Fun In The SUN!

This past weekend was so much fun.  I wish we could repeat it often, but next summer will be the closest.

Vegas is what was so awesome!  

Kyle took a few days off and we drove down again to Provo and stayed with family there.  The 2 hours less of driving the next day really helps, and we love spending time with them.  

Kyle, Danielle's Brother, and Trevor playing nintendo...as usual

The next day we set off.  It was a pretty uneventful trip.  We did make a stop in Washington, UT to visit with one of Kyle's high school friends and his family.  Oh and we did hit an intense rain for like 3 minutes....but yeah that was it.

Finally we made it to Las Vegas...and stopped off at the Hansens.  Kyle's brother and wife made it a more awesome weekend by them coming down too.  We actually arrived at the Hansens only 5 minutes apart which was pretty cool.  We grabbed some Roberto's...mmmm   super nachos with everything.  Then headed back to my family's house.  The Hansens already had a filled house, while my parents had a spare room.

Friday brought a few errands to run, and eating at In 'N Out.  Now they do have a few up here in Utah, but we wanted to get them in Vegas.  With grilled onions and everything hamburgers and Animal Fries...I was content for that night.  But it actually wasn't even half way through the day.  

That night Kyle got to go to a StarCraft night with all the boys.  Us women however, didn't want anything to do with that.  Instead they came over to the Hansens where we talked, ate a amazing dinner made by Mama Hansen, then went swimming in the dark.

All the females...plus the baby boy, who came to girl's night.

Next day was KYLE'S BIRTHDAY!  We actually slept in because Kyle didn't return from his guy's night until 2:30 am.  After taking a while to wake up, we headed over to the Hansens.  Here the guys played games...

This is what they always do...

Hair was braided....

Nice face Jake

Another one of Kyle's best friends also came over to visit and they ate at the BBQ with us.

Megan, Olivia, & Zach Smith, Kyle & I at the BBQ

After the BBQ was one of my favorite parts...swimming!!!!!

Kids Swimming

Mom & Pop Hansen

Start of a three person stack

Finished!

Boys wanted to try their own way

Just Kyle & I

Later that night we sang to Kyle and he was able to blow out all 26 of his candles before it caught on fire.  It was really close too...we noticed one of the candles left a little charred mark because they got so low.

Getting ready!

Well that ends the fabulous weekend.  If you thought that was long, I could have written so much more.  However, I'll let you suffer only with what I thought should be told.

Crazy Cousin Time Pictures

So here are the pictures for last week's blog:

Just a few of the people about to play

This is Kyle molding me to act out a word.  All we could understand from it was that I was stinky. We didn't really come close to the phrase which was "changing a diaper."

Danny doing charades.  He was the best player in that area.

Crazy Cousin Time

I wasn't able to write on Wednesday or Thursday because we were travelling and now are in Vegas!!!!  That however, will all be in next week's post.  On to the past weekend....

So Kyle has met a lot of my family, but always part of this family of cousins or that one.  Well this weekend he got about a third of them, plus a few other relatives.  The cause of this get together was that one cousin just got home from his mission to Australia.  He was giving his homecoming talk that Sunday.  It also just happened to coincide that a cousin from Texas had flown up for the BYU dental conference.  So we all got together Saturday night and ate pizza, and played games.  It was so fun.  I didn't take pictures, but I'm trying to get them from someone else.

This is how many people there were:
2 -  grandparents
2 - Aunt & Uncle
1 - My Mom (She's finally seen our new home up here)
10 - cousins (not including us)
2 - cousins once removed
2 - Kyle & I
---------
19 total

We played Turbo Cranium.  My team didn't win, but I did feel awesome when I had to mold Kyle to be a Rock Star and my team got it.  Then the others went to play Killer Bunnies and I learned how to play Sorry card game.  The last game was Dominion being played with my mom, Carleen, and Mariah.

The next morning we had stake conference at the High School auditorium.  Their auditorium was bigger than any of them that I saw in a high school in Vegas.  I was amazed, and was told that there were larger ones at other high schools.  Sadly the A/C or any air in the auditorium was not on.  Thankfully it wasn't Vegas, or the hottest part of the summer.  We picked seats that were around a large industrial fan though.  After we sat down we saw some friends in another part and went to chat with them, but we weren't willing to give up the semi cool air seats.

After this we hurried to my cousin's ward and listened to him talk.  His Aussie accent was always going in and out throughout his whole talk and was funny to listen to.  We got fed afterwards and that was the end of the weekend.

Sorry no photos.

Death to the Spiders!

Alright, I think I've mentioned it before but living in the basement brings lots of spiders.  This week I was presented with one that still makes my skin crawl.  I walked into the bathroom and in a corner that was too close to comfort for me was .....

THIS!!!!

I took a picture of it because I had read somewhere that there might be things called Hobo spiders, but that they are sometimes really just ordinary house spiders that get mistaken as Hobos.  Well, my research and comparison has led me to that this WAS a Hobo spider.  Why so bad?  This thing is venomous, like a black widow or brown recluse.  And...they LOVE basements.  UGHHHHHHH!  We are definitely respraying, and cleaning and spraying our outside windows...and I don't know what else, but I want them to be gone.  

I did kill it after taking the pictures.  I squished it with my pink flip flop multiple times to ensure a death.  And then it went down the toilet to drown its sorrows.

Anyways, that was Monday so now I'll focus on the weekend.  

Friday night we had a couple from the ward come over.  It was the first outside church and church function interaction that we've had.  I made dinner for them and then we just talked.  At one point we watched a lightning show.  We had walked outside because it was gorgeous to watch, but then a huge one clapped over us....so we were content to sit inside.  From here though through our one window pane the view wasn't the same.

Saturday morning Kyle had an Elder's Quorum breakfast to with.  The food turned out to be edible, and more than just the families of the presidency showed up.  So it was a great success.  Later, we had the missionaries over for dinner that night.  

I didn't take pictures of these weekend events because I had just met these people, and it is kind of weird if I just pull out my huge camera to take a few pictures.  Like I know I'm weird, but I don't want to completely give them to what level I am at just right now. That is one downside of a DSLR (the big fancy cameras for those who were wondering what that meant.).  The downside is that you can't just whip it out and take discreet pictures.  It's very obvious...

However you get beautiful pictures like the ones I got Sunday evening when we drove and parked in front of the Antelope Island Causeway Toll Booth thing. Examples are:

This was my favorite shot of the night.  I love the bright yellow/orange to the dark blue at the very top.

Or you get pictures like this:

Shows off the beauty of nature...

Or I can take cute shots of us when waiting for the sun to actually set.

So yeah...I LOVE my DSLR.  Those were just some shots from a sunset outing.  The rest can be seen through a link on the side to my other blog.

Crafty Woman

So not much passed this weekend.  We terrorized the house by rearranging two rooms, and laundry commandeering another one.  It's my goal to get it all situated by Friday, since we have a couple from the ward coming over.Anyways, since nothing of importance really needs to be discussed from the weekend I thought I'd share about some of the crafts I've completed or want to complete.
It's strange.  I didn't sew, even though I knew how and had my own sewing machine, when I lived in Vegas.  Now though that I'm stuck home all day, and don't have much money to spend....I turned into this craft fiend.  I actually haven't accomplished a lot, but my mind has thought of way too many projects for me to do.
So the first thing that I started...and eventually accomplished.

Cake Decorating Class
At the local Hobby Lobby (cross between Joanne's and Michael's) I took a Wilton Cake Decorating Class.


Week 1 - Basics and decorated cookies.  
I didn't have much time and only did two. It wasn't necessary for me to take a picture.  Imagine a sugar cookie with a heart on it.  That's all I did.


Week 2 - Decorated a cake
My first cake!  We got lots of time so I had fun with this one

.  It's a fish (in case you couldn't tell)...so I couldn't resist making a fish face.  Not the best shot of me I know.


Week 3- Cupcake decoration and fillin'
We learned how to use a cupcake turner and how to inject delicious flavors into them.  Here are my creations....

All of them...now for details

The Shaggy Mum

Conglomeration of flowers

The Pom Pom Flower

Drop Flowers

Week 4 - Final Cake

We were able to design any cake and make it however we watned.  This day actually happened to also be on my birthday so I just made myself a birthday cake.  It was golden vanilla cake with rasberry jam filling.  It was pretty good.

Me with my cute cake

Okay, so yeah I am now a pro of making some flowers and basic cakes.  I plan on taking the rest of the courses.

I have also had a want to change up my living room.  We have a great denim couch...but it's all denim.  The ottoman, pillows and couch.  So in my goal I bought fabric to make pillow cases.  I also wanted to spruce up our curtains.
The pillows are still just pieces of fabric, but I did manage to trim the curtains.

Curtains:

They were originally just plain brown.  Here's the details:

 

Layers of ribbon at the bottom

 

Strip across the top

So yeah, thats the stuff that I've completed so far.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to start and finish my other crafts.