Baby Shower w/ My Friends!

Yesterday my sweet friends threw me a baby shower (I swear that's my last one!! ha ha). I walked in to see such cute things as this banner:

...and my first ever diaper cake (the cutest one ever!!!):

...these cute toys and binkies hanging around:

with lots of nummy food, including taco salad and dips, fruit kabobs and, my favorite, eclairs!!! Yum Yum Yum :)

I want to thank all my friends that showed up. I know it was hard for a lot of people to make it so those who did come it really meant a lot! Here's a few things we made away with!

Cheryl gave Asher some seriously cute Carhart gear - a camo onsie and an orange with a tractor on it. I think my dad will love those when he sees Asher in them! And cute little Mikaili helped me open up my presents!:

Karen got me a cute bouncer...I'd show you a picture but I look like I was spawned of Satan in it....which is funny cuz I got told that I was spawned of Satan a lot when I was in high school. ha ha. Ashley got me some 'me stuff' ' - {wink wink} & Deb gave me lotion for myself, lotion and bath stuff for my baby.

Amanda with her daughter, Tenley, and Karen!:

Cheryl, Becky Lou, and Debbie Lee Snack Cakes, as I like to call her:

Becky is the one who made me that cute diaper cake, here's a close up:

I love this monkey on top - LOVE, LOVE it:

And Amanda gave me everything I could need for my diaper bag. Half the stuff in there I never would have thought of putting in my diaper bag! But lucky for me, I'm surrounded by people who have done this once or twice and I'm learning buttloads of helpful information!

And it just so happens that my Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag came today and so I had fun filling it with all the goodies Amanda supplied me!! Thank you!!!

Also, Amanda has a fun Silhouette machine she gets to have all sorts of fun with. So after all the guests had gone, she got it out and cut out these adorabley awesome characters and ironed them on the onesies that were in the basket. I got to watch her work her magic. Aren't they cute?? I LOVE LOVE LOVE them!!!

Thank you for all the hard work! Thank you for making it special for me! Thank you all for everything!! I'm so spoiled!! :)

Ta-Daaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Remember when I 'sneak peaked' you this pic??

Well I finally have my crib...it's finally set up...and it's finally ready to show!!

This Asher's new slumber pad :)

Here's an upclose look at the pattern of the material used for the bumpers and the crib sheet. It's acutally a little softer green than this but the picture makes it looks super limey.

The skirt is white on top, black & white checker in the middle and then black on bottom. You can't see the black very well because of where we have the mattress positioned right now. Eventually it will go down and you will see it the way it's meant to be shown...

...but here's a close up for now:

I like the pleats in the skirt and the colors put together. I'm working on getting everything put together the way I want and then I'll have more pictures. :) But I'm super pleased with how it looks. Now I just need the baby.....

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 ;)