Birthday Weekend/Week!

So this has been an awesome birthday for me.  It'll be a little long so I'm sorry.

It all started on....last Saturday when the visitors came.

This is when I got my first early birthday present.  A package had arrived a few days before, and from the manufacturer's name I knew what it was.  So on Saturday when I was going to make a bunch of guacamole using about 6 avocados I asked kyle if I could open it.  Soo....what was it????

In the third frame it's just a magazine...but then in the next picture you can barely see that it is an 4 in 1 avocado tool!

It slices, pits, scoops and mashes....and I love it!

My second early birthday present also came the same weekend.  It was brought up by Audrey and Jake from the Las Vegas Hansen family.  

It had yoga pants, pink shirt, jacket, sandals, and Love Spell lotion and spray.  Here's me sporting my new outfit.  Sorry it's blurry, it's from a cell phone.

Thenn....on Thursday night Kyle and I travelled down to Provo.  Why Provo you also might be wondering...for Seven Peaks of course!  We both have never been to this waterpark and I wanted to go, so we stayed at our favorite Provo people...Trevor and Danielle for that night.

Then Saturday morning we packed off and had fun.  Kyle was able to convince me to go on many rides I typically wouldn't.  I do have a fear of heights in certain conditions...and climbing stairs to the tops usually was.  I did make it twice off of one of the 5 story slides.  The last and scariest one though was the Boomerang.  It's a halfpipe, on an innertube.  I was saying no the entire way, but Kyle's sad face made me keep climbing.  Then I sat on the back and just screamed the whole way.  I hated it, and was shaking when I got off.  I will have no regrets about never doing it again.  Here's pictures of what it looks like:

  

Doesn't that look scary?!

We were able to take pictures while there, but it was with a film camera...so we won't be developling the photos for a while.

Anyways, after the Boomerang we were about to hit up the slides a second time when their power was shut off...therefore the water too.  So, after waiting an hour we left...and got day refunds.  But since we weren't going back this season we gave them to Trevor & Danielle.

Saturday I took pictures of my sister their located on my photo blog.

So....now for today...MY BIRTHDAY!!!

I tried being a bum and it was great.  I did have to workout and also make my cake & frosting.  I'm taking a cake decorating class and today was the last day.  Future posts will show my mad deco skills.

When Kyle got home I was surprised...he came home with candy (laffy taffy and sour punch straws) and that he had hidden another gift from me. Sneaky sneaky.

It was a pie crust maker!  I'm a messy person when it comes to rolling out pie crusts...so this contains it all in one bag.  Can't wait to make tons of pie crusts.

After my class I came home to dinner made, and then we devoured my cake...meaning one piece each from it.

Here's the cake!

So yeah, it was a GREAT day.

Sleepovers

So yeah this weekend we had visitors. But instead of just people passing through or one person spending the night we had 3 spend the night AND 4 people stop through!  The first two were Audrey and Jake.  They stayed with us Saturday and Sunday night.  Then also a friend of ours Brandon stayed over for Saturday night.

There were many hilarious moments.  Like when Jake realized he left his church clothes in Provo.  We all pitched in by giving him pants to try on.  Audrey had a few black pants; I had khakis and black ones; and Kyle had some church pants.  Well he tried on Audrey's which were skinny jeans, and they were still skinny jeans on him.  I'm not allowed to post the pictures, but they are hilarious to look at.  Probably it being midnight helped make things be even funnier.

Also, our friend Brandon is very tall.  Around 6'8".  Our house is at max 6'10" tall.  There were a few places that he had to duck to get through and couldn't even jump or raise his hands.

On Sunday, along with our current guests, some of Kyle's relatives from Cali were stopping by.  This made Sunday dinner come to a total of 9 people.  We decided not to stuff them in our small, hot kitchen and made a little picnic in our still small living room.  Having all the people were fun though.

 Aunt Suzie helped me make part of dinner

Everyone, minus Brandon, chilling in the living room

Group shot..thanks Brandon for taking the picture.  From left to right: Leah, Audrey, Jake, Kyle, Me, Joseph, Suzie, Dale

Oh in great news for when we had people to visit...WE GOT A SWAMP COOLER!!!!!!!!  Our house now ranges from 70-77!  It's nice, but so far we have to fill it up every 2-3 hours until a piece that automatically keeps adding water comes in.  Oh well, I can deal with it!

Going on...on Monday Kyle had to go to work and Jake just played games on his computer.  Audrey though let me convince her to take her on a photo shoot.  We went and explored downtown Ogden.  Ogden's downtown is what I think of for downtown.  Old stores with glass and brick fronts.  Cool architectural features and just the small town feeling.  Also down there is the old and large Union Station.  It's a museum now but had tons of trains and cabooses to climb on.  I'm not going to post the pictures on here but instead go to.... whphotos.blogspot.com.

I created the site to put my photography practicing on instead of everything on here.  Note: I'm not a pro or even think of becoming one, I just wanted a place to put them all without filling up these.  I'm putting a little logo on them for copyright purposes.

Well it all had to come to an end, but of course...we got a picture!

Special Occasions

Summer is definitely the time of weddings.  We got a lot of invitations and just a whole lot of people in general who got married.  This weekend we went to two receptions that were relatively close.  The first one was Friday night in Salt Lake.  We learned while driving that the airport is not a good turnaround place.  I had told Kyle to get off on the wrong exit.  US-80 West instead of the East exit 2 miles down the I-15.  Anyways...we're driving and the exits are going down, instead of up so I knew I messed up as the navigator.  The next exit was the airport, so we took it but had to drive through the economy parking lots in order to get back out.  Kyle is so great too because he wasn't mad or frustrated that I kept making those mistakes, but we just kept joking about it while still being lost.  Eventually we did make it.  The reception was in SLC and for a friend that Kyle has known basically since kindergarten.  We didn't think we'd know too many people, and we were right...other than the couple 4.  Two of those were her family though, so I guess that makes it 2.

The next night we didn't get lost while going to another reception.  One to my great friend the now Mrs. Caryn Crowley Wehmeyer.  Caryn was one of my first friends in the singles ward and then she became my roommate for 2+ years!  I was sad because her wedding was in Vegas, but we couldn't make it that weekend.  

I should be next to these wonderful girls.  All of us were friends and roommates for what seems like a LONG time....

However, I did get my own photo with Caryn...

The following Sunday we also went to my cousin's house for some dinner and game playing.  This time since my sister is at BYU, Trevor and Danielle were able to bring her with them.

We had fun.  Ate some good chicken.  Played some Bang! and then Life...electronic version.  It was a lot more fun because there are so many options.  Kyle and I were a team.  We were about to start kicking some big butt, but then through one of the cards we had to resign as Chief Archeologist making $500,000 to a morgue attendent with a Ph.D making $5,000.  Needless to say this didn't help us pay off our large house and sports car...so we lost in the end.

Here's all the people who came to party though...

Melynn & Mariah

Trevor & Danielle

Kyle & I

Oh...so I'm working on tons of craft projects right now maybe in one of the next few posts I'll have to show the things i'm making (or made). :)

No Fireworks

Since this past weekend was the 4th of July you would expect pictures of fireworks...except we didn't play or see any of these spectacular things.  Instead we again went down to Duck Creek to visit with my family.  Since it is in the mountains and they are dry and dead up there right now, fireworks are never allowed unless one of the villages does them.
This time down though we picked up a passenger.  My sister!  She just started BYU for the summer and so we were able to give her a lift down.

On the trip up the mountain we stopped at the lookout over Navajo Lake.  It's a gorgeous view and I was thrilled because the water was a foot or more still over the dike, and had even broken it during the spring.  On a side note: This is good because that means there is still tons of water.  The dike is meant to separate the lake into two because it drains.  This way only one side drains and the other gets water year round. Usually by this time the draining side is pretty low and definitely by August is gone.  When we looked though the draining side was still really deep!  End of side note...

Here's some pictures of us at the overlook...

Most the weekend as usual was just filled with game playing.  Here's us playing Dominion which was mentioned in this blog post...

Also, we celebrated my sister's half birthday since she was born on New Year's Eve and it already has tons of celebrations around that time.

Melynn and Grandpa

She picked Ice Cream and Grasshoppers as her treat, notice the candle on the top.  It was eaten very quickly.

On Sunday we visited Panguitch Lake branch for sacrament then went and journeyed to find some of our cousins who were camping kind of nearby.  After a while and taking my parents on a road not meant for cars we found them.  They had a beautiful camping spot.

Melynn played with our second cousins.

My dad talked with 2 of his sisters.

Kyle and I walked in the meadow.

The next few pictures are landscape ones, but they have not been touched up by me.  They were already so beautiful and I wanted to show just how great everything naturally was.

Anyways, we finished up Sunday and celebrated the 4th of July by making smore's in our fire pit at the cabin. They were sooo good, but I couldn't eat as much as I could when I was a kid.

Eating our smore's yumm!

That practically ended our weekend.