Trousseau Dreams!

As soon as I was called to Young Women's, I knew that I had to introduce Trousseau Dreams to our girls. For anyone who had the misfortune of growing up without this experience, I am truly sorry! It was a lot of work and a big undertaking since I basically had to do it all on my own, but I am so glad that I put the effort into it. There were days when I thought that we may have to cancel or postpone, but I think that it turned out great! As promised, here are some pictures of the big night.

This was my first attempt at making a wedding cake or anything close to it. I learned a lot and am pretty happy with how it turned out. It tasted great too, which is a big plus because I ended up bringing a ton of it home. The kids are thrilled because Issac told them that they can eat as much cake as they want! :) Top layer was coconut cake with a key lime filling, second layer was lemon cake with a raspberry filling, and the bottom layer was chocolate cake with a hazelnut filling. I covered the layers with a marshmallow fondant, so the whole thing tasted yummy!

We had tables set with name cards and everything. Besides the cake, we had a chocolate fondue station with strawberries, apples, bananas, marshmallows and pretzel rods.

We asked the mothers and leaders to allow us to display their wedding dresses and pictures. We ended up with 9 different dresses to show that spanned quite a few years and eras. It was really fun for the girls to see how styles have changed. There were some beautiful, modest dresses!

Our colors for the night were purple and white. As I said, the evening was a huge success. Our key note speakers were a newlywed couple that did a fabulous job, and the parents put a lot of thought into the gifts for the girls and really touched all of us. I am so happy that there is such a special activity that we can bring back year after year to help our girls stay focused on their goal of temple marriage. It was an amazing night!

* Special thanks to my amazing husband who helped me not only with the physical time and hours put in helping with the prep work and set up and take down, but all the emotional support and help that he gave to get me through it all. I love you baby! You are still my HERO and my Prince Charming!

Summertime.... finally!

It seemed like summer was never going to make it to Utah this year, but no worries, it has finally found its way. To kick off our 2010 summer fun, we had our first of many trips to Lagoon.

It was a perfect day to play outside and spend some quality family time together. Happy kids = happy parents! :)

My little princess?

McKenna is such a sweet little girl. She "wubs pink and poopal!" She "wubs mommy and daddy"! She is deathly afraid of dogs, ants, cats and spiders. One of her favorite past times though, is digging up "baby wormies"! She loves to have a bow in her pretty hair, and daily askes for her "hands and toes to be painted pretty"!

McKenna, although not quite 3 years old yet, suprises us on a daily basis with just how much she seems to understand, remember and accomplish. I really don't recall any of the boys doing things that she can do at such a young age. We have to be very careful with what we agree or promise her, because you can bet that she will call you on it and make sure that you hold true to your word.

But the best part of our sweet little princess, is that she loves to be goofy and make us all laugh. "Kenna is fummy mom"! How can you not wub this cute little face? You are our little princess!

We love you McKenna!

No Rest for the Weary!

Well, the thought of having some down time was a nice thought. I was out of Primary and Scouts for a whole month before I got called to Young Women's. I have to admit though, I was thrilled. Of all the callings, this is one of my favorite places to be. We only have 10 girls total, but only about 4 or 5 that come on any kind of regular basis. Today we had 6 leaders and 2 girls for my lesson. It has been really fun though getting to know the girls and making plans with the leaders. What I am most excited for though, is that I am going to introduce Trousseau Dreams to the ward. I have just over a month to plan everything out. I'm a little overwhelmed, but totally looking forward to it. I just hope that it all comes out right and that the girls will feel the spirit and have the desire to marry in the Temple some day. I'll post pictures of everything when it happens. I am going to attempt to make the wedding cake! Wish me luck.

Just the girls!

Ok, so it took me way too long to post this, but it is crazy how many different project I have going on right now.

Women's Conference was amazing! We stayed in the dorms and were lucky enough to get two rooms connected with a bathroom, so we all got to stay together. We were fortunate to hear some wonderful speakers, attend the fun concert with some really big names, and had a blast talking, catching up and laughing together. We all loved it so much that we may just make it a yearly tradition from now on. It was the perfect mini vaca that I needed with my mom and my sisters! Love them all!

I'm so excited!

I have never had the time or the money to go to any of the EFY, Education Week or Women's Conference. Pretty sad since I've actually lived in Utah for almost 4 years now, but I've always had little one's to take care of. This year though, my sweet, amazing husband has offered to take off work for the two days and play Mr. Mom to allow me to go! I am feeling the overwhelming need for a little vacation and know that this is just what I need for a spiritual pick me up.
The most exciting part though, is that my mom and both of my sisters are coming this year as well. I am always so jealous to hear of friends that take these amazing sister trips every year and I don't believe I have ever had the chance to do that with mine. It will be so much fun to be together and with our mom to top it all off. I am just so excited and can't wait. I feel kind of bad though for the other two women that will be rooming with us. Any one that knows the Gagon laugh and has ever heard when my sisters and I are together knows exactly what I mean. :) Should be one fun, crazy weekend for sure!

We're back online!

YEAH! We have gone electronic again. It feels like it has been forever, yet I don't know if there is anything big to even report. How crazy is that? In my little economic funk, I have even slacked on taking pictures so I don't even have any cute photos to post. But no worries! The whether is changing and soon we will be busy with soccer, camps and various other activities to keep the blog running again.
For now, I will just say that we are all pretty much healthy, happy, and doing our best at whatever we have going on. I promise to get back in the swing of things and keep my blog updated from now on. I have loved being able to catch up with all my friends and see what creative adventures you have been up to for the past few months.

Sorry!!!!!

OK, I know that since so many of you have been wondering what is going on with me and asking why my blog is so far behind, I guess that I will let you all out of your misery! 2009 was a hard year on us as I'm sure it was for many of you and the rest of the country. We had to take a good hard look at what was really important and necessary in our lives and cut out everything else. I tried to convince Issac that my blog was high on the importance list, but it was a no go. We had to get rid of the Internet. We haven't gotten in back yet, but we have high hopes that we will within the next few months, so I promise to get back with things once that happens.

Happy Halloween 09!

This year for Halloween, our ward participated in a trunk or treat. I was thrilled to have this safe place for the little one's to have fun, and all before it even got dark. For the first time in quite a few years too, the whether was amazing. I actually got hot sitting in the sun in the back of my car. :)


This was our dead zombie that helped me hand out the candy. Most of the kids were thrilled by him. Some, not so much!

Rhett was so excited to be Tigger, but unfortunately the costume was just a little too small for him and he had the never ending wedgie all night long. Didn't stiffen his excitement for the night though, little trooper. McKenna was a cute little bumble bee that had no sting in her, and Wesley and Damon were both soldiers again. It is so nice to have that costume and the ready year after year.

We couldn't find any costumes that didn't cost an arm and a leg, so I was forced to make her costume this year. I was mostly pleased with how it turned out, but I fear that making costumes for her my not work much longer. Her poor wings wilted into nothing. She sure was cute though.

After the trunk or treating, we came back home to eat some dinner and to wait for it to get dark. I don't think Wesley and Damon made it to dark before they headed out with friends, but poor Rhett and McKenna crashed. Rhett actually fell asleep with his sandwich in his hand. McKenna didn't even make it the short drive from the church to our house.

We gave them a little rest and then we took them out in our neighborhood for a little while. They both absolutely loved it, of course, and between the 4 kids, we now have enough candy at our house to stock a store. I'm so glad that they all had fun though and enjoyed their Halloween experience this year.

Murder Mystery Party!

Issac and I were both really stressed out and felt like we needed to have a party and try and let loose a little this year. We'd done a murder mystery party a few years ago and thought that Halloween was the perfect time to try again. (People are more willing to dress up this time of year). It was supposed to be all these famous people, invited to this mansion for dinner. It was really hard trying to disguise our house as a creepy old mansion, but we did our best.

We took care of most of the food, but asked a few to bring either an appetizer or dessert to share. We played the rounds between eating the appetizers, salad, steak and potatoes with green beans, and then dessert. I was so afraid that we wouldn't have enough food, but as always, had plenty and even some left overs.

There were 16 of us, do I decided to try and write names on these fun Halloween cups so that we could keep track of them and not share all the fun germs that going around right now. I used their character names though instead of their real names. :)

We had an appearance by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Judy Garland...

Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Groucho Marx....

Bruce Lee, Patsy Cline, Lucille Ball, Selina (the black cat)...

Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, John Wayne, Janis Joplin .....

Rita Hayworth, and Pete Persimmons (our police detective). Everyone had a great time and we were so happy that we decided pretty last minute to do this. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. We're even considering trying another one for New Year's Eve.