Bachelorette...

Jeremy-sent home this week.

WOW! Another shocking episode of the Bachelorette. Who would've thought Jeremy would be going home tonight? Obviously he didn't see it coming. I really feel bad for him. You can totally tell he is still completely in love with her and broken hearted. I think he was hoping there was a small chance that he would get a second chance. It is like a replay of what Brad did to Deanna and how she felt. She totally thought she would be the last one standing(I guess she was but you know what I mean.) She never felt like she understood Brad's reasons. I think Jeremy thought Deanna was going to pick him and was totally blindsided and still doesn't understand why. The minute she said Jason's name you could just see in Jeremy's face that he felt betrayed and was extremely hurt. They had another emotional goodbye(these are intense this season) and he was very beside himself during the Limo ride. He even asked the limo driver to stop the limo so he could get out and walk around-he didn't want to leave. I think when it came down to it Jeremy was just too serious and she realized how much she needed the fun playful part of a relationship. I'm still rooting for Jason and thought they really made a cute connection on their overnight date. However I'm starting to think Jesse might truly have a real chance at this-he really stepped up the romance during this episode. The drawback for Jesse is I don't think he is ready to settle down in general(job, location, etc.) and Deanna is. The drawback for Jason is he has a son and I don't know if Deanna is ready for that-however I think his life is more stable and he is more ready to financially provide. So who will she choose? Join me to find out! I'm planning a little girl's night at my house for the last episode if anyone is interested in coming. More details later.

Funnies: "Look at that big belly!"

Today Avery had a dr. appointment and of course we spent a while in the waiting room. While waiting a very pregnant lady walked in and as she was walking to the front desk to sign in Maddy very loudly said, "Mom, look at that big belly!" The girl just smiled and another girl in the waiting room(that was also pregnant but not as far along)and her husband cracked up laughing. I quickly said, "There is a baby in there." I was a little caught off guard because he hasn't ever said anything like that before. However, it was pretty funny.

Sunday Dinner with Family...

Last night my sister Jamie and her family came over for Sunday dinner. Ben grilled up some steaks and chicken and we also had baked potatoes, fresh fruit and steamed veggies. We had brownies and ice cream for dessert. After dinner we headed outside and just hung out and enjoyed each other. We lit our little outdoor fireplace and stayed up past the kids bedtime. We have been pretty bad at enforcing bed time this summer but the kids don't seem to mind.

Maddy and Dallin love playing together and especially love making Maddy's room a mess.

Claire loved playing with the chalk.

As you can see from her pants Avery also loved playing in the chalk.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today my mom is 54. The picture above was her senior picture(I wish my senior picture turned out that well!) Mom, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday and tell you how much I love you! Thanks for everything that you do for me and my family and for always being a great example. Hope you have a great day!

A Day Full of Fun...

The Saturday before Father's Day we spent the day at a friends house. They have such a beautiful home with the ultimate backyard when it comes to fun. The picture above is a beautiful water feature they have in their backyard. We started off swimming and the kids just loved it! Maddy is already begging to go swimming again. They grilled us up some yummy food(salmon burgers, turkey burgers, chicken kabobs, hot dogs for the kids, fruits, veggies and chips.) As you will see in the pictures we ALL had our fair share of playtime...

I LOVE this picture so much that it is in my new header. :)

Maddy is our little water boy. He just loves water. It took us a while to get him away from the drinking fountain. I love this picture too!

Steve was the biggest kid of all!



A little father and son slam dunk...


Even I had a little fun and broke out some old trampoline tricks-here I am in action. I had to take a quick timeout because I almost peed my pants...things just aren't the same once you've had kids! :)



Maddy getting his jump on...

Happy Avery hanging out in her car seat while the rest of us played...

Another favorite picture!

The little one!


Daddy and daughter.

Me and the kiddos. They were both too busy playing in the water to look at the camera.

"Playful Pickles Blog Design."

I am SO excited about my new blog design! It is a Playful Pickles Blog Design by Carly. She is so talented and it turned out EXACTLY how I wanted. I love everything about it! I owe a huge thanks to my sister Jamie! She actually won the blog design on one of Carly's giveaways. She knew I had been wanting Carly to do my blog design so she asked Carly if she could give it to me as a gift. Thank you so much Jamie!!! I owe you big time! I told Carly I wanted a really open wide layout so I can make my pictures bigger. :) I also emailed her the picture I wanted in my header(which I just love.) Here is the picture straight out of my camera before she did her magic... Here it is after she edited it in Photoshop...

Doesn't it look amazing!!!

I also emailed her a link to this necklace that I found on Etsy-I told her I liked the bubble-like graphic on it. From this she came up with the graphic underneath my picture in my header-which is my favorite part of the design.

I also told her I wanted the color scheme to be the aqua, orange, brown and white colors from my picture. She also made the fun graphic for my sidebar titles and I really loved the quote at the top of my sidebar and she did an amazing job incorporating it into the design. She emailed me lots of options for all parts of the blog, making changes as necessary until I was completely satisfied. Carly has also answered lots of random questions I had about blogging and photo editing and turned me onto Photobucket so I can now make my pictures bigger. I just want to thank her so much and recommend her to anyone thinking about getting a custom blog design. I promise you won't be disappointed and your blog will definitely be one of a kind!

Avery's first tooth...

I finally got a picture of Avery where you can see her first tooth. She has had it for about a month now and the one right next to it is coming in.

SYTYCD 4.2...

Last night was another great episode of SYTYCD. There were a lot of funky crazy dances and a lot of skin baring dresses. Katee and Joshua's Samba(shown above) was my favorite dance of the night. It was very sexy and made me laugh at the same time. Boys that buff shouldn't be able to move like that but he did-he really pulled it off. His pants-cracked me up because I'm used to skinny ballroom dancers wearing that spandex and he's definitely not skinny. Lets just say that Nigel summed it up pretty well when he said "he wasn't sure who poured him into those pants." Although she's not one of my favorites, I was also quite impressed by Katee(check out that dress)-she really stepped out of her comfort zone and was one hot little mama!

My next favorite dance was Chelsie(Utah girl) and Mark's Hip-Hop dance. Mark is one weird dude but so far somehow his weirdness works when he is dancing. They danced to Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" which is a great song and fit the choreography perfect. They also both really got into character.

I also really liked Courtney and Gev's(Utah boy) Rumba. Besides Contemporary routines, the Rumba has always been one of my favorites(if it is done right.) I think they did a pretty good job. She(check out her dress) has that "girl-next-door" appeal and he has such a crush on her off the stage that they are cute together. He was quite excited that he had to grab her butt-too funny.

One of the more interesting and unique dances of the night was Kourtni and Matt's Contemporary routine. This wasn't your typical Contemporary routine-it had a funky quirky twist on it. It was choreographed by a guest choreographer named Sonya Tayeh. She is very interesting and had a funky huge mohawk. I'm normally not a huge tattoo fan(I know my husband has two) but Kourtni has a pretty cool one. It is on the back of her neck below her hair and it swoops up and says, "...and she will dance."

My picks for bottom three are: Comfort & Chris(I think these might be the two going home-at least Chris), Chelsea T. & Thayne(these two are fab. but the Quickstep is super hard and not usually a fan favorite), and Jessica & Will(although he is fab-I know he will be saved-I think Jessica is bringing him down a bit-she might be going home as well.) Of course Mary Murphy was annoying as usual. Steve kept asking me why she had to be so annoying. I told him I think it is part of her job description-to get ratings, although she probably is just as annoying in real life. I just have to mention that Utah is really stepping it up in these talent reality shows. There are four contestants(out of 16) still remaining in this seasons SYTYCD. Last seasons winner Sabra was from Utah and we all know runner up American Idol contestant David Archuleta is from Utah as well. Go Utah!

I Belong in Rome...

You Belong in Rome

You're a big city soul with a small town heart Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand And gorgeous Italian people - could life get any better?

What City Do You Belong In?

Finally a little Motivation...

I attended a 8 week free class on organizing last fall. It was a great class and it got me all motivated to get my life organized. Marie Ricks taught the class and has a website that you can check out here. She has lots of great ideas for organizing all aspects of your life including cleaning, finances, parenting, cooking, etc. I do pretty good at keeping the house picked up and cleaned but at the time of the classes I didn't have the time to do all the weekly projects like organizing closets and stuff. I was still adjusting to Avery being home and the whole feeding/pumping schedule. So I have all these projects that I've been wanting to get done and I think I finally have enough motivation to get started. I figured if I blogged about it I would be more likely to follow through. My goal is to do a weekly project even if it is something small like cleaning out a drawer or cupboard. This way eventually I will feel like my house is in order and will quit dwelling on these kind of things. Saturday I cleaned out my fridge and felt so accomplished once I was done.

This is an "after" picture of my clean sparkly fridge. This is what Maddy and Avery managed to do to Maddy's room while I was cleaning away...

I guess at least they were having fun and not bugging me...

Bachelorette...

Graham-sent home this week.

The best word I can think of to sum up tonight's episode is emotional. From Jeremy reading his journal entries(that he wrote during the time his mother was passing away) to Deanna, to Jason and his son's reunion(so precious) as well as there goodbye's(so heartbreaking) to Graham's emotional departure(didn't I predict this one?), including the letter he left for her to read. Is he trying to torture her? I want to know what it says! Hopefully it will give her some closure and not rub salt in her wounds. As sad as it was to watch Deanna pour her heart out to Graham and he not giving much back to her, I can totally relate to Graham. That is pretty much how I am-it is very hard for me to express my feelings. I think this is one of the best "home town" date episodes ever. Also Jesse finally went for it and kissed Deanna(it's about time!) I'm excited for next weeks episode. I really kind of feel bad for Deanna because I really think she has true feelings for them all. It would just be a weird situation to be in but I guess she knew that going in to it. Anyway if you missed the episode you really missed out. :)

Avery's Favorite Car...

Of all of Maddy's play cars(20+), this is Avery's favorite. I started noticing every time I would go in Maddy's room to get her she would always have this car in her hand. All the other cars would be scattered all over his room. She carries it around with her from room to room. At first I thought it might just be a coincidence but noticed it more and more. The other day I lined all of Maddy's cars up and she quickly grabbed this one no matter where I placed it in the line up. I guess at least she has good taste...it is gold(and blue.)

Two of my favorite indulgences...

Most of the time I post about my kids. So I thought I would make a post about me and some of the things(shows) I like.

The first is the Bachelorette. I actually look forward to Monday nights purely for this reason. Although Deanna has a few annoying traits(she blinks uncontrollably and she acts as if she is the "relationship expert,") I truly think she is looking for love and is very open about her feelings(which I admire because I'm not) and she is trying really hard not to lead anyone on. I just love how the tables are turned and find it quite amusing watching the guys fight for her. Her top four are the top four I was hoping she would choose. Lets admit it Twilley was a complete basket-case and Sean was annoyingly vain. I think Graham is the boy that she likes more than she wants to but I think she will eventually let him go because of commitment issues(possibly next episode.) He is more "boyfriend" material than "husband" material. Although a little weird, Jesse as grown on me but I don't think they have enough chemistry. He blew it last week when she was practically begging for him to kiss her and he just kept looking away. Jeremy was my initial favorite but has become a little too arrogant. So my pick is...

Jason is such a sweet "real" guy and he is so cute when he talks about his little boy. That will always tug at a girls heart strings. He has kind of slid under the radar and I think they aired the show this way on purpose. They have to have a little surprise to keep it interesting. I think it will come down to Jason and Jeremy for the final two. Hopefully she will make the right decision and they will have another good outcome like the last Bachelorette(It takes the girl to get it right because they are in it for the RIGHT reasons.)

Next, on to SYTYCD...I'm just loving it so far this season! I think the talent is amazing and the choreography is incredible!

My favorite dance this week was Courtney & Gev's Contemporary routine choreographed by Mandy Moore. Loved all the partnering! I loved the song "Lost" by Anouk so much that I added it to my playlist. :)

A close(very close) second was Twitchington's(Kherrington and Twitch) Viennese Waltz. They danced to Celine Dion's "A new day has come." It was so precious and beautiful especially because of the meaning behind it.

So far Kherrington is my favorite girl. She just radiates beauty when she dances(kind of how Sabra did last season.)

Joshua is my favorite boy. He is just so humble but has killer moves!

My favorite dance last week was Chelsie and Mark's dance choreographed by Mia Michaels. Their song "Beautiful" by Me'shell Ndegeocello was beautiful as well. I love Mia's work and sometimes wonder how she comes up with it(would like to get into her head.) Although I do think she is being a little harsh this year. She is becoming the Simon Cowell of SYTYCD.

Again a very close second last week was Katee and Joshua's hip-hop routine to the song "No Air" by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. It was very touching and got Steve's vote for the best.
A couple other random tidbits:

Mandy Moore is right on Mia Michael's tail in becoming my favorite choreographer. I also love watching Thayne Dance(loved his solo to "Belief" by Gavin Degraw), although he is a bit annoying when he's not dancing(like when he starts talking.) Chelsea T. has one killer body that I can only dream about ever having. Comfort has got some major moves(it is fun to see a girl dancing like this instead of always guys.) Courtney G. is very unique and intriguing-I look forward to watching her. I really think Twitch is stepping it up and might be the "dark horse" of the competition. I also thought Gev did a great job. Last but not least...Could Mary Murphy get any more annoying!

Fun or Torture?

What started out as Maddy watering the trees and playing in the water turned into...

Love the tongue in this picture!

As you can see Steve was enjoying this as much as Maddy(if not more.)


You would think this would hurt? He laughed and loved every moment of it and kept wanting more. Then we turned off the water and he realized how wet and cold he was.

"Cheese!"