Baby Shower w/ My Ward!

So later on in the evening on Thursday, my ward threw me a baby shower! It was so extremely sweet of them...I felt so very, well, showered!! Har har har.

I really dig the chicks in my ward who helped throw this party and all those women (and man) who came to it! I feel so appreciative of everything!

When I walked in I saw this cute Onesie Banner that Alaina made for me. Love it!!!

Check out this cool balloon - it's going in my baby's room fo' sho':

One of my best friends couldn't make it due to traveling plans, but she was there in spirit...or rather in husband :) If you could read the sticker on his shirt it would say "Hello, My Name is Teresa" :) So clever and cute of them. And Paul (with his cute daughter) came with his own picked out and wrapped up present...a toy sword to fight off the dragons & wrapped in the comics! On the package he wrote: "For the Incubus". Inside joke.

Here am I being so spoiled in presents:

Some of my cool friends that I love:

More spoilage!!!:

The tasty treats and eats at the table!:

And more of my awesome friends:

Seriously, thanks to everyone who put in the time, work & money and for those who came bearing gifts to help us out. Words can't express the gratitude!!

Baby Shower w/ Paul's Work!

Paul informed that my presence was requested at his office for a luncheon on Thursday afternoon. It came as quite a surprise when I found out that his work wanted to throw us a little shower! Totally unexpected, totally appreciated and it was totally fun!! Ha ha

I walked into an amazing spread of food...they ordered some food from Out of The Box and then everyone pitched and did potluck. Enchiladas and sandwhich rolls and chips and all sorts of stuff. It was so yummy!

We all ate in the large conference room and I had a great time laughing at jokes and office banter. One of which would be Benny, my brother's best friend. He works at there now and is quite the comedian. He had all of us crying from laughing so hard. It was super fun. He also provided a pretty little present, wrapped up by Nadia:

And it was these adorabe little onesies that he had Becky embroider. The office got a kick out of the Adcentives West one:

Since I've been showered plenty and still had more to go, I made Paul be the present opener, especially since these people know and love him and that's why they were throwing this thing!

They were all so incredibly generous and we received some great stuff!:

I had to include a pic of the cupcakes that Nadia made...super cute and delish!

Paul works with some really great people. That company has family but they are all a big family, hardly any coming and going. So with as long as they have all worked together, I have gotten to know a few of them and chat here and there with others and they are all super nice and fun. I really like them and I appreciate them going to such lengths for us! Such a great 'surprise' and so appreciated!!

Baby Shower w/ My Family!

Saturday, my wonderful family threw me a baby shower and I (or rather, Asher) came away with some really great and awesome things. I feel so spoiled and loved! Thanks to any family reading my blog that came to the shower - it really is so appreciated and I loved having everyone there that could make it!!

My mom put together a Mexican-type salad bar (sooooo good) and then we had mini Taquitos, fruit salsa, Cowboy salsa, & guacamole with chips. Seriously...the fruit salsa and Cowboy salsa are amazing. And for dessert, my mother-in-law provided sherbet and sprite 'floats' :) It was all so delicious - again I appreciate it so much!

Here are a few things that are now piled in my baby's room, waiting for the day when I can start organizing...I mean nesting. :)

From my In-laws - a developmental gym, car seat dangly bug toys, several adorable receiving blankets, some really cute outfits from Carter's with the monkey's and frogs on the bum (love the bums!!), a soft blanket, and socks, hangers and stuff. Wow!!!

From my family - a nice bouncer and lots of cash so that I can go get my Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag -----YAYYYYY!!!!!

This stellar outfit is from my Aunt Karen - who apprently had help from her boys! So funny and I love the outfit (it's so Paul) and I LOVE those shoes!:

From Paul's aunt and cousin - a baby bath, bath toys for when he's older, bowls, spoons, food storage thing, bottle brush and a few other misc things!:

From Paul's grandparents - our umbrella stroller, plastic bibs, Aveeno bath stuff and some wipes:

We also got sleeper pajama 'bags' from Aunt Kristie, Bibs and more cash from my cute little Grandma, muslim swaddling blankets (so excited for those!) with a portable changing pad from my Aunt Rosemary and cousin Crystal, a box of diapers (thank you!) and baby sling from my Aunt Clarice and cousins Ashleigh, Nicole and Lily, and a super soft blanket and baby monitors from sister-in-law, Hilary!!

Like I said...Spoiled!!! Having a baby shower started making this whole thing incredibly real. Weird how the big baby belly didn't do it for me but a room full of baby stuff does. So crazy!!!!! Now where is my crib so I can get my room together?!!!!

THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

Patio Post

So this material in my earlier post....

...was used to cover this old ugly cushion.

My patio furniture needed an upgrade and I finally got it finished. I used to have some before pictures of it but they got lost somewhere. But you can see the difference, right?

I made a few changes and that included the sides and corners of each cushion. It made it look much cleaner and it was much simpler to do than all that piping.

The old cushions hooked onto the furniture with velcro. But what I learned that velcro left outside becomes less and less velcro-ey and the cushions would NEVER stay put. If a wind storm came up, I had to gather cushions from all over my yard. So I swapped the velcro tabs for tie-on strings. Also, the old cushions were sewn together and so there was no way to take the covers off to wash them. I closed them shut with, yes, velcro, but it won't be exposed like the other velcro tabs were.

And after giving the patio set a fresh coat of hammered-texture black paint, making the whole set look much nicer and sharper, it was finally finished and ready to be put together. It's about time because my backyard and my patio is my favorite place to be if I'm at home chillin':

The final product:

Just in time for a friend get together with some good friends from High School. We enjoyed BBQ chicken, cheese fondue (duuuhhhh), salad and some delicious cherries. It was a way nice evening and even nicer to have cushions to sit on - and cute ones at that!

While I'm at it, I'll show you my flower pots that got a make-over, too. These pots used to be green and then they were all spray-painted black for my wedding. After nearly 4 years, the paint was coming off and they were very weathered. So I spruced them up and made them happier and more cheerful:

I love all the colors but I especially like my purple one. Grow Dahlia, grow I say!!!:

And now since we're on flowers, let's move to the garden! It's coming along really great so far. We have the watering system set up even better than last year and have three seperate groups that have different watering frequencies and lengths.

I have five different tomato plants, one of which is an heirloom I'm excited for. The typical zucchini, summer squash, crook neck squash, lemon cucumber, beans, carrots (which don't ever do so well in my garden) and beets. I used to do corn but I'm not a believer in the nutritional value of corn and since I haven't been able to get corn to grow well the couple of years, I ditched it.

New this year is lilac, jalepeno and pablano peppers (as well as sweet red and green), red onions, green onions, potatoes and garlic.

I already have some Sugary cherry tomatoes coming on (very nummy!) and a few peppers. I can't wait for everything, especially the tomatoes!

4th of July Shenanigans

We had a lot of fun stuff going on over our 4th weekend. It was SO. INCREDIBLY. AWESOME. to have my husband home for a longer weekend. Work only got in the way a little bit and the rest of the time was just us and fun. He needed it!! He helped me accomplish some stuff around the house that I cannot do alone while sporting around my baby belly and the rest was relaxation :)


We went to our friend's house to watch the Riverton parade on Friday. She lives right on the road that it comes by so we were able to just park our bums in front of her house in some lawn chairs and watch the kids go nuts about the candy. Paul and I don't care for parades at all but it was a good reason to get together with friends we haven't seen in awhile. I thought the entire parade was super lame, minus some bikers and rollerskaters. The only truly awesome thing were these jeepers - a crowd favorite:

We had our annual dinner and fireworks with my family which is always looked forward to. Sadly this year, it was so overcast and rained a little so the giant slip n slide didn't come out. Maybe we will be able to for the 24th.

We had an awesome dinner where a mean game of "Would You Rather" went on and on and on. It was pretty funny and there was some nasty, gross and funny questions and responses. Aiden, my nearly-7 year-old nephew, loved it and he would ask the silliest questions like: "Would you rather eat a burger full of worms OR nothing at all??" Ummmm, geez that's a tough one. :) Such a cutie.

My husband was where he usually is for a lot of the night: out back entertaining the kiddies. He played ball with Aiden and wrestled both him and Dallin on the tramp. The boys really do love him. It's hard not to, really.

Summer BBQ's always have some corn-on-the-cob, which we always go out and feed to our horses. It's really strange though. These batch of horses (we've had several that were sold and moved on) don't enjoy the cobs like our original older horses did. Those horses would run to you and yank them out of your hand. These horses acted like they were a pile of poo.

Our family tradition is making bombs. Amanda and Gaven are the big bomb makers and the rest of us help and mostly watch. They have it down to a science. Everything matters, down to the bottle that it goes in.

Amanda usually hammers the powder loose in the Pickalo Pete's while Gaven squeezes the powder into the bottle and completes it with firecrackers (if desired) and fuse.

And there are usually casualties:

They also make a few other different types of bombs, but these are out favorite because if you have the right bottle and the right amount of Pete's you get a really awesome bomb like this one (and usually something gets blown up with it):

I wish you could hear how big the BOOM was through the video. It was awesome. And I lost track of the bucket clear up in the sky. It went forever high.

These two dorks never stop playing and running around the entire property. We discovered that Jimmer is a weiner when it comes to fireworks. He doesn't like them at all and peed all over the place. Bacardi has never even cared. He doesn't even look up when one goes off or somethine explodes:

Xannie and Mannie being total dorks. They actually ripped the tape off of each other and they both screamed bloody murder:

My dad got a mountain of awesome fireworks when he passed through Wyoming on his way home from South Dakota. This 24 Karat, for your information, is the coolest firework. I wish I could have a picture of it but it was too dark to try. Super awesome though.

We had Paul's family over to our house for dinner as well. We ate out on our patio and it was a nice evening for it. This picture cracks me up. Paul's face is in shadow and the shadows from my twinkle lights were hitting him just perfect...in case you couldn't tell:

I remembered that I had fireworks from a couple years ago still stashed away and so it seemed a perfect time to light them up since we were all still chilling out when night came. Here are two Budd Brothers putting together our firework show with my old school ghetto fireworks:

Zoyie with her new red hair she's so proud of:

Again, Bacardi couldn't care less about the fireworks but B.J. and Hilary's wiener dog sure hates them. He's so scared that he's holding on to Hilary like a little kid. So funny:

A few days of sleeping in, accomplishing work, laying back and enjoying fireworks, food and family...that's why I love the 4th of July so much!! My favorite holiday...next to Halloween of course ;)

More Crafty Me!

I am making me another fun project! This has been on my to-do list for two years now and I am finally accomplishing it! Almost done and then I'll show pics of this project and my other one!!

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 :)