Weekend

It has been a very relaxing weekend here. Saturday we got to babysit Mandi's kids while they went to the temple. It was very fun. We watched A Goofy Movie and then took them to the park. Brooke was a bit afraid of the dogs at first but she did better as the time went on, while Cameron loves them and chased them around.On Saturday Night we had double date night with Brett's parents. We had dinner and then We went mini golfing and had a lot of fun. Then we went back and played wii bowling for a while.

Today has been a very very lazy day... we had church at 9- which was really good. I like our ward the Relief Society women are very nice. And since then, we have been laying around watching Grey's Anatomy and I had a bath.

Very nice weekend... now back to work tomorrow. I switched offices so things are in chaos so I will have to deal with all of that organization tomorrow.

Dreaming of Laundry

So, we have been at our new place for 3 weeks now and still dont have a washer and dryer. It really threw us off moving as soon as we did as far as being able to buy one. We have been going to the laundry mat.... fun huh? We went to the Laundry mat last weekend and as a result, I dreamt about laundry all night... strange.

Luckily Brett is doing the laundry today while I work.


We have been looking in the classifieds for a nice cheap set and hopefully in 2 weeks we will get used ones... and I can stop dreaming of clothes.

(my dream set :) they are so pretty)

Vegas Day 2

Day two in Vegas was just as fun as day 1-- The passes gave us $10 a day at Planet Hollywood and the first day we bought stuff from the store but day two it paid for our breakfast. After that we went over to the Las Vegas Zoo. I am such a zoo lover but this zoo was sad and depressing. It is a small little zoo and it is apparent that there is little funding.We did what we could there and then headed over to the Go Karts. We did the adult grand prix which you need a license to do. THey were super fast and it was so fun! We had pizza for lunch there as well.
After that we went back to the hotel to rest a bit. Later, we headed out to the Madame Trusseu's Wax Museum which was SO cool. It really was amazing how real some of the statues looked. We had fun taking pictures with all of them.After that, we walked down the strip a bit to the Paris hotel. It was actually quite a walk and our feet hurt but we finally made it and went up on the Eiffle tower. The view is beautiful from up there and it is the perfect place to watch the water show at the Bellagio.
For dinner we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. This was the only thing we actually had to pay money for the entire day... everything else was included in our passes.
The passes are the coolest thing we have ever done. We did so much stuff in Vegas. We added it all up and we did over $200 worth of stuff for $88 dollars a person and we didn't even do everything we could have... there was just not enough time.

We had SO much fun on our vacation!

Vegas Day 1

.Brett and I are in Las Vegas with my sister Alyssa and her husband Kellen. We got here last night pretty late and we were very tired form the trip so we ended up just going right to bed. A few weeks ago I found these Super Passes online. It cost us $88 bucks a person for 2 days and includes a lot of places and attractions in Vegas. Today we went to ride the rollercoaster at the New York New York.

Then we headed over to the Mirage to see the dolphin exhibit and the Sigfried and Roy Secret Garden that had White Lions and Tigers. It was really cool.

Then we went to Sky Zone, which is this huge place made of all trampolines. We had a fun time jumping around and trying flips and such. Then we played a few games of dodge ball with some kids.

We are staying at the circus Circus and the passes include full day passes to the Adventure Dome. We went and rode a few rides there before lunch.

Later we went over to the stratosphere and went up to the top. We rode the Insanity ride which was really fun.

After all that, we were sure tired so we came back to the hotel to rest and go to bed.

The passes allow us to do anything we want to do again tomorrow plus there are still a lot of things we didnt do that we will do... stay tuned.

Engagement pictures

Today I got to take Macy and Drew's engagement pictures. It was really really fun for me to do and they turned out really cute.

Deacon

Dallin got ordained to a deacon on Sunday. I still can't believe he is old enough to be passing the sacrament. The whole family gathered in a room at the church to support Dallin. He looked so grown up and I was so proud. Then we had a gathering at Papa's house. I love having a house full of people I love.

Hillbillies

Both of my sisters were in town this weekend... which means that some crazy stuff goes on. We found these nasty teeth in a vending machine at Burlington Coat Factory when we went to get a suit with Dallin. We went out to dinner and walked into the restaurant like this...

Lyss and Kellen brought Chewie, Kellen's mom's dog. He got along pretty well with the others... I was able to get a picture of all 4 together.
THis is my new favorite picture of my sweet mimi...
More pictures from the weekend to come later in the week.

My baby is 12!

My baby Brother is 12 today!! Wow. I remember the day he was born, being woken up in the middle of the night, Driving to the hospital, falling asleep in the bathtub, then waking up at 1 in the morning to witness my brother come into this world. It was an amazing experience, and one that I will never forget. I was 12 so, he was in a way my baby as well. I learned how to care for him and it was really good for me to have that experience- there began my LOVE for babies. He became the joy of our whole family.... the youngest child, the youngest grandchild and the cutest kid ever...

My favorite story of Dallin: I was on the computer one day when he was probably just about to turn two. He was a chatty little guy and added EE- onto the beginning of everything he said. He left and went up to my mom and said "EEE-Coly-den-E-Peter! and he kept saying it over and over again... for weeks we could not figure it out... My mom finally figured it out... Cali's in the Den on the Computer... The name stuck.. my family still calls me E-Cali-Den.

Dallin will get ordained to a decon and recieve the priesthood this sunday. I am so proud of him. I love him with all my heart. Happy Birthday little brother.. (Buddy Booch)

Home Sweet Home....

We are finally getting a bit settled into our new house... We really really love it here. We moved the boxes from Orem to Lehi on Thursday night. We had Dad Smith, Adam, Grayson and Todd help us load and unload the moving truck and we also had 3 of Brett's cousins Ryan, Tyler and Jacob come help unload. There is a lot of stairs in our new house but the guys were so helpful and got all the boxes in the right rooms. I felt bad because my scrapbook room is on the top level so they had to carry many many many heavy boxes up 40 stairs... (yes there are 40 stairs in ny house!) but everyone survived and we are so grateful for everyone that helped. We have been unpacking ever since and that is the hard part. It takes forever and I cant believe the amount of stuff we have accumulated in 4 years. We are getting closer and closer to being done unpacking. I a getting tired of having these boxes all over my house. But we are loving our new grown up house and are so lucky to have found it. We have the main living areas done and looking nice so here are those pictures... other pictures of the upstairs bedrooms and the office to come....

Front door and porch:

Kitchen:


Living Room:

Garage: (yes we finally don't have to scrape our windows in the winter anymore)Funny Story: So our ceiling in our living room is very very tall. and there is a fan with these short little strings... They are both controlled by a light switch below but the strings were not pulled to the on position. how is a person supposed to turn the fan or the lights on? It took us a while but we tied a dustpan onto pur mop stick and Brett squeezed through this tiny opening in our staircase to get it on... after all that, we got the fan to work but all of the light bulbs are burned out.... bummer.



We got our fish tank all set up on Saturday night and then went to buy some fish... I had a $20 budget for fish and was able to get 2 tiger barbs, 2 silver dollars, a blue gourami, 1 red tailed shark, and an algae eater. Pretty good deal. The standard rule for fish tanks is 1 inch of fish per gallon of water. We have a 45 gallon tank and so far the fish we got equal 21 inches full grown. So we still will add quite a few more fish to our tank- including an angel fish, bala sharks and a catfish. We have only ever had goldfish before so it is fun to have tropical fish this time.

My nephew Andrew got blessed yesterday. He looked so cute in his little white tux. It was already off by the time we took pictures with him but oh well. We had a big Smith family get together after, It was really fun to see and visit with everyone. Mandi and Adam will be moving to Missouri this summer. Adam got into the PhD Program at Mizzou. I sure will miss them... especially the little ones. Even with this news, we do not regret not moving to St Louis- It would have been SO fun to be there all together but it has been proven to us over and over again that being here was the right thing for us.

Both of my sisters will be in town with their husband/fiance. It is really rare these days and I am really excited. Alyssa and Kellen will be staying at our house because Drew's mom is coming also and there is no room at my mom's so we need to get the spare bedroom in order- which has been the dumping ground for anything we don't know what to do with. So that should be fun.