Change of plans...

We had plans of going out with some friends of ours for date night.

They had a death in the family so we had to postphone it.

We were going to get a babysitter but decided to just make a family outing of it.

I'm so glad we did. It was FUN!

We went to Tempe Market place and walked around looking at all the different things there.

Then we went to Dave and Busters.

{K} thought the napkin was supposed to be tied around his neck like a cowboy.

He was looking over his menu and I said read your menu again

so I can get a pic...that was cute.

Well he then of course had to ham it up with his hand

on his chin as if in deep thought.

After dinner we went and played some games.

{B} loved her ride on the motorcycle.

They were both giggling so much and it was the cutest thing ever.

{J} can play a mean game of whack a mole.

{B} is not too bad herself.

We ended up with over 3000 tickets.

The boys each picked a spiderman toy and of course {B} picked something pink.

She loves her little kitty. The boys also found a baseball cap that they picked for {R}.

I got two darling little flower necklesses for {B} birthday next week.

I love making such fun memories with the kids.

I love the age of the boys. They have really started to joke around with Ry and I

and make and understand jokes. It is such a fun age.

I LOVE my Family...They all are just so fun to be with!

b-day party and patrol car fun.

Saturday we went to one of R's buddies house to celebrate his adorable little girls birthday. It was so fun to get the babies together and watch them interact. B LOVES babies and was so cute with her little friend. They daddies had a lot of fun too. :) Thanks Al and Aubrey for the fun party and yummy food.

After the party we dropped Roff at work. He let the kids play in his patrol car for a little bit and turned the siren on and everything. They thought it was the coolest thing ever

August b-day and Eternal families

Well I am once again behind on my August b-day postings. (at least the cards were on time right?) Anyway, here is a special shout out to all you August b-days.

Our niece Emily (in the middle) turned 1 August 10th. She is soooo cute and I'm so glad she is apart of our family.

Our niece Rachel shares the same birthday as little Emily. She is such a sweet little girl and great big sister. She is always smiling and lots of fun to be around.

Matt turned 18 on the 17th. He just moved to AZ and I'm so excited. Hopefully we'll get to see him somewhere between girls, work, friends and life. Matt is a musician and has such amazing talent. I could listen to him sing all day long.

Mandy (Ryan's sister) had a b-day on the 31st. She is an easy going fun person to be with. She is also so hip. She has such great style and always wears the cutest things. She's definately very girly even though she was raised with all boys. :)

Our Best Friends Tom and Amy celebrated their 7th anniversary on the 31st. We got to see them in Vegas that day and had fun traveling and hanging out with them on our last trip. They are sooooo much fun and we have the greatest laughs when we are with them. We'll be in serious withdrawal if they ever move, but I'm not going to think about that right now. :)

We hope you all had a great day and know how much we love you! Thanks for being such a special part of our lives.

A year ago my sisters famiy adopted the cute little baby in this picture. The first week of August we heading to St. George to witness the Sealing of this adorable little baby to her sweet little family. We are so glad she is ours now and that we were able to be there and enjoy some fun times with family. CONGRATULATIONS and thanks for the fun visit.

A surprise visit.

My cute nephew Matt (on the right) and his buddy Tim (on the left) are in town for a quick visit. They are so funny and have been fun to be around and listen too. Matt is going to be living here in Mesa for the next year until his mission and I'm so excited to have some family close. YIPPY!

Family vacation part 2

I know it has taken me forever to get the rest of our vacation blogged. But here it is.

After spending a week in Utah with R’s fam. we along with 6 of my siblings and their families journeyed out to S.D. for a big family reunion. My parents got released from serving their LDS mission in Rapid City which is where we grew up. So we decided to go “pick them up” from the mission and go see S.D. one last time in a big huge family reunion.
R and I met and fell in love in Rapid so it was extra sweet for us.

Here we are at one of the MANY pit stops. Our 12 hour trip ended up taking 18. Although it honestly flew by rather quickly. He had two way radio’s and kept each other entertained. It was fun.

FINALLY we got to see Grandma and Grandpa. It was sooo wonderful to finally be reunited with them.

Here are some of the cousins chillin. We rented a lodge that was big enough for all our family. We were out in the middle of no-where all by ourselves. It was lots of fun.

Here we are eating luch one day inside the lodge.

Before the reunion my parents sent all of the grandkids an invitation for a birthday party to celebrate each birthday they missed while out serving. They rented out the party room at story book island (a super cute park in Rapid) and my mom surprised all the grandkids by showing up in costume and putting on a darling show.

My mom is a professional clown and it was a fun surprise. Most of the grandkids had never seen one of her shows, only heard about it. Boy was it ever a treat. She is also a vantrilaquist and let K hold her Uncle Sam puppet.

Nose to nose with Muffin the clown. It was cute, when my mom was introducing herself she said that she is muffin the clown. She is a Grandma clown. She use to have bright beautiful vibrant RED hair, but now it's turned pink. ha ha.

J loved being Muffins helper. It was cute, one of my little nieces asked my sister where Grandma was. :)

Grandpa passed out b-day gifts to everyone and we ate pizza. After the party the kids ran through the park.

B had grandpa wrapped around her little finger

Can you tell where my kids are?

Yep you guessed it, the famous yogi bear picnic basket.

Home of the 3 little pigs (and K in the window)

And of course the big bad wolf.

The kids LOVE Cat in the Hat and little B was so excited she was about to burst!

Some of the cousins inside little boy blue's house

The next day we had an outdoor carnival for the kids that my sisters put together. They had all kinds of games that you could earn tickets at and then the kids got to pick prizes from the prize table. I didn’t get any pictures of the games (I was running a booth, but here is the prize table)

We went and saw the home I grew up in (out in the middle of no-where) and hiked around to some of our favorite spots like…

Sandy caves, They really aren’t caves, but we all hung out there with our friends at one point or another. This pic. is of Ryan (my brother) and Chelsea

We use to come to this tunnel that goes under the highway and explore. R and I came here a lot as teenagers. It was funny to come back to it.

I do miss the black hills, it is such a beautiful place to live.

J and his cousin on the Fourth of July

We watched the Mt. Rushmore fireworks at an old friend of ours private lodge. It was incredible and we were alone. It was so nice to not have to fight the crowd and still get such an amazing show.

There is this BIG hill in the middle of Rapid City that splits the west and east side of town. Well they put these huge life sized dinosaurs on top of the hill and you can see them from where ever you are in town.
We had a picnic there one day. I made huge dinosaur eggs (out of paper mache’) and had chips, fruit snacks and a Capri sun inside. Each kid had to hunt for their egg and break it open to find their lunch. We served it with subway sandwhiches. I didn’t get any pictures of the eggs because I was too busy hiding them. :)

We also went to the famous big blue water slides. I have so many fond memories there I just had to take the kids. This picture of B’s hair cracks me up. She had a blast in the water.

Home at last. The kids traveled so well. I was worried, but they were little angels. It was great. We had such a fun time and it was awesome to see everybody again. Can’t wait for the next one.

Summer Vacation Part One.

We had so much fun on our family vacation this summer. We spent 1 week in Utah and then 1 week in South Dakota.

Grandma and Grandpa Moody took us all to see the new Wall-E movie. It was very cute and the kids were glued to it.

Bloved her time with Grandma Moody and boy did she get spoiled with lot's of love.

We had a very nice visit with Ryan’s mom and Grandparents. (I forgot to take the camera darn-it) The boys got these fun portable desks along with new crayons, a coloring book and stickers. It’s the perfect gift for them. They LOVE crafts and are excited to use them for homework this coming year. R’s mom also treated us to Red Robin (the kids’ favorite restaurant) for dinner. It was a lot of fun.

B got a darling little baby doll from R’s Mom. She loves to sleep with it and has to give it lots of kisses every night before going to bed.

We all had a lot of fun playing Rock Band. They actually started to sound pretty good after a while.

Silly uncle Alex changed into some pretty grovin clothes to help him feel his part. He’s such a crack up.

R tried to get some brotherly bonding in while taking a cruise on the motorcycles. Instead he got guff about being an irresponsible cop. ??? We’re still scratching our heads on this one. I was curious what he had to say about it and his response was “while you really shouldn’t be driving with out a motorcycle endorsement , if I pulled someone over with out it depending on why I stopped him, as long as the bike had the proper insurance I would just tell him he really shouldn’t be riding with out the endorsement and then let him go. You have to common sense with this job, and not be soooo uptight. You don't always write a ticket just because you can. I personally don't write a lot of tickets in general anyway unless it’s an obvious dangerous reason like DUI. There are just so many other things out there that I’d rather be taking care of. Like DV, gangs, drugs ect..."
I love some of the discussions we have about his work. He really is an amazing clear thinking cop and he’s got the accommodations to prove it. Ha ha. I’m very proud of him. I'm very proud of him for trying to reach out and include everyone, but oh well...it’s all good. He had fun non-the-less.

Uncle Alex dressed up in his storm trooper costume for the boys. WOW, what a treat. They thought it was awesome.

Tyson and Danielle had us over to their darling little home for a yummy dinner. It is decorated so cute and it was so good to get to see where they are living. I am so bummed I forgot to take my camera and get some pictures of it.

We got to go to Uncle Seans mission homecoming. He did a great job. We really enjoyed looking at all his pictures and hearing all about the mission. He’s a super great uncle. Here he is playing with J.

Again I forgot to take the camera, but we got to go see the new finished basement in Mandy’s home. It is Beautiful. Dave did all of the tile work and he did a really nice job. Mandy and I also had fun making hair bows for the girls, and I got some great tips.

Kennedy is rather shy but her and Jaden got a long great Here they are playing together. They kept going under the bridge (Rs legs) so R decided to trap her and boy did she giggle. Although he kept trying, this was the only time she would have anything to do with R. She’s funny.

We were able to get some family pictures taken at the park by R’s mom’s friend. I am excited to see how they turned out. These are some I took with my camera.

I love this picture of all the cousins. Too cute!

Here I was trying to do the pose where you have all the kids lay down in a circle and lookup in the sky. As you can see, it didn’t work out. It’s cute anyway though.

We had a lot of fun in Utah. It was so good to see everybody again. We love them all so much and miss them already.