12 on the 12th--May 2018 Edition

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1. Randy slept in his clothes on the couch all night after falling asleep there, weird.
2. I worked on my primary lesson while watching The Durrells in Corfu (delightful).
3. I spent a long time cutting things out, but I was happy with the results.
4. A pleasing pile of cancelled posted I recently purchased on Etsy.
5. Mother's Day tulips for my mom and cute jars of flowers for Robyn and Amy.
6. I changed the pictures in the frames over our bed after having the previous pictures there for 11 years.
7. Landon did a marvelous job mowing the lawn, it's so nice having him home from Utah State.
8. What I'm currently reading. It's so charming and makes me want to move to Cornwall, England to live in a cozy cottage.
9. The current message on our letterboard.
10. Randy doing some work on his laptop.
11. Our Allium are in bloom.
12. Reading in the cozy with Ferris purr/snoring on my chest.

Miss Sassy Pants Turns 14

This year Whitney's birthday fell on the Saturday of Fall Break, so she had Thursday and Friday off of school leading up to it.

On Thursday my mom picked her up and took her to lunch and then birthday shopping with some money from us and then some from my parents. They also had plans to pick Bella and Tess up from the train to join them for the end of their shopping outing and then for a sleepover at my parents' house.

Whitney saying goodbye to Junie.

Whitney and Bella came back to our house Friday afternoon (Tess went home) and entertained themselves so much I hardly saw them.

On Saturday, we joined my entire family at Wheeler Farms for family pictures. Usually we set up my tripod and a self-timer and hope for the best but this year Robyn's boyfriend (who is a professional photographer) offered to do a photo shoot with us. It's so weird that the kids are all getting so big! Ashley is the youngest cousins and she's now 8 1/2...crazy. It felt like they were tiny for so long and now it feels like they're all teenagers.

After a couple hours of of photo taking, me, Lori, Whitney and Bella went to lunch at Apollo Burger. I took this shot of Whitney modeling her birthday shopping finds (i.e., new shoes, new jeans and new sweater) which she is thrilled about.

She loves, loves, loves these Sassy shoes!

Lori wore her sunglasses during lunch because she was next to a bright window. She could have closed the blinds but she and Bella said the sun felt nice. It was funny to sit across from her wearing glasses though.

Next we went to Color Me Mine (just like last year).

Lori took this fabulous photo of the girls.

Lori and I both painted mugs.

I painted this mug (which will end up being a bright turquoise after it's fired), Bella painted the bulldog, Lori did an ombre affect on her mug, and Whitney did a really cute little sugar bowl, lid and small spoon which she'll probably eat cereal out of.

Later that evening we got together at Lori's house to finally celebrate her birthday (which was September 8th), Landon's birthday (which was August 10th), Andrew's birthday (which was September 29th), Randy's birthday (which was October 12th) and Whitney's birthday...apparently we've had a really hard time getting everyone together. Robyn and Lyman (boyfriend) ended up having a couple Halloween party to be at and Landon ended up going to the BYU-Nevada game, but other than that we were all there.

The spread of gifts. Lori wanted work done for her gifts so Adam and Randy hung a couple heavy duty items, mounted her flat screen tv to the wall and fixed a toilet.

We had cheesecake AND the Oreo Ice Cream dessert.

All lined up so we could sing to them.

We relit candles and put them on Andrew's piece of dessert so he could blow them out and spray as needed.

Spring Revelry

I took myself to Thanksgiving Point on Tuesday (after having lunch with Amie) for four hours of strolling in the Spring sunshine and taking over 600 photos! Taking photos of flowers is one of my favorite things to do so it was an excellent outing for me and I thoroughly enjoyed being alone so that I didn't have to worry about anyone being bugged by my frequent stops. I wandered around and soaked it all up, plus hardly anyone was there so it felt like I had the place to myself.

Which photo is your favorite?

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Thanksgiving 2013

For Thanksgiving this year we gathered at my parents' townhouse for the first time ever as an entire family (it's much smaller than the Compound in Freakin Eagle Mountain).

The kids were excited to see each other.

We need to take family pictures before dinner so we hopped into the cars and drove around the corner to try to find a place that wasn't too sunny. 

We found some shade nearby that was backed by piles of manure! It wreaked for sure, but served our purposes and was definitely memorable. We took four shots with the tripod and self-timer.

We had Amy take our family photos (no easy task) and she ended up having to stand in the doorway of our car so she could shoot us from above, it was pretty funny. She also had to work around the trash and manure in the background. Good times.

Back at the house the boys played video games, while the girls played one of Whitney's creative games.

Amy helped Robyn with a photography app for her phone, and Olivia and Megan laid on the floor (which was funny because we hadn't even eaten yet).

We all fit at the same table except for Ashley, Megan and Olivia who sat at a little table nearby.

Andrew made an appearance with his besties.

Tess was in charge of organizing names to be drawn for Christmas gift exchange.

We hung out all day.

Amy was oh so happy to get a little nap in.

And then the M&Ms and games came out.

We taught Randy and Landon how to play Wizard.

I brought Thanksgiving Bingo (which I got from Pinterest) and it went over huge.

I also brought Catch Phrase which meant the kids could all play too. It was pretty funny.