stay tuned...

upcoming blog posts:

princess pony birthday party
brown recluse spider bite (gross graphic pictures included)

4th of july decorations, ward breakfast and bbq

girls day/night part 2

oh my goodness, so i forgot to blog about something else we did! we asked for a room tour :) we rode the elevator up to level 9, or 13, i don't remember. the lady showed us the head honcho rooms that run around $189-$250. it's 500 sq. feet, which by the way is the size of my first apartment. besides the great view, it had a comfy looking bed and a very decent sized lcd flatscreen tv. but the best part, the bathtub filled from the ceiling! AND it had jets and lights in the tub for the ultimating bathing experience. the shower was seperate with big glass doors and nice travertine tiles. my ONLY hang-up... there were no doors that seperated the room from the bathroom area. which isn't a problem for me now, but i could see how that would damper your stay if you were traveling with kids.

our current picture...

for family... here we are... going on 5 years of marriage!

girls day/night!

i've become friends with 2 totally awesome and fun ladies at church! well it was one of their birthdays last weekend. so me and the "other one" (sorry to use your codename in quotes, not sure how you feel about being publicly blogged about and you don't have cell reception to text you and ask, ROFL!) decided to "kidnap" her and take her to lunch, shop, pedicures and a bbq back at her house. her husband knew of our plan, but she didn't, and it was lots of fun surprising her! our trip started out at the padre hotel here in town.

it's a very old hotel that recently had a $3-4 million facelift and it's just FABULOUS inside!!! the design was very modern with damask wallpaper, marble floors and columns, huge vases with beautiful fresh flowers and cute canvases that had local well known business logos on them. and these fun chairs in their lobby! (identity hidden for security purposes, lol)

we ordered a few appetizers to munch on (us knowing, but her not knowing of the bbq later that night), we didn't want to stuff ourselves. but oh how we wanted too because the food was YUMMY!! we had hamburger sliders that had fried onions that were so crispy and sweet on top and was smothered in cheese. mmmm!! also artichoke hummus with pita chips and thai eggrolls. and the waitress even brought us complimentary cookies that were also, very divine!

across the street was this thrift/vintage/consignment store. we spent 2 hours checking it out and still didn't see it all. we're definitly going back someday to finish it off!

then it was pedicure time! who doesn't love those right? i do believe we're counting down til our next visit!

the "other one" and i had our husbands/kids meet at the birthday girls house and when we dropped her off, she figured out we were staying and brought food to bbq. the kids (7 boys) played, the husbands talked "man stuff" and us ladies did what we do best... talked and prepared the food. we had burgers, DELICIOUS RIB EYE, cesar salad, potato salad, chips, grilled corn on the cob and watermelon. dessert/birthday cake was a frozen key lime pie. my mouth is watering blogging about this. better go eat lunch :)

thanks again ladies (and husbands) for a wonderful girls day! i'm ready for our next one when you all are!

knock knock, anyone still visit this blog?

my poor blog has been abandoned the past month :( let me clear off the cobwebs and i'll fill you in :)

of course i've been crocheting!

puff stitch beanie

wacky monster beanie accompanied by nathans cheeeeese face

we had a family movie night at church the beginning of summer. we watched kung fu panda. one of our family favs for sure!

jaren is on the activity committee (they're the ones who put this on) and came up with some pretty neat decor ideas. we bought red poster board (2 for $1) from the dollar tree. man do i love that place! i also picked up a few rolls of electrical tape to use around the edges of the posterboard to make them not so drab. then he (we) came up with some church sayings and used google translator and had them translated into chinese characters and glued them to the poster board. so if they're not right, blame google ;) jaren also made 25 origami cranes that we taped around some of the posters.

i made "panda" cupcakes, kinda sorta?

i found a po picture online and added text that said, "enjoy the movie, or else" and printed it onto brown lunch sacks to use as popcorn bags. i suggest doing this only if you have a top feed printer!! i don't, mines a bottom feed. and i broke my less than 30 day old printer!!! so i jumped onto kodak.com and "chatted" with there 24/7 technical support about my broken printer. EXACTLY 23 1/2 hours later, i had a BRAND NEW PRINTER at my doorstop thanks to the big brown truck :)  and thank you kodak for having great customer service!

k, back to the popcorn... we had 2 homemade caramel corns, jalapeno cheese, cheddar cheese and basic popcorn. they were all SOOOO good!

the "concession stand"...

we bought chinese takeout boxes and filled them with candy for each of the kids to have. i printed the CTR logo in chinese on labels and cut them out and stuck them to one side of the box.

the other side was a kung fu panda picture i found online and added text that fit the nights theme.

fun was had by all!

Nathan at 16 months

even though he's now 17 months ;) for starters... accidental matching can be so cute sometimes :)

nathans stats: he weighs 30 lbs and is 34 inches tall

he can say:
daaaaaaaaad
mom
i do
ya i did
fish
papa
backpack
nathan
ball
mimi
please
more
dog
bye bye
night night
no-no

he can sign-
please
dog
more
eat
no-no

and of course, in true kid fashion, we can't get him to do it around anyone else but us.