On October 14th over UEA we headed to Ephraim to check out Snow College. Steph is thinking she might like to major in music and Snow has a really good music program. I've never been there before and it's a super small town, they only have one traffic light and the big place to shop is Walmart. Here are a few highlights of the campus.
Don't ask me why, but at the time it seemed like a good idea to take a picture of the drinking fountains and then a picture of Steph and Erica getting a drink????????
After our visit we headed to Provo to pick up Nicole and take her to dinner at our favorite Mexican dive to celebrate her half birthday, since she'll be in Russia in April on her legit birthday
That was 2 very very fun day trips in October. Score!!!
As usual I have some catching up to do, so here I go, I hope I can keep up the momentum. In early October on a Saturday, the family went on a day trip to Logan. In all honesty, it was a food trip. We started with an early lunch at our favorite place, Maddox, in Brigham City. This is not a good picture cause I forgot to take a picture so I clicked one in the car driving by on the way home.
After a yummy lunch of fried chicken we headed up the canyon hoping to take some pictures of the fall leaves. We were a few weeks to early but we did get a few good pictures.
After driving through Logan canyon we headed to the Gossner Cheese Factory where we found some fun and interesting things to buy, like the whipping cream in the boxes that can be stored in your food storage, it only has about a 4 month shelf life though, but I've used it and it's good.
Next we headed to Steve's favorite Chinese restaurant for his favorite Tiny Spicy Chicken. It was strange, the tiny spicy chicken makes Steve's cheeks (the ones on his face) tingle, and it made Nicole and I have a full blown case of the hysterical giggles. I wonder what spices are in that chicken. It took about 15 tries to get this picture cause I could not stop laughing.
In the background behind Steve's head is our waiter. In our fits of laughter we were thinking that it would be so funny if he wanted to come over and take our picture, and guess what, he did.
All of us were trying so hard not to laugh.
Next we headed back to Salt Lake and made a little stop at Iceberg for ice cream. See, I told you it was a food trip. We ALL had a ton of fun together.
I totally forgot to put these birthday pictures on. So one of the highlights of the summer was in July my Dad planned a little family reunion. Jeffrey came from Washington, Roger and Katheryn and family came from Pennsylvania, and Bruce, Jamie and family also came from Pennsylvania. And then we were so lucky to have Britney, Shared, Ethan and Kylie drive down from Washington to be here too. I am not normally a picture taker so I totally forgot to take my camera on the days that we all got together. But Steve did remember to take his camera the day we celebrated Jeffrey and Erica's birthdays. In years past we always had birthday celebrations for the girls with family birthday parties. The grandparents and whatever aunts, uncles and cousins were around would come. Well, it just so happens that Erica's birthday is on July 12th and Jeffrey's birthday is on July 14th, so we would usually have them blow out candles together at the extended family birthday celebration. And that's exactly what we did this summer at our family reunion.
Here are some pictures getting ready to light the candles, lighting the candles, and blowing out the candles.
I have a lot of good memories from Conference Weekends from the past. When my mom was alive many many times we would get together with my Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins on Saturday night. Everyone would bring potluck and we would eat and then the men would go to Priesthood session together while the women and girls stayed home and would work on quilts together. This year our family decided that we would carry on the tradition. It was me, Steve, Erica, Nicole, Stephanie, my Dad, my niece Rebecca and Kortney and her husband Clayton. (Kortney was Nicole's roommate for 2 years at BYU). We had some serious fun. First we ate spaghetti for dinner with Steve's famous spaghetti sauce, then the guys went to Priesthood while us girls tied a Halloween quilt for my cute niece Rebecca.
When the guys got home we had a dessert bar. It was tons of fun sitting around the table eating, talking and laughing a lot. Thanks to everyone who was there for making it a memorable Saturday Conference evening.
Here's Erica ready to eat.
Clayton, Kortney, and Nicole.
Before we ate.
After we ate.
There's a package of saltine crackers on the table because we thought it would be fun to do the "Saltine Cracker Challenge". In case you don't know what that is, it's where you try to eat 6 crackers, and swallow them in 1 minute without taking a drink. Nobody was sure how many actual crackers you had to try to eat in the challenge but I just looked it up and it's 6. If I remember right I think Clayton ate 7, none of the girls got past 5 and I only ate 3. It was hard not to laugh while we were eating them.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Erica is 25 years old this year!
I feel pathetic. I haven't posted since April, now it seems to overwhelming, but I need to do it. First things first. Erica turned 25 on July 12th. It was an especially fun birthday this year because Brit, Shared, Ethan and Kylie were here on account of a family reunion that my Dad put together. Here are some pictures of Erica opening her presents. Kylie was very involved and very excited, she handed Erica her presents and then was excited to see what she opened.
OPENING PRESENTS
And here is a cute picture of Ethan with Erica as she's opening a present from her Visiting Teacher.
CAKE MAKING
Erica and Kylie had fun watching me make the cake and frosting.
And Kylie especially had fun licking the beaters.
BLOWING OUT THE CANDLES
And last but not least, blowing out the candles so we can eat the cake.
Happy Birthday Erica, we all love you so incredibly much. Thank you for being in our family and being the perfect example of love and patience
Well yesterday our Nicole turned 20!! I can't believe it. Time goes by so fast. Nicole is still in Provo at BYU but luckily it's only a half hour away. It's reading and finals week so no way could she get away to come to the house to celebrate her birthday so we went to her. It turns out that Steve and Erica are both pretty sick with colds so just Steph and I could celebrate with Nicole. We arrived at Nicole's apartment to pick her up and then we headed to our favorite Mexican place there. It's called El Mexal, it's our families favorite Mexican place to eat (it looks dumpy on the outside, it's in a little stripmall place next to a laundromat/tanning salon, but it has excellent food).
Here's a picture of me and Nic at dinner.
After dinner we stopped at the grocery store for ice cream and then went back to Nic's apartment for cake and ice cream. She wanted white cake with white frosting with coconut on top.
And here she is making a wish and blowing out the candles. (here's a confession, we forgot to take a picture so we had to reenact it after we'd already cut into the cake, bet you couldn't even tell, haha).
A picture of Nicole Steph and 3 of Nic's roommates, Heather, Jamie and Ally. I'm glad they were there to share in this fun moment with us. Seriously, we had a lot of fun talking and laughing and me and Steph trying to understand college humor. (I hope you guys had fun playing your kite game after we left)
I'd say Nicole looks pretty happy here :)
After cake Nic opened her presents. She only got a couple of things, you'll see why in the next picture.
Nic's laptop died and what college student, or anyone for that matter, can survive without one (ummmm, apparently I can cause I don't have one :( So we bought her a new laptop for her birthday but gave it to her early when she came up for Easter/Conference weekend. I can honestly say she was really happy. She even wrote on facebook that she has the best parents ever. No kidding, I'm glad she can see that (actually, Steve and I have the best kids ever).
Happy Birthday Coco Bear. I loves you tons. Thanks for being one of my favorite BFF's.
Yup, that's right, April is a big Birthday month at our house. It's starts on April 13th, Stephanie's Birthday. Funny story. So Steph was born on the 13th and Nicole was born on the 14th, only 3 years apart. When Steph was little, I'd say around 4 or 5 years old. She used to tell Nicole that she was older than her because her birthday was before hers. That would make Nicole so mad, but it was kinda cute, just cause little kids don't understand the date concept.
So, yesterday Stephanie turned 17. My baby is growing up, however, I do still call her baby. Here are a few pictures from her birthday. While she was at school I made these little ball thingys out of tissue paper, an idea Erica and I saw on Studio 5. She's going to hang them in her bedroom, since her bedroom is brown and pink. They were easy and turned out pretty cute I think.
At our house when it's your birthday you get to choose what we should have for dinner. Steph would have chosen spaghetti cause that is her very very favorite, but we just had it last week so she chose Chicken Cordon Bleu casserole instead. After dinner Steph got to open her presents. Here she is with Missy (or Wissy as Kylie calls her).
And a picture with Kim (the cat) in it. Kim is such a brat, she really isn't a snuggly cat, very stand-offish.
Steph got lots of clothes this year. She and I went browsing at the mall one night and she showed me things she liked. The very next night Steve and I went to the mall to buy a few of those things, of course I could barely remember the things she showed me that she liked. But she told me that I did a good job.
After present opening we had cake and ice cream. Steph has been telling me for several months that she wants a tie dyed birthday cake. hmmmmmm. I've been thinking about it all that time, how can I do that? I finally decided to do white frosting and put drops of food coloring on it and swirl it. It didn't turn out the best, but I think next time it will. The trick, use very very little food coloring, it goes a long way.
Steph making a wish and getting ready to blow out her candles.
Blowing out her candles.
It was a fun day. Happy Birthday Stephanie. I love you tons and tons. You're a doll and one of my BFF's.
