Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Our (Lame) Anniversary

What up? I’m back. I’m behind again, however I haven’t taken many pictures so it really doesn’t feel like I’m that behind. Which is good.

I’ve been sick. Really sick. And it has made me not want to do anything. At all. Ever. :)  (If you come to my house anytime soon, please don't judge me).

Plus the first thing I needed to blog was Justin and Gaelin’s Millville wedding reception and I couldn’t get the files to work. Apparently my Photoshop is very old. :) Anywho, Stacy swept in and saved my butt and now I can finally share some pictures. So here we go.

This was right when it started and I had just got my kids their cupcakes. I don’t know what I’m so excited about, but clearly it was terribly exciting!


Scott and Kathy (Josh's parents) came up to the reception, which was very nice.  But as Scott, put it, "We'll be where ever they are."  (Referring to my tinys).  My kids have wonderful Grandparents!


My children spent most of the night running around the gym.  Like the entire time.


Or running and eating if you're Avonelle.


Traegan found several people his size and had a blast running around.


When you couldn't see Traegan it was safe to assume he was with Izzy (my bestie's little girl) and Emma (my youngest cousin).  They are all REALLY close in age and had tons of fun.


When you couldn't find Av, you knew she was at the candy table conning elderly's into giving her candy.  Seriously.


I found her over there once demanding candy from one of my grandma's friends and when I went over and tried to give her a candy, the older lady said, "I think she wants that one." Pointing to another kind of candy.  Sure enough, she didn't want what I gave her, but what she had told the old lady she wanted.  Wow.  Just wow.

Traegan did manage to spend some quality time with Uncle Justin.


Mostly on his shoulders, where he stayed perched for a long time and didn't care at all that Justin had visiting to do.


Eventually, I excused Josh from the whole thing and he took the kids to his parents house to watch the Real Salt Lake game.  I hung out and visited.

Here is a cute one of my mom, (Cardboard) Missionary Brandon and his girlfriend Hailie.


It was so fun to see her and everyone that came.  I loved seeing all my old Millville friends and neighbors!

Now, in case you didn’t know, this all happened on Saturday, October 19th, which is the day that Josh and I got married oh so long ago…

(I love my honey and how happy he makes me!)


What a fun way to spend our anniversary right?

Truthfully, it wasn’t that bad and it was a million times better than what we did two years ago when we helped my youngest brother with his Eagle Scout project.  Ha!  Plus, lots of people wished us Happy Anniversary, so that was kind of fun!

It was fine though and we do have high hopes to actually get to do something fun for our anniversary soon now that the wedding festivities have died down. We’ll see. Maybe when I'm feeling a little better.

But here’s the thing. We were in the exact spot on that night that we were in six years ago, as I also had my wedding reception in that gym of that church. (Classy huh?) AND I DIDN’T TAKE A PICTURE! What the hell yo?

That might not seem like a big thing to anyone else, but those are the kinds of picture taking moments that make my heart flutter. But I was far too sick and distracted that night to be thinking about that. Darn. Endless regrets. :( (Really I'm okay with it, but I'm a little sad I didn't think about it until after the fact).

But here is one of us at our reception, just to ease the pain a little. Ha!


And that was how we spent our anniversary this year.  Ha!  We'll get a re-do soon.  :)

Oh, though I should mention that the night before, Josh went to return us a Redbox and when he came back he brought me flowers.  Seriously pretty flowers.  I was VERY surprised as it wasn't even our anniversary yet.  He's a sweet heart and I love him way, way mucho!

And that is all I have for today. More coming another day...

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

And The Rest

Well after this I’m caught up again. Which is really not impressive because I have felt like absolute death lately and so all I’ve done is sit at the computer and nap. Not really that impressive, but hey, I’ll take my wins where I can get them.

So Friday morning after the wedding, we took our sweet time in the morning getting out of the hotel and then we eventually made it back to my house. Janece stayed there and helped me clean and decorate for a baby shower she was throwing for her friend. I let her have it at my house because I’m cool like that.


Felicia got tons of loot!  And holy crap, girl stuff is cute!


The next morning, Traegan had his last soccer practice and game of the season. He was very excited! 

Avonelle and Trae practiced for a few minutes before the rest of the team got there.


Then the team practiced throw-ins.


Then Traegan and Caleb both bent over to get the ball at the same time and bonked heads… This went on for a few minutes.


Trae sat out for the first quarter, which gave Aunt Janece time to get there, and man was he excited when she came!


Janece took this cute one and I LOVE it.


This is his very serious soccer face while he plays.


Jason is the coach for Jettsen's team and about halfway through Trae and Owen's game, Jettsen started putting the cones on people's heads.  Avonelle's stayed on really well thanks to her bow.



Janece and Avonelle


After the other team would score a goal and Traegan's team would march back to the center, most of the time, they would just be laughing their butts off.  It was so funny!

They definitely weren't the best team, but they sure didn't take themselves too seriously either!  And I know they were always having fun.


Traegan had improved so much from the beginning of the season.  He is definitely not the aggressive type, but the ball touched his foot several times that game and more than half were even on purpose!  :)

But he sure does love the high fives at the end.


The parents and grandparents and all manner of family all made a tunnel for our team.  And the other team came through it too.  :)



The official team photo.  :)


We hung out with my family that day and then headed home to enjoy a little OUR family time.  It was a very busy weekend!

On the 14th we took this little video of our dance party, which has since then become a nightly thing and it's pretty freaking awesome.  

Avonelle tries to copy whatever I do, which means I can get her to do some pretty funny things.  (Check out the face she makes at about 5 seconds and 20 seconds).  And Traegan is just wicked awesome.  All the time.


And this was the next morning, just because it's cute.


Oh and for the sake of documenting... last night at dinner, Traegan said the prayer on the food ALL BY HIMSELF!  It was adorable and probably the proudest I've ever been ever!  And then, not five mintues later, when Avonelle ran out of water and held out her cup, Traegan just jumped up, got her cup, filled it with water, and sat back down.  No one asked him to, he just did it.  I swear he is the sweetest child on this planet.

And that's life as of now.  We have another wedding reception this weekend and then I've got roughly 80 bagillion photo shoots to edit so who knows when I'll be back again.  :)

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Rain On Their Wedding Day

Thursday, October 10th, my brother Justin married his best friend Gaelin in the Draper, Utah LDS temple. I was honored to be there and so happy for the two of them. It was a rough start to the morning and a very rainy day, but that didn’t matter to the bride and groom. They were just happy to get to be husband and wife finally. :)

The ceremony was beautiful inside of the Temple and then tons of family and friends were waiting to welcome them outside the Temple doors.

Justin pretended he was a Jedi and was opening the doors with Jedi powers. Wow.


The happy couple!


It was about at this moment that the photographer mowed Traegan flat on his face on the pavement. He cried. I missed the next few minutes. :)

But I did get a picture of cardboard Brandon (left) and Cameron, who are off serving missions and couldn't be there in person.


After a short drive and quick nap for Avonelle we headed to the luncheon. The caterer’s weren’t doing exactly what we had thought they would so we jumped in to get the tables ready. My job became pouring salsa for each of the tables.

Now the story of the salsa incident…

I knew there was an inherent risk of getting super messy so I was being super careful. I managed to pour a bowl for each table and several other family members were distributing them. All done. I picked up the two remaining full bottles of salsa to go put them in the fridge.

And then I watched, in slow motion, as one of the bottles slipped out of my hand and fell toward the table and towards the only bowl of salsa still on it. The bottle hit the bowl, which caused it to jump up and tip and fling, yes fling, salsa all over me. I’m talking from my neck to my knees, Carrie at the prom with the pigs blood, salsa all over the dress I needed to wear ALL DAY.

I swore. Right next to my newly appointed Stake President Uncle. My next move was to stand there dumfounded for a minute. Then I yelled at Janece to come help me and to Josh that he had the kids. He looked at me and I saw his face and I knew it was just as bad as I thought it was.

I headed to the bathroom where my current plan was to take off my dress and bawl. Just stand there in my G's and bawl.

Then my lovely Aunt Teresa showed up. They helped get the chunks off of me and the dress before I slipped off the dress and Teresa guided Janece through the process of washing my dress in the sink with soap and the drying it by hand with paper towels. I was still standing there ready to cry. Tears were welling up and about to come spewing out people!

But somehow, miracle of miracles, the dress was completely cleaned. I’m talking you would NEVER know it happened. And because there was no air hand dryer and the paper towels could only do so much, when I put my dress back on it was slightly damp, but didn’t even look like it had wet spots.

A- MAZE- ING! I have no words. I made my triumphant return back into the gym and my husband just said, “WOW!”

Aunt Teresa will go down in the history’s as being the most amazing miracle worker ever!

After that it was all much smoother sailing. I changed the kids clothes for the luncheon as a precautionary measure and we had a lovely messy lunch of Café Rio and Cold Stone. Delicious!

After the luncheon, my family and Janece went back to the hotel for a nap and it was much needed and enjoyed.

Janece took this video on the way and it just shows how badly Av needed a nap.


Later that night at the reception.


A LOT of work had gone into decorating the night before and it all looked really cool.


Gaelin and Justin with my kiddos during the reception.  Traegan had a hard time leaving Uncle Justin alone and when he finally got on top of him, he just rubbed his hair.  Avonelle meanwhile was trying to pick all the pretty beading off of Gaelin's dress.


The cake


Cutting the cake.  When I told Traegan they were going to cut the cake, he went running over saying, "I want to cut the cake!"  I was seriously worried he was going to get in the way, but then the photographer was there and he was honestly scared of her.  Ha!



After all the cake cutting was done, he turned to me and said, "I didn't get knocked down!"  Poor little dude!

Avonelle spent most of the night running through the hanging fabric.


Until the end of the night when we gave her a balloon!


They had a photo booth and we had lots of fun in it!


Josh went home that night and the kids and I stayed and helped clean up.  We left pretty late and went back to the hotel.

Janece took this cute one in the car on the way back.  :)


It was a fun and beautiful wedding!  And I'm so happy for Justin and Gaelin to start their life together!

Monday, October 14, 2013

Reunited!

So when I last left you I was on my way to go get Janece from the airport. I guess we’ll start there. :)

That morning was filled with running around like a crazy trying to get the car packed and loaded so that Josh could take the majority of our crap with him in his car. I finally got it all done and then had to hurry and get ready to go.

However, we did take a few minutes for Traegan to make Aunt Janece a “big card.” You know of Traegan’s love of making “cards” right? Click here if you don’t and you want to. :)

Well I decided it would be fun for him to make Aunt Janece a big card so I picked up a poster board during my late night Walmart run. When I showed him the paper that morning and told him to make Janece a big card, he about exploded. :)

My camera lens was broken so I don’t have great pictures of this day in history, but here are my little cuties waiting for Aunt Niece at the airport!


We got more than one smile and acknowledgement of how adorable my children are while we were waiting. My kids were definitely the cutest ones there, and that's saying something on a Wednesday in the Salt Lake City airport.  Ha!  And a the great big grin from Aunt Janece when she saw them made it all worth it!

We knew the rest of the weekend would be very, very hectic so we took our one spare hour and made a quick jaunt to Gardner Village so that the kids would have an opportunity to do something fun with Aunt Janece. It was way fun!

Traegan had lots of fun telling Janece about all the witches and showing her where they were. We looked in a few stores and fed the ducks. Which is now Avonelle’s favorite thing. She says, “Wow!” after every piece that she throws when a duck eats it. :)

I’m really glad we took that little jaunt.



Then we drove to Alpine to pick up my beautiful camera lens. Oh how I missed it. Then we had the most complicated checking in process imaginable. Oh my. There are just no words. Then we met up with family, waited for family and eventually all went out to dinner. At which point my children had multiple mental breakdowns because they’d been up forever with next to no naps. Then dear sweet husband waited at the hotel with the monsters while my family and I went to help set up the reception. It was a long day and a very late night.

But the next day was WEDDING DAY! Yeah!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Dinosaur Day

Thursday, October 3rd, was “Dinosaur Day” at Preschool. Traegan was so excited!

Traegan’s daddy has always loved dinosaurs and still does. It has become a joke in my family and they always get him little dinosaur toys. So Traegan had quite the collection to choose from to take to school that day. He was very, very, very excited.

When I went to pick up Traegan and Owen this is what I was greeted with.
(Don’t mind the blurry pictures, my camera lens was broken there for a minute).


Seriously, please just picture a little herd of Preschoolers walking in a line with these masks on… FREAKY.

But Traegan and Owen were thrilled to be dinosaurs. They played at my house for a few minutes and relished sneaking up to and scaring me. They told me multiple times how scary they were. And even though, Traegan repeatedly said, “dinosaur mask is so hot”, they both straight refused to take them off.


Saturday brought… SURPRISE!… More soccer. Avonelle and her best buddy Cole wandered around and sneaked treats from each other.


And Traegan true to form only touched the ball when it was his turn to throw in, or kick in, or in this case, kick off. :)


He spent the rest of the game chatting with Owen.


But he does love it so much when it's time to give the other team high fives!


Traegan is always so happy with the people who come to watch his games.  He always loves to see all of his Grandparents and Jason and Noelle and boys.  But this time Jeremy and Julie and girls came as well as Justin and Gaelin.  He was pretty darn happy!


And that's it.  I'm caught up.  Which is good because I'm going to go get Janece from the airport today and then it's wedding time for Justin and Gaelin and that will undoubtably result in more pictures to blog.  Yeah!