A Sprinkling of Fairy Dust

Oh how I have looked forward to this!  This is the second year I was invited to attend Merry's Fairy Party.  Last year I was large with baby and put together an outfit last minute and I even surprised myself at how it came together.  I loved it!  Now I look forward to all the different fairies I can be.  

This year I thought I had more time to prepare than I did.  Luckily it still worked out.  Sam, my sis-in-law, lent me her butterfly wings...she also has a ton of Asian stuff so she brought stuff over for me to peruse through.  I decided to go with this robey thing.  It was totally awesome.  However, the wings didn't jive with it and someone suggested a great place to find some wings.  I lucked out and found the perfect pair that was cheap (the most important factor!)

So here I am this year as an Asian-type fairy.  (My fairy wings were called Nymph wings...mabey I am an Asian Nymph??? ha ha ha):

It helped to not be 8 months pregnant as well. Here's a view from the back: 

My hair and make-up: 

I was thrilled to be getting quite a few votes throughout the evening for Best Costume.  It came down to Me and Mindy as tied but I gave it to Mindy because she made her wings and they were awesome :)  Next year though....Ima gonna fight for it!!! ha ha :)

My contribution for the evening...my raw dip was super yummy! 

Our wonderful host and her homemade fairy outfit.  I loved that she created wings from flowers: 

This year a few men were in attendance and their outfits were pretty cool!  This guy made his own wings, belt, clothes AND shoes - yes shoes (out of leather)!!! 

Some other creative fairies from the evening: 

Is it weird to dress up, eat dinner with fairies and prance around outside for all to see??  Nay, I tell you.  It is quite wonderful, indeed.

Keane!!!

On Tuesday, June 26th Paul and I headed downtown for a spectacular evening of music from the amazing Keane, enjoyed by and with great company, Paul and Teresa.  

I love concerts at the Gallivan Center...so laid back, open, outdoorsy (my favorite).  The sound was great, Keane was awesome and we had a blast singing and dancing the whole night away!

Paul, Me, & Paul:

Me and Teresa:

Yeeeeee Haw!!

We've been to so many rodeos this summer - which makes me happy all through my soul!!!  Only a couple of them did I remember to take pictures and those were the two where Asher tagged along (a very ornery, cranky, way past his bedtime Asher).

Chewing on a Sno Cone straw in an attempt to make him happy...in turn this face made me happy:

"Whyyyyyyyyyy do they gotta do this to me?  Uggggghhhhhh." 

Asher was so tired due to an early afternoon nap due to the fact that he wakes up at 5 am and he refused to nap between then and the rodeo so he so sleep-deprived he refused to be held by anyone but me.  It was a long night.  But truthfully, I didn't mind...he's my baby :) 

Draper Rodeo, last Friday the 13th!  Asher was much better rested but still refused to go to his Aunts or Uncle.  So testy that he couldn't even appreciate his bunny ears: 

Am I crying or laughing??? 

LOVE the Draper rodeo grounds.  It was a perfect night.  The T-storm cleared up just as the rodeo started making it perfect hoodie weather, but not too cold.  It was really fun! 

Zoyie had been begging Paul for some quality sibling time and so we towed her along with us.  It was her first rodeo and she was so excited! She had her hair all done and a cute little black cowboy hat :) 

The 4th Festivities 2012!

This year for the 4th of July, my sister-in-law, Sam, had this amazing idea to do our own hide race.  I mean, we have the horses, the access to an arena, and several acres full of misc. junk that surely we would be able to construct our own 'hide'.  Well, construct we did!!!

Paul pulling off slabs of wood from a crate:

My dad screwing those slabs to a giant piece of old carpet (seriously it's the same carpet from when the carpet was laid in that house...about 17 years ago): 

Asher and Samantha taking a ride on our hide, testing it out: 

Our baby!!!! 

And this is my other baby...my favoritest one :)  Looks like such a little boy sitting there on that step and not an almost 11-month old infant.  My, how fast they grow.:

At the arena putting on the gear!  We grabbed my dad's grease monkey suits, snow goggles, bandannas, and leather gloves.: 

Samantha:

Paul (I don't know why my brother only shot one video of Paul..and that's of him, eating dirt):

Gaven swallowing dirt:

My last and best run...of course:

This was us at the end, when I took my turn and Gav switched me spots on the horse.  Halfway through we had to do some creative thinking to help with the slicing of the rope past my hip bone when I carried those heavier guys.  The solution was chaps and a jean jacket rolled up and tucked inside the waistband of the chaps for padding against my hip. Here, Gaven is demonstrating the fashion: 

This was BUTTLOADS OF FUN!!! We can't wait to do it again!  Afterwards we headed back home and grabbed the food off the grill, grubbed down on some excellent bbq and Sam's patriotic berries and fruit kabobs!:

and then sat on the grass and enjoyed the fireworks from across the entire valley.  Riverton's was the closest and  so it was the best but I have always loved watching the night sky being lit up by color and sound all the way down to Sugarhouse.  We were also visited by some small creatures.  Having these guys hop through the grasses and bushes that surrounded us can be quite unnerving until you figure what it is.  When one finally popped out, it scared the crap out of me.  I haven't touched a toad since we moved into that house...I am just not a fan of the feel of them and plus they pee on you almost instantly, which was the case with this person.  NO. THANK YOU.

A great holiday spent with family and reflecting on our freedoms made possible by so many others.

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.

Riding The Ponies

I grew up riding horses and one of our family activities was to go out to the desert and do an all day ride. It's super fun. We don't make it out to the desert so much anymore however, my dad takes the horses to Yellowfork Canyon in Herriman (only a fifteen minute drive from the house) and goes riding a couple times a week. I love go riding and I don't get to go up the canyon often. So Friday, since Paul was leaving on a Scout camp, I headed out with my dog and we went riding with my parents.

This is Bacardi right before we started off - he was super excited, as you can tell:

It was such a great night for riding.

This is my horse, B.J. My rodeo horse was sold a couple years ago and recently I took up training this guy. He is actually the baby of my other rodeo horse that I used for Barrel Racing.

It was Bacardi's first time on a ride and he had a lot of fun being out where he can run a muck with the other horses. He was pretty funny cuz he wanted to be at the head of the line the entire time but if we started and he didn't get ahead, he would be stuck at the back of the line until there was an open pasture where he could run out and get in the front. He didn't figure out that he could just go off the trail and run through the trees and bushes to get ahead. I could see him try and bypass me, but then a bush would come up and he would fall back behind. Such a dork.

The scenery was beautiful and the weather was fantastic:

When we got back to the trailer and I had B.J. unsaddled, he started stomping his feet and snorting at the meadow behind the trailer. My dad looked a little closer and he found that there were deer just chilling about 20 feet away from us. So I krept to the edge of the meadow and started taking pictures. The deer actually took a few steps toward me! I was pretty happy to get an even closer picture since I wasn't even ten feet from him....and then in rushes my dog. Dumb dog. We usually see tonz of deer but this time we only saw a couple.