Memorial Day Weekend

We went up to Jade and Brit's house for a BBQ on Saturday.  Chelsie and Brian were home for the weekend.  It was so fun spending time with my whole family.  We got to see Brittiney's new mother's day present, Millee.  She is a pugpom and so tiny!  She loves to burrow inside Josh's jacket, and yes Tara, she still has puppy breath!

Gavin is such a smiler and a happy baby.  He had fun with Aunt Chelsie.  

Branson was getting really crabby so Brittiney and my mom read his baby book to him and he loved it.  

My mom, Brittiney and I started a fire in Jade's fire pit while the sun was shining for a minute so we could eat outside around the fire.  While we were doing that Branson was packing Millee around with him everywhere!  

After dinner, Josh was playing so cute with Gavin, who was enjoying Josh's nose!  

We got dinner cleaned up and started playing Battle Of The Sexes.  It's always a heated game when we play this, and of course the boys won...because my brother knows WAY too much girlie stuff!  

While we were playing, Branson and Gavin watched Nemo.  Gavin was smiling from ear to ear the whole time, he loves that movie.  

It was a fun night, I love spending time with my family.

Baby Sister Graduates!

My baby sister graduated from the surgical tech program at CSI on Friday and my parents and I drove up to Twin Falls for the weekend to see it.  Josh didn't come with us, he stayed home with the animals.  We took her graduation present, Yoshi, with us.  He thankfully sat in a box on my mom's lap all the way up.  I had nightmares the night before of him getting out of his box and crawling on me so I was happy!  He didn't like being in the box and my mom kept petting him and he kept trying to get out.  I was freaking out.  We got up to Twin and got him all settled in his new home with his new mommy!  Chelsie was so happy to get him.  The plan was to go take some graduation pictures on campus before we went out to dinner but we didn't get up there in time.  So we went out to Applebee's before the graduation ceremony.  It wasn't a bad ceremony except for the bad organ player, my mom and I felt like we were in sacrament meeting and needed to be reverent!  It wasn't too long of a ceremony, luckily!  Brian was so into it:

Chelsie was on the second row so she got to walk and get her diploma quickly.  She's wearing the gold stole and blue and gold ropes for the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society.  She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA!  She's wearing the green for the surgical tech program that was a gift from her supervisor.

I was so proud of her when she walked across that stage and got her diploma!  She's worked so hard for this the past couple of years!

We found her afterward and got a couple of family photos before the sun went down.

Then my parents and I went back to the hotel, got changed and went back to Chelsie and Brian's to hang out for a while.  

The next morning, after not sleeping very well on hard beds, my parents and I went out to explore the gorge for a while before we met up with Chelsie and Brian and his family.  My mom has a serious fear of heights and wasn't very happy with my dad and I when we went close to the edge on one side.  She did walk out on one of the look out spots, though!

Mom and Chelsie feeding and loving Yoshi, and then he pooped on Chelsie and her couch!

We went out to see the Shoshone Falls before we headed out of town, they are so pretty!

It was so much fun to spend the weekend with my baby sister and to see her finally graduate! She has a couple more months of clinicals and then can take the certification exam. We are hoping she'll be able to get a job closer to home so she and Brian can move back.  I'm so proud of you Chelsie!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was great.  I went down to Salt Lake again this Saturday to see Elizabeth perform in her last dance comp for the year.  She did her solo Friday night and she won Queen again in a group of 5 girls!  I'm so proud of her.  Her team dances went really well Saturday, too.  Her dances this year are so cute.  I went Mother's Day shopping with Shannon afterward in Draper.  We witnessed a car accident in the parking lot when we were leaving so we had to wait for Draper police to get there, and they weren't speedy!  It was getting late and I wanted to get home to watch the Jazz game with Josh and I still needed to go look at Shane's car that he was wanting to sell to us.  The cops finally came and we could leave, it was 5pm.  I went to Josh's mom house to see the car and when I got there I locked the keys in my mom's car that I was using.  There was no way I was going to make it home in time to see any of the game.  So the locksmith came and unlocked my car then I sat and visited with Rosie and watched the rest of game with her.  It was great to spend time with her one on one.
Josh had Morgan pick up some Smart Cookies for me for  Mother's Day on her way home from Salt Lake.  I was so excited to get them, they are heaven in a cookie!  Thanks Honey!

Then today we went up to my parents' house for Mother's Day dinner.  We went over to my Grandma Lowe's house to see her new pug, Duke, with Branson.  He was so excited to see the dog!

Until later when he actually heard Duke grunt and snort, then Branson wanted nothing to do with him.  He was scared of him and didn't want to be anywhere near him.

I also got to meet my little sister's graduation present.  She is graduating from CSI in the surgical tech program on Friday, I'm so proud of her!  She wanted one of these for graduation so my parents found her one:

This is Yoshi, he and I get to spend some quality time together on our way out to Twin Falls on Friday.  I'm super excited...not really.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom.  Mom, I am so thankful for you and our relationship.  I love you so much.  You are the best.  Thank you for everything you do for all of us all the time.  You are such a great example to all of us and you raised 3 great kids.  You are fantastic, I love you!

Happy Mother's Day to my Momma 2, Josh's mom Rosie.  Rosie, thank you for raising such a great guy and for letting me have him.  Thank you for treating me like I am your daughter.  Thank you for everything you do for us.  I really lucked out in the in-law department.  You are the best, I love you!

Guess What?

It's May 6th and it's snowing.  It's ridiculous, I'm tired of cold weather.  I want sunshine and flip flops!  Where is Spring?

Amazing Lady

I found Stephanie's blog and started following it a little bit before her near fatal plane crash.  This lady never ceases to amaze me with the faith and courage she has.  This video is beautiful just like she is.  She is truly an inspiration to me.  You can read about her and her beautiful family here.