Our Yard

Our yard has slowing been going downhill ever since we moved into our house 3 1/2 years ago. When we moved here I was sure I hated gardening. I've since changed my mind! This summer we finally decided to do something about our yard.

Here are a couple of before shots. Don't you love all the weeds? It had so many thistles that the kids couldn't even play on it. Something was also wrong with the sprinklers and you had to manually turn them on (in the basement) when you wanted to water. Such a pain. I don't even have a picture of the backyard. Just imagine knee high weeds.

We hired some landscapers, to come and do all of the dirty work, and it took them about a week. They were amazingly fast!

They...

- Tour up the front and back yard

-Ripped out the old sprinklers and put new sprinklers in the front and back

-Put new wood chips in our flowerbeds

-Put a weed killer mat under all of the wood chips (I don't have any idea what the official name is?)

-Put good top soil in the front and back yard

-Put in a flower bed on the north side of the house and in the backyard

-Planted flowers and plants in the flowerbeds

-Put a drip watering system in all of my flowerbeds

-Planted two big beautiful trees in the front yard

-Laid sod in the front and back yard

-Put gravel and stepping stones on the south side of the house

-Put curbing around all my flowerbeds and the two trees

-Put in a fence with two gates in the back yard

The Front Flower Beds.

One of our Beautiful Trees!

North Flowerbed.

South side gravel.

Back flowerbed.

Our backyard!

It's so nice to have some privacy and it's wonderful to be able to contain the kids!

Twilight Movie News!

I just found out some exciting news from stepheniemeyer.com!

"The good people at Summit were thrilled to let me know that now Twilight fans are going to get their movie three weeks earlier than scheduled. That's right—Twilight will be released in theaters November 21st! Let the merry-making commence!"

-Stephenie

I just had to pass on the good news!

Welcome To Forks!

You need to read this post while listening to Starlight By:Muse (on my music player on the right)!!! True fans know what I'm talking about.

So I'm a HUGE Twilight Saga fan and just had to have a party to celebrate the release of Breaking Dawn. I invited some friends over for a fun Girls Night Out!

This is the entrance to the back yard where the party was held. You can't see the white Christmas lights around the "trees" and the swag but it looked awesome when it turned dark.


I had huge red, black and white tissue paper flowers hanging down from the tent ceiling. Which you can't see in this picture but it looked awesome.





These were the centerpieces!

Here is our food buffet. I also made signs of all of my favorite Twilight quotes and stuck them up all over the fence.

We had Sparkling Fruit!!

Blood Red Ice Cold Punch.

We also had Vegetarian Salad!

We finished off dinner with some Dangerous Dessert! Team Edward and Team Jacob Cupcakes.

After Dinner we Played Twilight Jeopardy. It was a lot of fun and Tahnie won by hundreds of points! I was seriously impressed. There were some hard questions in there.

These are the party favors I made for everyone. You can't really see them but in the left back are some Twilight bags and in the red Chinese take out boxes are super cute T-shirts I made. Some of them had a picture of an apple with a bite out of the side and they said,"Bite Me" the other ones had the Twilight movie poster picture on them. We had a great time talking about all the Twilight books and talking about what we thought would happen in the fourth one. I was dying to get the fourth book and didn't get it from Amazon until Tuesday-Aug.12 (It was released on Sat. Aug. 9). It was pure torture waiting for it! I loved reading the fourth book but my favorite is still Twilight, then Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and finally New Moon. If you haven't read these books you're really missing out! I CANNOT wait until Dec. 12 when Twilight the movie hits movie theaters!

High School Tag

High School Tag
I saw this on Anna's blog and thought it would be a fun one to do.

1. Did you date someone from your school? Yes, Senior Year I had a pretty serious relationship.

2. What kind of car did you drive? A Grandma car. It was some kind of brown Buick. Sweet!

3. Did you pass your driver's license test on the first try? Just barely.

4. Were you a party animal? Nope, I was such a good teen! I never even snuck out of the house.

5. Were you considered a flirt? Nope

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Choir; we called it Tapestry. And we went on an awesome trip to Disney World Junior year. It was the best.

7. Were you a nerd? No

8. Were you on any varsity teams? Drill Team for four years.

9. Did you get suspended/expelled? No

10. Can you still sing the fight song? Um..... nope, sorry. Maybe if I heard the music it would come rushing back to me?

11. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. Draper and Mrs. Sylvester

12. Where did you sit during lunch? I mostly went and ate at Dick's Drive In, Summit Inn or Kamas Food Town.

13. What was your school's full name? South Summit High School

14. School mascot and colors? Wildcats and our colors were kelly green and white.

15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with? Yes, it was just a casual dance in the gym after the game. (Am I remembering this wrong? Did we have a formal homecoming dance?)

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? No way. I have some really awesome memories. Especially from Junior and Senior year. But that was the past and I want to live now.

17. What do you remember most about graduation? Staying up all night for our senior party at the high school. It was really fun. I won a huge green bean bag. It was hilarious to try and get that thing stuffed into my grandma car! Also I remember pining for my ex and being so excited when he gave me a hug. Weird, the things we remember, huh?

18. Where did you go senior skip day? Lagoon and Karalee and I were late getting on the bus and everyone was booing at us. In our defense we really had to go to the bathroom, and it was halfway across the park.

19. Were you in any clubs? Governor's Youth Council, Future Business Leaders of America, and Future Homemakers of America

20. Have you gained some weight since then? Nope, I weigh the same as I did in HS after FOUR kids. I'm pretty proud of that fact.

21. Who was your prom date? Junior Prom-Shane Hilton (from rival school North Summit), Junior Prom (when I was a senior)-Rick Shaw, and Senior Ball-Trent Vernon.

22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? Yep, it was just this month! See a couple of posts below.

23. Did you have a job while in high school? Yes, I was a checker at Kamas Food Town for three years.



I tag Tahnie, Alisha, Alayna, Beau, and Amanda

Emilee's Birthday Party!

Emilee turned 7 years old yesterday. We had a fun friends birthday party to celebrate. The theme for the party was Princess and Knight's. We had 22 kids there. It was pretty crazy but a lot of fun.

We colored pictures of Disney Princesses and Dragons while we waited for everyone to come.

We then played a few games. First we played Belle's Rose Petal Game. I put some princess stickers on the backs of loose fake rose petals. I mixed those in with lots of other rose petals and then spread them all over the back yard. The kids had to find one with a sticker on the back and bring it too me for a prize (candy bracelets for the girls and a gummy mouse for the boys). We then played pick up the rose petals!

After that we played Pass the Poison Apple!




I told the kids that Ariel had hidden treasure for them under the sea. They had to dig through the "water" (blue balloons in a kiddie pool) to find it. They really enjoyed that. Then they had fun popping all of the balloons.















Then we decorated crowns with jewels and foam stickies.




When we tried the lite the B-day candles the wind keep blowing them out so we just sang Happy Birthday and Emilee "blew" out her candles even they weren't lit. It was really cute. At least she wasn't disappointed that she didn't get to really blow out her birthday candles! After cake we opened presents and passed out gift bags. The boys got shields, helmets, and swords. The girls got a little purse like bag (I ironed a princess picture on it using t-shirt transfer paper) with a crown picture frame, pencil, and two rings.
It was a really fun party!

Here's a video of the Boy's having a sword fight.

10 Year High School Reunion

Last night was my high school reunion. I'm sad that I forgot my camera though, so I don't have any pictures to post. It was held at The Homestead in Midway. I was surprised that more people didn't end up coming. The class president said that there were about 25 of us plus spouses. We had dinner and then watched a video that was made our Senior year. After our senior video we watched a slide show with pictures from all of our lives since high school.

It was fun to catch up with everyone. I actually had a better time than I thought I would. We headed home through Parley's Canyon and got stuck in awful construction traffic. It took us an hour to get from Lamb's Canyon to the mouth of Parley's Canyon. Which made it really late by the time we picked up our kids from Tahnie's house. Sorry Tahnie! And thanks for watching the kids.