Ah, summer...

Now that I'm thinking about our summer to blog about it, I'm realizing that we had an awesome summer.  We crammed a ton of fun things into a few months!  Of course, I didn't get pictures of the "regular" stuff that we did all the time, like going to the neighborhood pool or hanging out with all the neighbors in the evenings.  Don't worry, I have those fond memories stored in my mind to sustain me through the long winter months. ;) I was going to try to fit the entire month of June into one post, but remember how I said we did a lot of fun things this summer?  So here is June, part 1.

On a Saturday, Trevor and I randomly decided we wanted to visit BYU campus.  We all drove down in our minivan (Oh, did I forget to mention that we bought a minivan?!? Yes, my heart died a little the day we sold our beloved little dying Prizm and bought a mommy-mobile.)  in the afternoon and walked around campus to see the changes.  In true university fashion, there are huge construction projects every year, so already a lot of things have changed since we left in 2010.  (Honestly though, the change I noticed the most was how much the trees have grown!  Especially the ones that were planted when I was there.)  We took pictures of our old stomping grounds:

Ah, the HFAC...the building I lived in for 4 years of my life...

 The view from the top of the Joseph F. Smith Building.  There is nothing like the mountains in Provo!

A common sight...a couple holding hands on campus

Trevor only posed in front of the engineering building, he didn't want to go inside.  Bad memories? ;)

 A very washed-out picture of me in front of our first apartment (third floor, with the flags hanging on the balcony). That giant tree is part of the reason I loved that apartment so much.  Living in a brand new subdivision makes me miss big, old, shady trees I guess.

We ate dinner at Brick Oven that night (a Provo classic!) and got home way too late for the kids' bedtime...but it was worth it.

Somehow I got invited to be in an awesome book club in my neighborhood, and in June we had the author Sarah M. Eden come to our book club (!) to discuss one of her books.  It was so cool to hear her perspective as the author and to pick her brain about the writing process.  And how amazing is it that she actually came to our dinky little book club?  She was awesome.  She is in the bottom left of the picture.

Our dear friends from our Wymount days, the Crocketts, visited us on their family vacation, and it happened to be Melanie's birthday!  (They lived in the first-floor apartment in the picture above.) We took the kids swimming, ate dinner, had cake and ice cream, and reminisced about when we only had one kid each.  Let's just say that getting together is a little crazier with 5 kids running around.  She was pregnant with her 4th and of course I have number 3 in my belly.  She is now the busy mother of 4 handsome little boys!  Yes, she is a rock star.

Melanie and me and a little frosting thief

The whole gang!

More June coming soon!

The Birthday Girls

I finally turned the age I will be for the rest of my life!  I had a nice, relaxing 29th birthday and celebrated with cake and ice cream in the front yard with all the neighbors.  (Just hanging out with all the neighbors in the evenings is the best thing about summer!) One of my amazing neighbors made this awesome cake for Cassie and me.

We celebrated with a family dinner at my parents' house the next night.  Right now, I think Cassie likes that our birthdays are so close (June 1st and June 5th), but we'll see if she ever gets a little more diva in her. ;)

Opening Presents

This is payback for my little brother stealing my phone when I wasn't looking and taking ridiculous pictures.  I have to keep my eye on my phone when Bubba is around, or I end up with shirtless Taylor Lautner as my wallpaper and fart sounds apps...

Just hangin' out on the back steps and eating some after-party yogurt.  Cassie's favorite birthday gift was the goggles from Uncle Vaughn.  Obviously.

I threw Cassie her first real birthday party this year!  I felt kind of guilty that she had never had a friend birthday party before (and especially guilty that I was gone for most of her birthday last year because I was attending my uncle's funeral), so when Cassie's list of friends that she wanted to invite numbered in the twenties, I decided to suck it up and make it happen!  We played water games in the back yard with about 26 kids, and luckily I had several moms who stayed to help out!

Playing duck, duck, goose while we wait for all the party quests to arrive

Water relay race

Singing to the new 5-year-old

I love this one of Cassie!  She was so excited about the cupcakes with My Little Pony toppers!

Opening gifts- she got spoiled.  I guess you can expect a lot of presents when you invite that many friends....

The pinata was a big hit! (heh, heh)

The preparation for the party was quite a bit of work (I stayed up until midnight frosting cupcakes), but I have to say that the aftermath was way worse.  It got windy right as everyone was leaving the party, so I had to quickly get everything inside- presents, wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, pinata pieces, decorations (I didn't even get a picture of them!  But they were cute, I promise.), towels, garbage can, paper plates, napkins, folding table, cupcake stands...you get the idea.  I just dumped everything inside and we drove to pick up Trevor from work (he had to work late that night) and went to a restaurant for Cassie's birthday dinner.  By the time we dropped Trevor back at work and I got home with the kids, it took all my energy just to put them to bed.  (Let's be honest.  At that point in my pregnancy [about 4 months along], I was totally exhausted every night after putting the kids to bed!)  So...absolutely no cleaning got done that night, or the next day, or the next day.  Seriously, that party had me wiped out for a full 48 hours afterwards!  I am proud to say that I did finally clean everything up.  And since my guilt is now gone, next year's birthday will be much lower key. :)

Flat Stanley

In April, Cassie got a big envelope in the mail from her cousin Lucy, who lives in Pennsylvania.  Flat Stanley was inside! (instead of explaining, how about I give you the link to the Wikipedia article?)  We were excited to take him with us on all our adventures and take pictures with him.  I really am grateful that Lucy sent him to us, because it really motivated us to do fun things and take pictures along the way!

He came with us to the Tulip Festival at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  (Grandma K gave us a pass to Thanksgiving Point for Christmas and we love it.)

He came furniture shopping with us at Ikea...we finally bought bar stools!  It has changed our life. ;)

Can you find him on the table?  I did a pre-school co-op with other moms in the neighborhood last year.  It was really a good experience since we were able to trade off every 5 weeks- it gave us plenty of time to come up with fun ideas, and I don't think any of us got burnt out.  Okay, maybe I got a little burnt out at the end since I was in my first trimester with baby #3.

Driving cars at the mall...sshhhh!  Don't tell my kids that you can put quarters into these things to make them actually move!  They get so excited when we go to the mall- they love playing on the cars, no quarters necessary.

Riding ponies at the Thanksgiving Point Farm.  I love this picture of Mr. B!

That cow is eyeing me suspiciously...

Unfortunately, since Stanley is made of cardstock, he got ripped accidentally and had to have surgery...

which involved a piece of packing tape.

At the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point...are you noticing a pattern here?

Don't worry, Stanley saved them by giving the shark a paper cut.