Brenda's Bridal Shower

I had the opportunity to throw Brenda a bridal shower! woohoo! Thank you for letting me put all this together, it was super fun and I loved it.

Brenda is getting married on Saturday and wanted a bridal shower with her people from her hometown. The location was Janet's house (Brenda's mom). The theme was something blue. The menu.... If you don't yet know, when I'm in charge of food, I do what my momma taught me. I go overboard. It's far better to have leftovers and send stuff home with people than to run out of anything. So we had creme drops, taffy, caramels, caramel covered pretzels, peanut M & M's, grapes, fruit dip, strawberries, watermelon, cantelope, caramel covered popcorn, mints, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate covered pretzels, Rolos, Dove chocolates, and Hershey's kisses. I had so much fun decorating the cupcakes!

The spread. I made "Tiffany punch" which is supposed to be more of a Tiffany blue color, but it still looks cool. It's blue Hawaiian punch and lemonade. Tastes pretty good too. 

I hot glued paper doilies to napkins that were wrapped around a fork. 

I don't think I got any good pictures of the cupcakes, but they were blue and white with flowers and swirls and little pearl candies. I made my Great Grandma Delaney's chocolate cake with my mom's vanilla buttercream icing.

For decorations, I borrowed some brown packages (that look like wrapped presents) and made all these tissue paper pom poms. I was pretty impressed that the pom poms turned out so well. Thank you pinterest for the pinsperation.

Brenda's guestbook with more decorations behind it. 

Brenda had lots of guests show up, so many that we ran out of chairs! And she got lots of presents.

Happy bridal shower Brenda!

The Boldt's

Congrats Heather and Brandon! They got married in the Twin Falls, Idaho temple on Saturday.

Friday night they had a reception/ family reunion with Brandon's family. There was a ton of food, a ton of people, and it was a lot of fun.

Ivan fell asleep in the car with his hat just like this. Must have learned that from his Papa.

The huge line for food. It was nuts!

Something weird had been said to deserve the sass. 

Shaya gettin her baby love on.

The best way to keep Ivan busy in the car. He loves his magnets.

We had the chance to visit some friends in Filer, the town next door to Twin Falls. Logan is one of Michael's friends from his mission. He and his wife, Heather, are expecting their first baby. It's a girl! I'm so excited for them.

They have a dog, a retriever mix. Ivan really liked him. Lately Ivan has been pretty nervous around dogs, especially big dogs. So we had been taking him to the dog park in town just to see other dogs and be around them. And we were nervous for Ivan to meet the Lusk's dog since we would be staying with them while we were in Twin Falls.

Ivan kept moving the food to the water bowl, after he dumped the water out, then back to the food bowl. Buck thought it was pretty cool. 

Most dogs that Ivan has been around have tried to lick him in the face and smother him. Buck didn't really even notice Ivan was there most of the time.  And we left Ivan outside with the dog for quite a while, turns out Buck is a pretty good babysitter.

He sure loved the dog kennel.

The temple the next day was simply beautiful. It was great to see so much of Michael's extended family. And it was hot! They got married in the middle of the day on one of what must have been the hottest days of the year. Amy, Laura's sister, was there and watched my kids while we went to the ceremony. Natalie helped too!

A sucker, the only way Ivan would take pictures with us.

His red little face says it's hot out.

Aw, our little family. I managed to not get a single picture of the bride and groom....

Shoshone Falls, just around the corner from the temple.

The Twin Falls Temple

 Later that evening, Heather and Brandon had a reception in Aberdeen. We stopped in American Falls and fed the fish at the hatchery there. Ivan really liked seeing all the fish and thought throwing food at them was the best thing ever.

He would throw the food so hard it would jolt his little body. 

He fell in. Ivan was walking a little too close to the marshy edge of the water and hit a spot where there wasn't any land. It somehow managed to put him flat on his back in water that wasn't deep enough for his face to go under.  And if you've seen Ivan on his back, you know he doesn't have any ab strength. It was pretty cute watching him try to get out of the water. Once we got him out he was covered in this weird green seedy stuff, which was way gross. And he smelled like fish. Yay!

Adopted Aunties

When I was a student at BYU-I, I made some really good friends. Two of these friends in particular I still keep in touch with really well. Megan, from Minnesota, and Amber, from North Carolina, are my favorites. They are both living in North Carolina and working at a vet clinic there. I seriously love these guys. They have come to visit me a ton since we've graduated. The most recent time was such a blast. We went to the zoo, to lunches and dinners, and to see Amber's horse (who lives at a ranch here while being trained).

Ivan simply cannot get enough of these guys.

And Charlotte loves them too of course.

We got to see them feeding the penguins. I have got to say, these are some of the saddest looking penguins I've ever seen. They were being hand fed a bunch of dead fish and kept choking on them. 

Ivan LOVES the goats!

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Happiest boy on the planet right here!

 Funny story. Ivan likes to roar. He's like to growl too, but he really likes to roar. And he's good at it. And he will tell you what animal he is after he roars. Sometimes he's a lion, sometimes a dinosaur, sometimes a tiger. Well, when we walked up to the lions, he immediately started roaring!

How is that comfortable?!

Just some fun at Church

I love going to church on Sundays. I love dressing my kiddos up in cute, fancy clothes. I love seeing Michael in his church best. I love the one day a week I have a reason to get a dress on. I also love the Spirit I feel at church. I love being built up in the gospel by people my age going through the same thing I am. I love feeling like a part of something bigger than this life. I love knowing, without a doubt, that families can be together forever.

Fourth of July

Independence Day is always a fun holiday for us. Well, for anybody. It's smack in the middle of summer so it's warm, there's swimming, barbecues, parades, candy, family, friends. What more could you ask for?

We don't care a ton for parades, all the people is too much for us. But we figured Ivan would really enjoy the horses and candy.

This was the coolest float ever!

He got prime seating for seeing everything.

And Charlotte had a good time just chilling with me.

This is the same outfit Ivan wore for July 4th last year. Ivan was 9 months in it. Charlotte is 3 months in it.

Then the parade got boring, after about a half hour or so. And Ivan found the rocks to be much more exciting.

After that we went home, had the kids take a short nap then packed up for Rigby Lake.

Ivan had a blast playing in the sand, tasting some of it, and watching his juice cup float.

See how much he likes this dirty water?! He let me take him out deep enough where I almost couldn't walk anymore. And he loved it!

We got to spend some quality time with Ivan's good friend Ember (he calls her Emmer).

To top off the day we had a nice quiet dinner at home. It was a perfect day.