with. But we had great seats...fifth row up which ended up being perfect because you could see things on the side stage like this picture here...I was only three seats away from them:

This is one of those awesome special effects, where the water comes down and it looks like they are in the ocean. Here Ariel is going to rescue Eric after he was thrown off the ship!:

Under the Sea was my favorite part - super fun song, fun costumes, fun all around:

And Ursula was pretty cool -as you can tell:

Overall it was pretty good! The ending is totally different and I didn't like it but other people did so it's just personal taste, I guess.

Saturday we had a nice lazy morning followed by a looooong time at the pool :) I loved it! We made lunch and then went out shopping to the outlets to see what we could find...one of which happened to be these totally awesome visors that I know you are all jealous of:

And you just can't go wrong with a look like this:

We found some good stuff and I picked up some goodies from Osh Kosh for Baby to wear and we gorged ourselves on Apple Pie Apples from Rocky Mtn Chocolate Factory and I was super excited to find a place that did Bubble Tea!!! Yummmmmmmm. It was quite an exhausting shopping experience, though, given the heat. I did not appreciate the fact that this was the first time I noticed my feet starting to swell. Boo hoo. But they went down! I just had to get unhot.

We went back to get ready for dinner, which we had up at Tuacahn. It was themed after the diner in Grease. We did some browsing and then got seated. This was what the stage looked like for Grease from up top:

I liked Grease a lot cuz of the fun songs and it was truer to the actual movie/play.

We sat on the second row from the stage and while it was a great view, you had to twist around to see things on the side stages, so that's why I liked seating a bit farther up.

If you like musicals, these two are pretty fun. My favorite is still Wicked, though...which I hear is coming to Utah next year?? Anybody else hear that? Fun vacation to take with the girls - we had a lot of fun and it was nice to get out of the city and enjoy something new.

I Come Prepared

That's a song title by the way. Probably didn't know that, did ya? It's by Keenan. Love him.

Anyhooslebees, speaking of prepared, I finally got my 72 hour kits! Well, I got them about two months ago...and I'm finally blogging about it. ha ha ha. I decided that instead of piecing my kits together little by little, I went to Emergency Essentials and bought the Trekker II, on sale.

I took important things like toilet paper and matches and put them in sealed plastic baggies to water proof them:

And I have one of these for each of us:

I next need to add to it some clothes, money and some other odds and ends that I think are important. But I'm quite happy I got it done. I am also going to get the 72 Hour MRE food supply but they were out when I was there.

Sew Fun!!

Me and my tiny inner crafty person are getting in touch again...I've been working on something so fun and it's turning out stinkin' CUTE!! It's almost done - Stay Tuned.........

Hawaiian Luau

Paul has a high school friend in the military (who flies helicopters and teaches how to fly hellies) and he's home in Utah for a two-week leave. His family threw a big luau party for him and I thought I'd share some fun pics.

This tiki bar was homemade! We got the whole story on the warrior posts and all that but I won't bore you with it:


This little warrior guards the alcohol. It's my favorite:


They have some polynesian neighbors that roasted them a pig with real yams and everything!:


As you can see, Paul and I each got leid ;)

Candy Centerpieces

So my college friend, Debbie is getting married at the end of this month - Yay for weddings!! My other friend, Amber, threw her a cute little shower at this super yummy place called La Caile Noodle House. Check it out for realz. Anyway - I helped by bringing some decoration to make it a little more shower-esqe and I decided to make these candy centerpieces. Cute and Edible!

Just some cleaned up canning jars tied with ribbon. I got most the candy at Sweet Afton's in Gardner Village. I had long-stemmed suckers, laffy taffy rope, bubble gum and licorice ropes (instead of licorice I wanted pixie sticks...but could I find any pixie sticks??? Noooooo) and in the bottom some grapefuit gummies!

Check out these super cute cookies Amber made for Debbie! She is oodles and oodles smart with the baking and makes super awesome cakes. In fact, she'll be making Debbie's cake for the reception. You can see her stuff here:

And these were our little take home favors, made by Amber:

Super duper cute!!!