Pistol Practice

 Saturday morning was such an awesome day!  I was able to go with the Young Women in my ward to one of the local shooting ranges.  When we got there, we found out that it was free shooting until 3pm.  That was pretty cool.  I didn't even know they did stuff like that.  They were shooting 22 rifles while I got to shoot my 40 caliber pistol.  Let's just say it was an interesting experience.  I got a lot of strange looks from the shooting range people.  I even made them laugh quite a bit.  I was really nervous mainly because Brian wasn't there with me and it was only my second time actually shooting with my gun.  

One of the shooting range people came up to me and was a little shocked that I was shooting a 40 caliber pistol because I was "so petite."   I had to laugh at that.  I guess I must have shown how nervous I was because one of the rangers said that I kept shaking so much so he wanted to help me out.  I guess it was that obvious how scared I was.  I was more scared of the kick or recoil of it that I kept anticipating it.  It really wasn't as bad as I was thinking it would be.  I think I was just psyching myself out more than anything.  In fact, at one time (while a range person was standing behind me) I ended up shooting off a piece of one of the railroad ties.  Talk about embarrassing.

Another time I noticed my arms were getting tired from holding the gun up to aim it so I put them down for a second to rest them and looked around and noticed that the male leader that went with us was just sitting back chuckling at me.  I had to explain to them that I never really grew up around guns or anything and they made me really nervous, but I just had one for protection and self defense purposes. 

By the time it got closer to leaving, I started doing much better.  I was actually starting to hit closer to the bullseye.  I was also getting much more used to shooting with my gun.  Although, I don't know that I'm going to go to the anymore at least until after I have the baby.  I don't want to do any damage to his hearing.  I guess I didn't do too bad for a pregnant lady whose balance is already off anyway and who had only shot twice in her life.

I won't tell you how many bullets I shot all together because it's just sad.  I was just proud that I hit in the red and black.

After we left the range, we were treated to goodies at one of the local convenience stores.  It was so much fun!  I had such a blast!  No pun intended.

3 of 3 B-day Celebrations

Monday morning I woke up to find Tali sitting at the table in front of her covered left over birthday cake.  Luckily she hadn't gotten into it, but she was just waiting oh so patiently to eat more of her birthday cake.  I of course didn't let her have that for breakfast.  Instead, I gave her a bowl full of some of her favorite fruit and let her watch her favorite cartoon Super Why.

We then got her dressed in one of her new birthday outfits so she could open her last birthday present from us.

Doesn't she look ADORABLE?

Brian and I had bought her a bubble blowing lawn mower for her birthday to play with outside when we're doing yard work.  She absolutely loved it!

She wanted to be just like her mommy and "mow" the lawn.

Her face in this picture just cracks me up!  

Later, I gave Tali her last piece of cake with candles in it to blow out.  She thought that was pretty cool.  We spent the day playing with her new toys and just having fun.  For dinner, I decided to let Tali choose what she wanted for dinner.  She ended up choosing cereal.....yes cereal for dinner.  I of course obliged since it was her birthday after all.  For dessert, mint chocolate chip ice cream.  For a low key day it was pretty nice and relaxing.

2 of 3 B-day Celebrations

Just FYI, this post may be a bit long.  On Sunday, we had family over to celebrate Tali's 2nd birthday after church.  Tali decided that for her birthday she wanted a carebear cake.  Since her favorite color is yellow we decided to make her cake like "funshine bear."  We didn't really have a pattern to go off of for decorating, so Brian just decided to wing it.  I thought he did a pretty good job with the cake though. 

"Happy Birthday 2 you!"

Tali loved her cake..... 

but really LOVED the rocky road ice cream.

After cake and ice cream, Tali went in her room to check on her cousin who had fallen asleep on her bed.  I thought this picture was really sweet!

Tali just wanted to hold his hand.  What a sweet girl she is!

It was now time to open gifts.

Tali's Aunt Missy had gotten her a big super cool purple bouncy ball that she just LOVES as well as a really cute summer outfit.  Tali ran to give her a hug to show her appreciation.

Tali really liked opening all her gifts.  Her Nanna Monson had gotten her the Cars movie as well as the second Tinkerbell movie.

Her Grandma "Nette" had gotten her Monsters Inc which is one of her absolute favorite movies.

She was so cute.  She kept grabbing her new movies and hugging them.  It was really cute!

She really loved all her new gifts!

Brian and I had bought Tali a few new outfits.  Here is one of the shirts we bought for her.

I don't know if you can read it or not, but is says "If Momma says NO!  Just ask Daddy."  Truer words have never been spoken!

We also got Tali these really cute Curious George jammies which she just LOVES.

Tali then started to take off really quickly with all of her great gifts.  It was pretty funny.

She had to come back for a hug from Daddy before taking off  and play with her cousins again.  It was such a fun day!

1 of 3 B-day Celebrations

Last week was Tali's 2nd birthday.  I cannot believe how fast that has gone by!  We celebrated her birthday over three days because we knew Brian wouldn't have a lot of time to celebrate it on her actual birthday due to work and school.

On Saturday, we decided to take Tali out to dinner at McDonald's and let her play on the slides.  She had a blast...so much so that she didn't even really eat.

Peek-a-boo!

 Brian even wanted to get in on the fun.  He's a kid at heart.  Tali LOVES that about her daddy.

Time to go down the slide!  Here they come!

Ahhhh!

 Watch your head Daddy!

Now it's Tali's turn to go by herself.

 Tali loved every minute of it!

Backyard Project

A couple of years ago, Brian and I decided we wanted to take down our aluminum awnings in our front and back yard and build a pergola.  The reason for this is because we had discovered birds building their nests in them and had occasionally found dead birds hanging from it that had tried to get out of the nest.  I know.  It was pretty disgusting.  Luckily, I didn't have to take care of it.  Brian cleaned them out.  

This year we finally started to take down the aluminum awning in our back yard.  Brian has been working really hard to get the awning taken down by himself.  Here is what it looked like after taking off the awning top and before we took out the aluminum posts.  Ignore the mess.

  Brian then started taking out the aluminum posts that were cemented in.  It was really hard work to do it by himself.  I kind of felt guilty that I couldn't help.

This is one of the cement blocks from the first post that had been taken out.  We now have three new posts cemented in and are just waiting for the cement to dry and then we can finish building the rest of the pergola.  Oh and for those of you who don't know what a pergola is or what it looks like here is a similar idea of what we're building.

 We planted wisteria vines (with purple flowers) to grow up the two sides and then we'll put icicle lights around it.  It will look really good once it's all done.  I'll post more pictures once we get it done.

Family Fun

Last week I had gone over to hang out with my sister.  While we were there, I was able to get some really cute pictures of Tali playing with her cousins.  She absolutely adores them!

Tali had recently discovered a new favorite toy at her cousins house....the slide.  She LOVED playing on it!  Her and her cousins would practically race to get to the slide to go down it first.

Good times!

I love this picture of Tali and her cousin.

After they were done playing on the slide, they decided to go play on the trampoline. 

 What a bunch of cute kids!  Can you see the family resemblance?

Tali had so much fun spending time with her aunt and cousins.

7 Months

I know I'm almost eight months, but I have had so much going on and haven't had a lot of time to update my blog.  

Brian and I took these photos while we were on our little 5 year anniversary trip.  While we were taking photos, we decided we should take a couple prego pics.  Here I am at 7 months pregnant.  Enjoy!

We really liked the background so that's why decided to do the prego pics there.

This picture is kind of weird looking, but you get the idea of how big I'm getting.

Finally Done!

The past week I have been keeping myself plenty busy!  The project I've been working on was baby bedding for our son Jairus.  I decided to make his bedding from the Pixar movie Cars.  Here are some photos of how it turned out.  Mind you this is only my second sewing project ever really.  I was quite proud of it.

I had only completed some of it at this point, but I put things in there to get a visual of what everything would look like.

Here is the finished product with the crib lifted and everything.  I finally finished the bedding at about 1:30 this morning.  YAY!  It's DONE!!!

I think I may actually make a valance and possibly a quilt if I can find a material that is complimentary to what I already have.

Mother's Day

M

Mother's Day started out awesome!  When Tali woke up, she came straight to me and just cuddled with me and wrapped her arms around my neck.  She is so sweet!  I just love it when she does that!  Brian and Tali then cooked me eggs, toast, and some orange juice for breakfast.  Brian also got Tali all ready for church and changed every dirty diaper.  What an awesome hubby I have!

When we got to church, I even got a huge Symphony bar for Mother's Day.  My ward really knows how to treat the mothers!  The way to a mother's heart is through chocolate!

I absolutely LOVE my family!  I am so grateful everyday for them. They truly make my life so worthwhile.  I could not imagine my life without them.  

Thank you guys for such a wonderful Mother's Day!

Anniversary Fun

For our five year anniversary, Brian and I wanted to do something special.  We ended up buying a wedding cake top to eat for our five year.  Funny thing is our original wedding cake looked awful!  Nothing like we wanted and on top of that we spent about $150 for it.  Dumb I know.  This year, when we bought our cake, it was really no different from our wedding cake five years ago.  When we called to make sure we could pick up our cake at the scheduled time, they couldn't even find our order because it was put under a different date.  Then when we went to go pick it up the next morning, they thought that we were picking it up at 10pm (mind you the bakery closed at 9pm)instead of 10am.  Who picks up and eats a cake anyway at 10pm?!?  When we finally picked up the cake, it looked sloppy and nothing like the picture we saw when we ordered it.  The birthday cakes as well all the other cakes looked better than what we were given.  They even forgot to put my wedding colors on the cake like we wanted (they even had all the instructions and everything we wanted written out on our order).  We also wanted a whipped cream frosting....yeah that didn't happen either.  Luckily, we were able to get a full refund as well as a $25 gift card for all our trouble.  Brian and I just joke now about how our wedding cake was a disaster as well as our anniversary cake, so really, it's very fitting.  :)

After the whole cake incident, we traveled up to Logan to stay at the Anniversary Inn.  It was AWESOME!!!!  We stayed in the Aphrodite Court room.  Of course I had to surprise Brian with a little extra stuff.  I had them scatter the room with real rose petals....

put tea candles to the stairs leading up to the bath tub and gave us two flute glasses filled with Hershey kisses along with some complimentary sparkling cider and cheesecake!  Mmmmm!  I was in HEAVEN!

We of course had to take some fun photos....don't worry, they are all decent.  Here are a few we took while we were there.

imagine this without the body pillow and the Walmart bag on the bed.  It was so pretty!

We of course couldn't forget to do a cake cutting ceremony thing.

We were going to go to the temple, but by the time we got there and got settled in, it was already 7pm and so we decided to go look for somewhere nice to eat.  Apparently there were quite a few weddings going on so EVERYWHERE was PACKED!  We ended up just eating at The Olive Garden.  It was really nice to be able to go out on a date with just my hubby.

Saturday morning, our breakfast was delivered to our room!  Those scone things were filled with cream cheese.  It was delicious!

We then of course had to take more pictures.

We LOVED our room...

 

and the cheesecake....

but we love each other more :)

Before we left Logan, we decided to go to check out the temple and maybe take some photos.  Unfortunately, it was too packed with weddings, so we just took pictures of the temple instead.

I really thought Tali would have a hard time being without us overnight.  Apparently, she did better than I did.  She did so good with my in-laws.  I on the other hand, woke up at 4AM wide awake because I couldn't sleep.  I guess she will be okay without us when we have the baby.