Missing You

Hello My Dear,

Do you remember this wonderful day almost 6 years ago? Do you remember how happy we were? Do you remember what love and peace we felt as we looked looked into each other's eyes during our sealing in the Temple? Do you remember all of the bright and beautiful flowers? Do you remember how thrilled we were to spend the rest of our lives together as we jumped into the limo and waved goodbye to friends and family after our reception?

I miss you my love. The girls do as well. We can't wait for you to be here with us next week. Avery is about to walk but I am making sure she waits until you arrive. Brinley meet a new friend last night at Rebecca Clark's wedding reception and is going to play with her after her nap time. Tonight my Mom is having her usual large dinner gathering and we are going to have a little celebration for

Avery's Birthday.

We wish you could be here.

Busy Trip!

As you can see I have failed to post during this trip. I attempted to upload pictures from our time in Mesquite but they turned out blurry so I am going to wait to post most of our trip pictures until I get back home on August 9th. SO don't loose faith in my blogging, I will soon be up an running again with lots of pictures from our trip!

It's good to be home

Mom, Arian and me!

I am happy to report that we survived the plane ride home...barely. Avery's inability to sit still for longer than .2 seconds can make events such as a plane ride quite challenging. It's good to be home. Brinley has been in 7Th Heaven with her grandma all afternoon as they have played games, read books, danced and done a lot of catching up conversation. I hope to have time to update the blog in between a wedding, a trip to Mesquite and a Stampin' Up convention in Colorado!
This is me at age 3!

The Crawl

Avery is particular about where she chooses to place her knees. When she is on concrete or grass she does this funny crawl and it's really quite hilarious to watch. Her knees never touch the ground but rather she uses her feet and hands to crawl.

She can actually move about rather quickly this way.

Orders are in!!!

Every month our dinning room table turns into STAMPIN' UP order sorting central, but this month was SPECIAL. Why? Because it was the first month that my clubs ordered from the new Fall Collections Catalog. It was so BEAUTIFUL to see all of the new colors displayed on the table. Ribbon, ink, paper, stamp sets & loads of embellishments where piled high and I just could not help but share this sight with YOU!

The Truth

I was SO happy last June when Cody walked across the stage at graduation and received his medical school diploma. Even though we both knew that residency was going to be tough, I was thrilled that all of the long nights of endless studying, which Cody had so patiently endured, had finally come to an end (except during boards).
Ha Ha Ha! The TRUTH about residency is that MUCH studying is required. On top of all of his other text books that he is currently studying from Cody brought home a gigantic bag full of these fun little syllabi to study and review. My sweet husband gets up at the crack of dawn 7 days a week to study before work!

New Club

Welcome Chelsee, Julie, Kathleen, Jessie, Carol, Lisa, Karin, Ashlie, Sara, Kara, Mandy & Shelly to your new stamp club! I am so excited to enjoy fun creativity with each of you in the upcoming six months as we explore new stampin' techniques and learn to make many new projects!

ATTENTION ALL CLUBS. From now on our monthly projects will be posted on my blog so if you miss a month you will not have to miss out on seeing what we did! I am also going to work on adding links with directions for ccertain projects we do

This month we used Glassy Glaze to create tile like embellishments. You can see in the "Cherish" card how the Glaze creates a thick enamel finish. We learned to use the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig and created this "Kind" card by turning the stamp to create a diamond shape. The one sheet box we made is a darling idea for party favors or to put a treat in and give along with a card. We used the Baroque Motifs stamp set and 3 of our new In Color's: Wild Wasabi, Blue Bayou and Soft Sky.

Brinley's Luau Party

Swimming, jumping on the tramp with sprinklers, a water slide and a water balloon game were the main attractions.

Sweet Brinley,
We have been so blessed to have you in our family for the past 3 years. How we enjoyed watching you squeal with delight on Saturday as you ran around the backyard with your friends during your 4th Birthday party. Do you remember how you have been asking all year long "How many more days until I turn 4?" Now the time has come and on Thursday you will officially turn 4 years old. Daddy and I are very proud of all the new things you are learning to do like writing your name, doing your chores, helping Avery to be happy, participating in primary and being kind and loving to your friends. We love you very much!

Megan, a friend from church, and the girls eating birthday cupcakes
We dressed up each of the girls and did some hula dancing.

Hawaiian outfits and beach balls were the party favors.
Cody was the official pinata man again this year!

How to make a coaster set

1- Buy 4X4 tiles.
2- Choose a stamp set to use.
3- Ink stamp with black or white StazOn ink.
4- Stamp image onto tile.
5- Hot glue felt piece on back of tile if desired.

Feeling a little red, white and BLUE

I do considerably well being far away from home usually, but the 4th of July is different. You see in Utah the 4th is a HUGE deal! Ever since I was a baby we have celebrated this day the same way. First comes the grand parade. Most of our extended family gathers together in front of our old home on East Center Street to watch the parade which includes tons of colorful floats, marching bands, animals, cannons, huge balloons "princess ladies", etc... During my teenage years Kelty, Arian and I would participate in all night and early morning patrol duties to save our coveted parade seats. As soon as the sun came up we were greeted with dozens of hot air balloons soaring high above. This year my Mom got real smart and hired someone to do the seat patrolling!
After the parade we would walk down center street to the annual 4th of July Arts and Crafts festival to eat yummy food, watch different local performers and meander through the various craft booths. Then comes the family BBQ in Aunt Tricia's back yard : family, food, fun and LOADS of fireworks. Ross & Arian would take control when it came to lighting the backyard fireworks. As the years went on they began to set multiple fireworks off at the same time creating quite a show.
After the sun set and our backyard firework show had concluded we all jumped into various cars and made our way up the hill to Grandma & Grandpa's house to watch the Stadium of Fire big firework show from their back porch. What I remember most about watching the fireworks at Grandma's house was the grand assortment of all you could eat popsicles that she would pass out during the show.
We did watch a local parade this year (mostly cars decorated somewhat throwing out candy) and Nikki, Brinley and I went to a park to see the local firework show, however, I was mostly feeling BLUE missing being home with family and enjoying our 4th of July traditions.

Nikki's In Town

Nikki (Yvette Schemm's daughter) came all the way from San Jose to visit us for one week! On Saturday we went to a gigantic outdoor shopping/fountain parks/dinning center. After Brinley played in one of the fountains for a little while we took a ride in this bike

buggy and then enjoyed lunch at Cosi.
Avery would have loved to jump right into the middle of the fountains that day, but we had to restrain her since she can not even walk yet.