Two Weddings and a Conference: Part 1

Well, we didn't have a working camera most of this summer but we did get some pics of some of our happenings.

First my brother Jeremy's wedding to his long-time sweetheart Ashley (she waited for him while he was on his 2 yr mission in Chile and at BYU no less) took place towards the end of June at the Washington D.C. temple. We spent a little over a week in D.C. with family. It was a great trip.

The cute & happy couple

Jared got some great shots of the D.C. temple. It is so beautiful!

I think this is a great pic of my Mom & Dad 

My parents were sealed in the D.C. temple almost 29 years ago. I was just over 1 years old at that point and we have lots of cute pictures of the three of us from that time...

So, here is another pic of the three of us together years later at the D. C. temple.

We're still pretty dang cute.

We did lots of things like the Holocaust museum & monuments, took Aurora to her first movie- Cars 2 she loved it, went swimming a lot, family gatherings & dinners, lots of game playing etc... But I only got pics of the D.C. Zoo which is a great place. The zoo is free, you only pay for parking and you can get that free too if you can find any in surrounding neighborhoods but we were willing to pay the $5 it cost to take a Suburban full of people.

My brother Jeremy with our nephew Tyler...Aurora was in this pic like 2 seconds before it was taken.

Tyler and Aurora were best buds most of the stay.

The gang taking a lunch break.

The gorgeous girl texting next to me is my niece Lauren.

I don't see Tyler or Lauren often enough...it was so good to hang out for a week.

Aurora's favorite part was the monkeys especially the Orangutans that use the "O Line" which are these ropes/cables strung high above the ground from a tall tower to a tall tower all over the zoo.

Then we spent several days and the 4th of July weekend with my family attending the reception in my old hometown of Muncie, IN.

This pic is in here of my new sis-in-law Kayla and my brother Aaron (married in March...I need to upload some pics of that happy event too) because I caught on camera his reaction to her pinching him. :) Have I ever told you that I really like Kayla a lot?! :)
I am so blessed that my brothers all have good taste in women...I love all my sister-in-laws!!!

Loving, Happy Couple

Then in mid-August we headed out to Utah for about a week for Jared's brother's wedding...more on that the next post which will hopefully happen before the New Year.

Can You "Spot" the Birthday Girl?

Aurora's 2nd birthday party was "Spot" themed based off some of A's favorite books by Eric Hill.

 In one of the books, Spot goes to a costume party, so I put a large trunk of costumes out for ALL our party guests, adults included. 

Apparently upside down sunglasses are all the rage among the toddler crowd. 

Gpa Mac

 

Gma Mac

Uncle Aaron & Aunt Kayla

Aunt Jessie also attended the party but she's the one who took all these pics for us! Thanks! And also Momma A was visiting us for the week which was a great treat and blessing.

After trying on lots of costumes we had a parade with party blowers to show off our savvy costumes. This was A's favorite part.

I decorated for the party with "spots" by stringing up some pom-poms (super easy and very cute!) and a colorful spotted tablecloth.

We then read the lift the flap book Spot's Birthday Party with each child getting the

chance to lift 2 flaps.

In this book Spot plays Hide & Seek with his friends at his party...

(the official party guests: Addie, Lydia, Trenton, & Alyssa)

 ...so I hid paper puppets of some of the Spot characters around the house.

The kids had to find them, then color them and tape them to craft sticks.

Puppet coloring.

 Candle time!

Besides serving brownies (Aurora's not big on cake) all the kids were served ice cream in a dog shape cookie cutter and were given mini M&M's to decorate their dogs w/ spots. 

This is Aurora's twin...

whenever Alyssa is out with us, I get asked if they are twins by everyone! :)

Another family friend, Princess Emily.

Thanks everyone for coming! It was soooo much fun!

New Family Pics

Go to this photography website of my friend Hope to see a few of the new pics of our family especially the ones of our beautiful newly turned two year old!

Recap & St. Louis

It's May and I've only posted 3x's this year!

Well here is a recap (I'm getting really good at doing these.)

We still don't have a camera that I like which is part of the issue with not blogging. Also I'm still the seminary teacher and a mother which is really the issue with not blogging.

I love teaching seminary. I truly think it's the main reason why I was able to stave off the Seasonal Affect Depression this year. It's fabulous to have the Spirit in my home every morning Mon-Fri.

The car seat woes from the previous post were resolved about a week or two later (which I knew in my head would happen sooner or later like all stages but it was still really hard). 

What helped push the transition faster and more smoothly was help from my most trusted mother's aide: books.

I've been testing out audio books with Aurora off and on over the last 6 months and she just grasped the

concept that the cd is telling her stories from some of her favorite books. 

So now when we go anywhere it's "Do you want to listen to Monkeys (5 Little Monkeys Jumping On the Bed) or to Cows (Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type)?" And she chooses one and happily gets into the car and her car seat. 

Her favorite right now is Audrey Wood's (my all time fave children's author) King Bidgood is in the Bathtub. The sound recording is quite fabulous and it's like listening to a musical. I highly recommend it! 

Jared and I took a short vacation together to St. Louis. He had a meeting there on a Thursday and it coincided with the schools' spring breaks around here. So I didn't have to teach and my Mom and Dad watched Aurora for us, it was perfect.

So despite the quite warm weather the previous week we had snow on our "spring break" vacation.

Quite a bit of snow.

Of course, we saw the Arch.

But by the time we bought our tickets to go up this is what it looked like...

(Note: If you ever visit St. Louis buy your tickets for the arch beforehand...we tried too but instead had to buy them the day of and you have to wait several hours before you can go up)

This was some of our views from the top...

Not great, but still fun.

 

This is the door to the elevator to ride up and down to the Arch.

It's so small, I thought it could easily be a hobbit's door.

 (Remember that I am hobbit size when you're looking at the size of the door in this pic.)

This is one of my fave pics from the trip.

We are in the waiting area at the Arch about to board the elevators and go up.

I was going to type out the whole "witch" scene from Monty Python but decided against it in favor of just publishing the clip itself.  You're welcome and enjoy! :) 

Peasant 1: If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood
Sir Bedevere: And therefore...

Peasant 2: ...A witch!

(I guess Jared is the "duck" and I'm the "witch")

We also took a ride on the ferry boats. I enjoyed the names of the boats.

Ours was called the Becky Thatcher and the other boat was the Tom Sawyer.

We had dinner at a local pizza place: Imo's Pizza.

I didn't have high expectations but it was truly great pizza!

We went to the St. Louis temple that night.

The next day we went to the Science Museum (no pics really to speak of)

and my favorite place: The Butterfly Garden.

It happened to be Blue Morpho month and so the most gorgeous and huge blue butterflies were everywhere along with all kinds of other butterflies. 

Okay, enough pics of just butterflies...here is one of us.

The garden is inside and feels like a tropical rainforest which is good compared to outside...

That night for dinner we went to the Melting Pot (a fondue restaurant)

We have never been there before but we had heard good things about it.

Even though my expectations were relatively high...I was still pleasantly surprised how good it was.

We did the 3 course meal! It was so much food but soooo good!

Jared wanted me to take a pic of the meat plate...he was so excited about it. :) 

After a fabulous weekend, we drove home through the snow to our much missed beautiful daughter.
(Thanks Mom & Dad!)

This is what she got out of the deal: 

Coming soon to a blog post near you:

Aurora's 2nd Birthday!