Uncle Bryan's 40th Birthday Party!

Bryan is Kimball's eldest brother. On this night we celebrated his 40th birthday! Bryan is truly a wonderful example of son, father, husband, brother, friend. We love Uncle Bryan!

We swam, BBQ'd, ate cake, and played party games. Karin went all out planning this party. Thanks Karin, we had a blast!


Karin and the birthday cake she made for Bryan. The inside was Rice Krispie Treats! Awesome!


Gage and Amberly had tons of fun jumping off the boulders into the pool! They started off in life jackets by by the end the took them off and jumped in. If you know my kids, you know what a feat that was for them!

Carrigan loved swimming with her cousins. She is becoming a little fish!

Emmalin and Daddy!

Bryan and his cake.

"Pin the toupe on Bryan"

Ashley gave a roast about Bryan, teasing him about how "old" he is getting, complete with wig and glasses. The roast was also inspiring and helped us learn more about Bryan.

More games about Bryan's life.

We hope it was as fun for you Bryan as it was for us! We had soooo much fun!

Piano Before and After (almost)

A friend of ours had this piano in her home for 7 years. She rescued it from a school dumpster. She saved enough to buy a brand new piano and wanted her old piano to go to a good home. She called us and told us it was seriously the ugliest piano but it sounded good. She was right on both accounts. It was SERIOUSLY ugly but it sounded good. Well after doing some research on the internet I was finally ready to TRY and give it a makeover. Check out these before pics. Deep scratches and gouges. Stickers on it. Key tops chipping off. Ugh! I had my work cut out for me for sure!

It's still not gorgeous. There are some areas that I need to sand and paint again. And we are waiting for the key tops which I think will really help. But here it is for now. Even though it's not perfect at least it's an improvement from what it was! For now it will do and will sit proudly in our living room while we save our pennies for a new one!

Summer Fun

So last summer we bought a swimming pool. We LOVED it and had so much fun in it. We couldn't wait to get it out and set up this year. Memorial Weekend we cleared a place and got it all layed out. Darn thing had a hole that we couldn't find. We TRIED for a week and a half to find the hole. We had some pretty sad kids, but it wasn't in the budget to get a new one because of some unexpected expenses that came our way at the same time. Well... this past weekend a dear friend of Kimball's decided to spoil our children and bought them a pool. He doesn't have children yet and is much too kind to ours! My kids call him Uncle John. Well, the pool is up and the kids are like little fish. Thank you John. You are WONDERFUL!

Our family now has a goal to find a way to pay it forward!

Zions Camp

(Posted by Kimball)

The second week of June I went to Williams with the young men from our stake. There were about 35 ranging in age from 14-18. We planned out a whole week of games, hikes, food, and fun.

We started the week with some games on the first day and a night hike that tested EVERYBODY. It was about 12 miles round trip with an elevation change of 2500 ft up. We got everyone home and in bed at around 3 am. What impressed me was they all got up at 6 am to get to a scheduled service project for the city of Williams the next morning. Most of them did not complain.

The following is some of what happened.

As you can see, the area we camped was absolutely beatutiful!

Each quorum of boys were responsible to first build their "shelter" using some wood and tarps. No sleeping in tents on this trip, it was all about teamwork and group unity.

For some of the games they worked together to get things done.

This is the popular 10 foot wall. The record this year for 3 people was 10.5 seconds held by the Palo Verde priests. The record for 5 people was held by the adult leaders at 21 seconds.

We built some trebuchets from scratch with the help of Wiley Ahlstrom. The record there was set by the 2nd Ward at 125 paces or about the length of a football feild from endzone to endzone. They shot big grapefruit.

Brother Hansen built a human bowling ball for one of the games. I was the guinea pig.

Team working together to solve the problem at hand.

The boys did some service for the city of Williams by picking up trash for the Hog Rally the following day.

We ate very well the whole trip.

That bacon looks great! Day 3, bacon looks AMAZING! They looked like zombies.

Shannon Shultz made the whole eating experience top notch. Great cook. Great smile.

Some showed up with a bad attitude.

But the attitudes improved and everyone had lots of fun.

The squirrels in the Grand Canyon are not shy.

Bishop Hoopes overlooking the South Rim.

Kyle, Skylar, and CJ

We all had scriptures to memorize through the week that all focused on obedience. Tom Gassaway is passing off one here with Bishop Hoopes.

Wade Gable, Moroni Dominguez, and Tom Gassaway all resting after a long hike in and out of the Grand Canyon.

President Ricky King and his son Spencer.

After the week was ended we had an award meeting and then a testimony meeting. This is a group of tired young men and old men. Ironically, the whole meeting was surrounded by rain, hail, lightning, and thunder...just like the origonal Zion's Camp. It was a good time.

Amberly Lost Her 1st Tooth!!!

It seems like Amberly has been waiting for this moment her WHOLE life! She was soooo excited to get a visit from the tooth fairy!

She is a little disappointed that losing a tooth hasn't affected the way she speaks. She was sure hoping that her "s" sound would be funny! Silly girl!

Another Craft Post

So, I have a HUGE project on my "to do" list. I need/want to paint my piano. It is the ugliest thing but I am so grateful to have it. I have researched how to go about it and bought all of my supplies. But, I am SCARED!! So while I work up the nerve to get my piano painted I work on smaller projects. Here are a few that I have done recently.

Have you checked out Picnik.com. All you do is upload a photo and they have all of these fun enhancing tools. I uploaded a picture of my kids and turned it into a pencil scetch. Cute.

I finished this and it hangs proudly by the front door. I used the same hymn book pages that I made my wreath with (in my last craft post) to make the flowers.

Silhouettes of my children. I have made silhouettes of them before, but it's amazing how quickly they change in just over a years time. Emmalin looked like Alfred Hitchcock in her first one. It was time for a change. This time I used green toile fabric for my mats and glued on some glass beads.

This isn't anything fancy (nothing I make is). I painted the mats that came with the frames orange. I LOVE orange! I took some of the wording from "The Proclamation to the Family" and fiddled around with it on the computer until I came up with this.

I made a couple of topiaries to flank my kitchen window. Some of you might recognize that green fabric from my Statue of Liberty costume last Halloween. I'm all about repurposing!
I call this my "bloomin onion". Just pieces of canvas glued down in a circular pattern.

I keep my apothocary jar full of "pumpkin spice" Hershey's kisses. I buy a year supply of them at Halloween time. Not only are they yummy, they are ORANGE! Again, I love orange! I'm sure you have seen the apothocary jars all over blogland. So easy to put together with a jar, wooden finial, and a candlestick.

Pillows! I have an unnatural obsession with pillows and plates. Anyways, I was looking through a fabric remnant bin and found this orange fabric for .60 cents. The pillow covers went together so quickly. It was fun to twist the rosettes into shape.

I went to a girls night recently and we worked on vinyl projects. Everyones projects turned out so cute. This is mine. It took FOREVER to pick all of those tiny windows out.

I decided to try my hand a free-handing these wooden signs. One for my kitchen and one for my laundry room. They aren't perfect, which is the look I'm going for...right?!

Well, now I need to go and get my paino done. Wish me luck. I guess it really can't look any worse than it does now. We shall see...