July Goals

July was a busy month and we all had fun.  I was able to complete every monthly goal except going to the temple (which I think we might make a every couple months goal for now).  It feels so good to check off every goal.  I've probably mentioned this before, but I really do feel proud of myself for actually keeping up with my new years resolution of monthly and weekly goals.  Since I've made it halfway, I don't have any doubts that I'll be able to keep it up the rest of the year.

The house project for July was to get those canvas pictures hung up in the family room.  The addition of the pictures really completes the room as there's not an empty wall there anymore.  I was reserved for a while to get anything up there, especially in canvas as you can't switch out the pictures.  I'm thinking that our room will be where we'll put the pictures once they're outdated.  The flower picture is courtesy of my brother Aaron.  I looked and looked and I didn't have any flower pictures that looked as good and he was nice to let me use it.

The Kylie project was to plan her birthday party! Of course I waited to do this until Scott's party was over.  It's coming up soon and I'm excited for it! The invitations are adorable and I made them on the computer and just printed at Wal-Mart.  I've decided to do her party on Sunday the day before so work schedules don't interfere. The theme of the party is elephants with grey, light pink and white colors.  I've got a few diy projects to complete and a gorgeous cake and smash cake that's being made.  I wish her party was tomorrow so I could see this cake; I'm so excited!

Our date night this month included Kylie and I almost thought we weren't going to have one as things were so busy.  I found out that the band Train was having a free outdoor concert on Saturday night (26th) and how could we not go?!  We both think the band Train is great, we know a lot of their songs and the concert is FREE!!  You know how much I love free stuff.  We took the trax there and found a nice spot on the side in the grass.  We weren't close to the stage (which is what I was expecting), but it worked out great for Kylie to be able to run around (which is all she wanted to do).  It was so much fun!!

More than just Kylie and I were able to see Scott play soccer this month.  Scott parents & Andrew were in town a few more days after his birthday and tagged along to watch Scott play.  Unfortunately, his team got roughed up a bit and lost.  Oh well, what can you do.  My craft project was to make this bunting banner for Scott's birthday party.  I bought soccer fabric, red ribbon and followed this tutorial. It was super easy once I got going and I'm working on making another one for Kylie's birthday!  Our friend get together was seeing each other at Scott's party.

Lots of weekly activities went on and it was nice to be busy for a change.  Although, I didn't realize how much time I needed to recover from being so busy.  I need to start working on recovering a little bit quicker as it's hard to get back into routine again.  4th of July activities (on a separate post) happened the first week of July.  The second week, I went to the outdoor movie with Amanda (by myself as Scott actually didn't have to work and stayed home with Kylie) and then we were invited by Brita to go get free slurpees on 7/11.  It was busy and the slurpee machines started running out, but we got some before it was empty.  Kylie sure loved it and doesn't mind pina colada flavor.

The third week, we were at Snowbird (separate post) and then Scott's birthday (separate post). That was the busiest week of them all (I also worked for my aunt Carolyn at her insurance office).  The fourth week, we headed to the reservoir in Herriman and then walked around City Creek with Scott's family.

Playing in the fountains. Kylie promptly sat down and got so wet I had to buy her an outfit.

Eek! Her first kiss! She looks a little shocked.

At the reservoir.

It was really bright outside.

Looking cool.

That same week was Pioneer Day (24th).  West Jordan has pioneer day activities at the library park, so we headed down to check it out.  Kylie couldn't do many activities, but it's nice to know what they have so she can enjoy it in future years.  Kylie and I then headed to grandma's for dinner and then everyone ditched us for other activities. Haha. At least Kylie had fun playing with Grandma Omer.

She couldn't stop watching these horses go around in circles.

There's technically a fifth week in July, but we weren't able to do any family activity.  For meal plans, I did quite well! The only week I didn't do one was the week of Snowbird and Scott's birthday.  The one thing I'm working on with meals now is to try to get the grocery bill down a little bit.  I think I need to plan meals two weeks in advance, that way I'm only shopping for produce and milk every week.  I'm also trying to look at using ingredients more than once as well.  I have to wait until a time where we're not so busy!  I did awful with exercise the whole month.  I feel disappointed that I didn't exercise as much as I could have and I need to get back into making it a priority.

This is a long post, but like I said July was a busy month!  August will be just as busy too, so be prepared for another lengthy goal post.

Scott's 30th Birthday

Scott had a wonderful birthday weekend!  Scott's family came up and we had a fun, busy weekend.  I hope that everyone had fun as it's hard to tell when you're hosting.  Scott's family arrived Friday morning and everyone slept until about noon.  Once everyone was awake, we got ready to head up to Snowbird.  I decided it would be fun to go up there and show them something they hadn't seen before.  Since we left a little later in the afternoon, all we had time for was to go swimming.  The kids did have fun, but it would have been fun to go on a little walk to the outlook as well.

After swimming, we ate Cafe Rio and then to Brita's place to play some games.  Saturday morning, I made a breakfast of waffles and fresh orange juice (with oranges from California).  Scott headed out golfing with David, Kyle and Lane.  He had so much fun and I was able to prepare things for the party.  Kristene was such a huge help in getting things ready.  The kids also took long naps, so everything just worked out really well.

I looked for ideas for the party on pinterest and saw these birthday cakes made out of fruit.  It was perfect!  The theme for the party was All About Scott and fruit is something he loves.  I still made his favorite birthday cake (yellow cake with chocolate frosting) out of cupcakes.

The cake coming together.

Kristene. Two heads were better than one in putting this cake together!

The finished product!

The main dish we had was pizza (one of Scott's favorite foods) which I got from Papa Murphy's (with a gift card and coupon).  It was nice because I picked them up early and then was able to bake them right before, so they were nice and hot.  I love that the food I chose was simple as to cut down on stress.  I made sure to calm myself down when the frosting for the cupcakes wasn't turning out and I had to try 3 times to get it right.  There was going to be no freak-outs for me!

Since we were having the party at the park, the main activity was to play kickball, but it was so hot outside!  We would have had to have the party at 9:00pm for it to be cool enough.  I did do another activity where I had everyone answer questions about Scott and whoever got the most correct won a prize.  It was fun to hear reactions from people when finding out the answer Scott gave me.  Scott's mom won in the end with 19 out of 30 correct!  There was a great turn-out (Andrew & Rebecca even stopped by on their way back to Colorado) and everyone was so helpful in putting things together.

Since it was so hot, we headed back to the house to cool off and play some games indoors.  We played a few rounds of Mafia and Scott opened presents.  Scott received a lot of jam for his birthday (strawberry from me and raspberry from my mom), some new shoes, a new griddle and various other presents (I can't remember everything).  It was a whirlwind day and I hope Scott had a fantastic 30th birthday being surrounded by people who love him.

Happy Birthday Scott!  I hope your 30's are full of wonderful, unforgettable moments.  Kylie & I love you!

Scott w/ poster. This thing was a pain to display.

Collage of pictures of Scott throughout the years.

Friends came to the party too!

Pretending to blow out candles. It was too windy to light.

I wrapped up 6 jars of jam. :)

Save the date I made to make sure everyone could come.

Official invitation.

11 Months!

Kylie has been 11 months for about a week now.  My little girl will be 1 here so quickly!  I know that at 1, Kylie will still be a baby, but she is starting to look like a girl every day.  Kylie's hair is long enough that I can put it in a little ponytail or pigtails.  I need to buy some cute little hair clips to use.  She just looks different (in a good way) when her hair is up.  It is starting to make me nervous for when her hair is long enough to do some fun things with as I have trouble even doing my own hair.

Another thing that makes her look older is her teeth! That's right, she's cutting her third tooth right now!  Kylie has been such a trooper with cutting teeth.  The only thing that I can notice is that she's been more tired lately.  She also likes to gnaw on pizza crust to help.

• Kylie waves bye-bye sometimes; she just does it when she wants to.  
• Kylie can do some sign language and it all relates to eating.  She can do more, eat, all done and milk.  I'm trying to remember to do please and thank you to her, but I don't do them enough for her to know what they are.
• Kylie likes to dance now as well. She especially loves to dance to the hot dog song from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It is so cute to see her dance.
• We are slowly getting her used to whole milk by putting it with her formula.  She seems to like her bottle a little bit better now.  Kylie would just rather drink juice from her sippy cup.
• Kylie has gotten used to needing a story before naps and bedtime.  She'll get upset if I stop reading, even if I've read her 3 stories.  It's fun to see her enjoy reading and books at such a young age.
• Kylie loves playing with her cousins and other babies.  She is such a social baby that I wish I had friends who have a baby her age to play with.  It will be nice when the reading times at the library start back up as it will give her a time to be social.
• This girl is doing wonderful at keeping up with all of our activities this summer.  I'm glad that we haven't felt like we can't go and do things.

It's 11-months too late, but I've discovered that the best time to take her pictures is right when she wakes up from a nap.  This girl always wakes up happy, so it's a perfect time to catch some smiles.

This was before her nap.

This was after her nap.

Snowbird

My grandma has had a time share at Snowbird for as long as I can remember.  Almost every summer when we'd go out to Utah for vacation, we'd end up going to Snowbird.  Looking back now, I have no idea how we all were able to fit inside the room!  There are so many of us and I can't imagine everyone gathering in the room today.  It is so fun though that my grandma lets everyone in the family have a chance to spend a night at Snowbird.  This year, we were able to spend a few nights there as a lot of other extended family were headed off to Lake Powell.

Saturday was a busy day as Scott & I headed up to pick raspberries at my Aunt Debbie's in the morning.  Their bushes were so full of raspberries!! We picked so much and it didn't even look like we picked anything.  Kylie would attack Scott's bowl and for the first 1/2 hour, there was nothing in there as she ate everything he picked.  We ate as many as we could, froze some and then my mom made jam out of the rest (for a birthday present for Scott).

After picking raspberries, we headed to Snowbird for the weekend!  The room was supposed to be available at 4, but housekeeping wasn't ready and we had to wait for about an hour.  We made tacos for dinner and played games the rest of the night.  Sunday morning, we went for a hike up at the Alta resort.  After the hike, we ate lunch and relaxed for a bit.  Grandma Omer and a friend of Aaron came up for dinner.  After dinner, we all went swimming.  Kylie loves to go swimming!  Mom watched Kylie while the rest of us checked out the hot tub and 18+ pool area.  After swimming, we had dessert, watched The Lego Movie and played games.

Kyle, mom and Aaron had to go to work on Monday, so it was only Brianna, Scott and me.  We wanted to take a walk to the outlook as it's short and something to do.  We got a little lost trying to find it and Kylie was hungry and tired, so we headed back to the room.  People took naps and relaxed until dinner.  After dinner, Scott went to go play soccer and Brianna, mom and I set out to go to the outlook and were successful this time.  Kylie wanted to walk a lot of the way and had a blast checking out nature.

Scott & I were the only ones up at Snowbird during the day on Tuesday.  Mom had to work and Brianna worked for Carolyn in her insurance office.  It was nice to be able to do our own thing.  We didn't want to be too bored though, so we went swimming again!  After swimming, Kylie took a nap and we were able to figure out a way to play Settlers of Catan with just two people!  It actually worked out pretty well, so the game was fun.  Scott had scouts that night and I had to get the key to the office from Brianna, so we headed back home around 4:30pm.

I love that Snowbird is like a stay-cation.  It's far enough to feel like you're getting away, but close enough that you can take care of things at home.  Kylie enjoyed being somewhere new and it was a good preview for when we go to Yosemite.  Hopefully we'll be able to go up to Snowbird often!