Wedding Bells Are Ringing

So this is the real reason I flew up to Idaho: Isn't my niece beautiful?

Here are all my brothers and sisters except for my brother in South Africa.  We are posing outside of the Logan temple as we wait for the bride and groom to come out. What a good looking family.

My sister made the wedding cake.

Here is the father of the bride (my brother in law) hastily putting the finishing touches on the pulled pork, which was served at the reception.

Three sisters with very tired feet at the end of the day! (Actually, this was totally posed, as we are hoping to guilt our sister into decorating for our children's weddings! Do you think it will work?)   

 So much fun visiting with my brother, his new wife, and my sisters.  The wedding was beautiful, too, although I did miss Brent and our munchkins.  Always good to come home again.

My fabulous day...

There comes a time in a girl's life, where she has to endure a birthday. A big birthday.

So for FHE on Monday, Kayla baked me a birthday cake, and we celebrated early.  Thanks guys!   Then, on my birthday, I left home and flew to Boise, to get some TLC from Kirsty. Here's the cake she baked for me while I'm posing in her rose garden.

Then she took me to Miss Tami's Cottage for a monte carlo.  (Which involves ham, swiss cheese and powdered sugar.)

I decided to play some blues, but Kona (alias Coconut the dog) took the show with his singing.

This is the sidewalk chalk card that Lauren and Kirsten blame on their kids. Thanks little nieces and nephews! 

(It says, "Over the hill, its all downhill from here, with a beautiful green chalk hill. The rest you can read for yourself.)

And, of course, what is a big birthday without black balloons and dying roses.  Thanks so much, Kirsty.

Sisters are life's best kept secrets.

Catching up on Important Summer Happenings...

The three girls spent the summer swimming on a swim team with their cousin.  Lots of hours swimming laps.

This is what the two boys were doing while their sisters were at the pool.....

But the girls did really well at the championships. Here is Karina showing off her medals and ribbons.

Here is Kayla with her swim medals and ribbons. She also won the trophy for the most points in her age group.

 Kimberley, with her medals and ribbons.  She joined the high school swim team.

Later on that summer, Kayla had a birthday. She went for pure taste with her angel food birthday cakes and strawberries and whipped cream.  Her Bell cousins came and celebrated with her. 

The next month, Kimberley celebrated a birthday.  Which one is the cake, and which one her birthday present? 

 With the move, swimming, and birthdays, the summer was really, really short, but a lot of fun.



Crazy Fun Summer

Crazy Fun Summer 2010

As a family we did so much this summer its hard to narrow down the pictures to post. First, we moved, so here are some moving pictures:


Our last night in Biloxi, MS, we went to the beach, and flew Kayla's kite.  It was on her to do list.  You can see the moon shining in the background.

This is what our house looked likeall packed up.

This also gives you a good idea of the colors. 

Michael loved playing hide and seek with the boxes.  And then they were gone.

Here is our home in Arizona. Jumping ahead a little, this was the first day of school.

But before school started, the kids were part of the cast of "Once Upon A Princess" directed by Aunt Lauren. Here the boys are making their costumes and props.

Princess Fred, Queen Kim, Princess Karina, Jester/sheep Matthew and Jester/sheep Michael. Kimberley designed and painted the sign.

Everyone got to paint the backdrops.  Aunt Lauren now has pink and grey spots on her garage floor.

Two jesters.

Queen Kim on her throne.

Princess Karina auditioning for the chance to marry Prince Dauntless.

Queen Kim positioning the pea under the mattress.

Prince Dauntless packing every sharp object he could find under the mattresss.

Princess Fred and Prince Dauntless high fiving. (They are, after all, cousins.) 

And then, of course, there was swimming.  But that is going to have to be another post!

Finally: Matthew's April Birthday Party

Matthew had a birthday in April.  He'd been planning his birthday for over a year as last year we'd collected all the cool party stuff for his birthday, but then we never actually had the party. Nice little kid that he is, Matthew decided to postpone his space party to this year's birthday. 

Here's the cake that Matthew designed, and mom baked.

In keeping with the space theme, everyone got to do scientific experiments.

What's a party without streamers?

And here we have blastoff!  If you look carefully, you'll see I caught the very beginning of the bottle eruption on camera.  More important was the pure joy on two little boy's faces.

And what is a scientific space party without a little milk art? The two black things are raisins, from the bouncing raisin experiment.

What a fun time.  Matthew said it was worth the wait. 

Here's Dad lighting the moom/rocket ship cake.

Very, very cool.

Leaving Biloxi...

Leaving Biloxi...
Our last day in Biloxi was designed to keep us there until the last possible minute!  A long story, but it involoved a last minute trip to the car dealer, to fix a broken window.....Here's two cuties, waiting with Dad for the car to be fixed.

Finally, however, we captured our last Biloxi sunset in our rearview mirror.  We left at 3pm, and drove to Texas.

The second night we drove to Lubbock, Texas, and visited with good friends. We also revisited some good memories of our years spent in Lubbock.  Kayla mentioned that the elementary school had shrunk! Our old house still has the best yard on the block.

The next night, we visited Grandma Lucile.  We spent a couple of nights and went to church in Las Cruces. The kids collected memories, pecans, and home made cookies from Grandma's cookie jar. We enjoyed every moment of our visit.

Finally, after four days of travelling, we drove into Tucson.  We spent our first night with the Bells, our Tucson cousins (Delwyn's sister.)  Our new home was ready for us the next day, and our boxes began arriving at around 10 am.Our old Biloxi sunsets are quite a bit different from our new sunsets--we couldn't have moved somewhere more different from the Gulf Coast if we'd tried! 

Life is good.