Saturdays :)

I love Saturdays, no where to be and all day with my family. Yesterday was spent with a bike ride and then down to the Gateway. We went to the children's museum and had an awesome time. We were even lucky enough to get all of us in for the price of 1 admission because the people in front of us had a 6 person pass and only used 3 and they gave the other ones to us. Score :) The kids spent the majority of the time in the grocery store, they loved pretending to be cashiers and stockers and bakers. It is always hard to get the kids to leave that place but luckily they were hungry and we got them leave for California Pizza Kitchen. Joe used to work there so we always get great deals from old coworkers. It was an awesome day spent with my favorite people. <3

(sorry the only pics are on my phone)

Wedding Part 1

So today is our 1 month Anniversary! I can't believe it has already been a month, time flies by so fast. I figured it was about time to post something about the wedding. So today It'll be the ceremony and I'll do another one soon about the reception.

My day started at 4:30 AM because I couldn't sleep. I got to the church at 7:30 and Carrie got to work on my hair and makeup.

I was finally ready to go about a half hour early. Can I just say that was the longest 30 minutes of my life. I am so glad that I chose to do it in the morning because I would have been going crazy all day waiting.

My dad walked back to get me and I just started to cry, it was finally here, all the waiting and planning and now it was happening. I pulled myself together as I walked with my dad toward the sanctuary. As soon as I walked through the doors and saw Joe and completely lost it.

The ceremony was absolutely beautiful. I don't remember everything that was said and I am so glad we have a recording of it so we can go back and remember exactly what we vowed to each other. Our pastor is a great friend and I couldn't have let anyone else do it for us.

Part of our ceremony was the lighting of a unity candle. Both of our mothers lit a smaller candle and together we took our candles and lit a bigger one representing the uniting of our two families. As we were lighting the candle another great friend and the worship pastor at our church sang the song that he wrote to propose his wife.

We exchanged rings and then the kiss ♥

(Love Scott's face in this picture!)

Finally Married!!

After the ceremony we had a luncheon for everyone and just talked and mingled.

It was exactly what I had pictured and everything turned out perfectly.

Thank you to everyone who came and supported us!

Christmas Spirit!

I love Christmas time and this year it seems extra special. My own house with my kids and fiance. We went and picked out our tree last week and it was so cold! We hurried and found a nice full nine footer. It didn't look that big til we got it in the house. It is seriously huge. It was the kids weekend to go with their Dad and I wanted to make sure they could decorate some of it but we only had a few sets of lights so I put them on the bottom of the tree and then gave them the whole box of ornaments to put on. It was the cutest thing. Of course all of the ornaments ended up on the bottom part of the tree. I felt bad taking them all back down to put the new lights on after they left but we left some of the ornaments for them when they got home and Cadence is now constantly rearranging them.

After our huge snow storm over the weekend we decided to take the kids out to play in the snow. We finally got their boots and snow suits. It was so deep that Cadence couldn't even walk in it. We had tons of fun and made a snowman and named him Bob. He is right out our window so the kids can always see him and they like to make sure he is still there. We didn't have anything to make his face out of except for some baby carrots so Joe carved his mouth and we used balls for his eyes. After I stuck his arms in Braxton wanted to put a stick in too so he put about 6 sticks at the bottom and said they were his feet.

The other day we decided to make some Christmas sugar cookies. We had tons of fun and made a huge mess but it was so worth it. I let the kids help cut out the shapes, we had a Christmas tree a star and made some plain old round ones. We made red and green frosting and had red and green sprinkles. I gave them to the kids and let them go.

My family has so many Christmas traditions and I love every single one of them but I am so excited to be able to start some of my own and things that the kids can look back on and remember how special Christmas was during their childhood just like I remember mine.

U of U student =)

I am so excited to finally start my college experience at the U! I wanted to start there but living in Utah county it was just more practical to attend UVU but since we moved to Park City I finally transferred! I feel like graduation is so far away but I am just about done with all of my generals and pre-requisites. As of January 11th I can officially call myself a student at the University of Utah.

We have season tickets to the basketball games this year. We joined a group called Section F. Coach Boylen wanted a section for the biggest fans to be kind of like the MUSS and stand and cheer and create energy for the team. It has been way fun and the kids love going to the games. Braxton calls them the huge guys lol :) They both put up their U's and clap and cheer and Cadence dances every time the band plays Utah man, she is so adorable. We have a young team but I have very high hopes for them. Last night the football team was there and sat behind us. Braxton was so shy and kept staring at them. He asked tons of questions like who is that and what number is he. At half time they went on the court and a few captains spoke and thanked the fans for their support during the season. When they sat back down we asked a few if they would take a picture with the kids. At first Braxton was shy but he eventually walked over and sat on their lap. They loved it! I am so excited for many more good times and great games!

Jordan Wynn, Chad Manis and Stevenson Sylvester with the kids.

The kids first Utah game!

So Joe and I have season tickets to the Utes games but on Saturday we had no one to watch the kids but luckily our friends wife couldn't make it so they had and extra ticket for Braxton and Cadence gets in free. They were so excited! They love the Utes almost as much as we do. The game was a 2 but we wanted to get there early so we could walk around let the kids see everything. We usually park away from the stadium and ride Trax and the kids loved it. I don't think they had ever ridden it before. We got to the stadium and found some face tattoos for the kids. The band always plays outside before the game and we watched them for a while.

I thought it was pretty cool that they put their hats in a U. We went to our seats and not too long into the game it started to rain which wasn't too fun but at least it wasn't cold. It was right around Cadences nap time so she was kind of out of it for a little while but she never fell asleep but she perked up around half time and really started to enjoy it. Braxton sat on our friend Kerry's lap almost the whole game and stole some popcorn from some of our neighbors (they actually gave it to him but he ate more than they did lol) We were kind of worried that Utah wasn't going to pull out the win for their first game but they ended up winning in overtime =)

We are trying to adjust our season tickets so we can add some for the kids for next year. Hopefully we can because we had tons of fun and so did they. I think it was a lot for them to take in though. Cadence fell asleep on our way back to the car and Braxton fell asleep in the car. That was about 6 and Cadence slept until 7:30 the next morning.

Here are a few pictures from the game:

We also let Braxton take one of our old cameras and take his own pictures. Some are actually okay and not blurry. He took a bunch of videos thinking he was taking a picture. Here are some of his:

Life...

I haven't posted for a while because there really hasn't been anything to post about. We are just living life and loving it. We have been in Park City for over 2 months! It's crazy how fast time flies. Fall semester started and I really like all of my classes. I am taking my math class at the UVU Wasatch campus in Heber and I have 3 online classes: Biology, Nutrition and Intermediate writing. I hate writing but so far it has been okay. The kids are doing great, it amazes me how much they grow and improve in so little time. When it was warm we would put them in the jogging strollers and run/walk to a park about a mile away from our house. It was great, I hate sitting in the house all day and it kept us and the kids active. Now that it is cold it really sucks. It has already snowed a few times up here and the kids hate that we can't go to the park. I love fall because that means: Halloween, the leaves change, my birthday and football. We have season tickets to the Utah games. They are so much fun! We also have all the NFL games. I love football and Joe is really glad he has someone who loves to watch sports as much as he does. He has a fantasy football league with his friends and someone backed out or something right before they started so I was recruited to play. I really thought that I would get beaten every week but we are 4 weeks in and I am winning! =) It's really funny because they really take this stuff seriously and I really could care less if I played. They can't handle the fact the a girl is beating all 9 of them. I'm sure that my winning streak will come to an end soon but right now it's great. Besides football, school, and the kiddos we really don't have much going on right now but life is good and I wouldn't have it any other way. If any of you are ever up here don't be afraid to stop by and say hi.

Oh and we finally set a date... July 2nd. I am so excited, at times I feel like it is so far away and other times I feel like it is coming really fast. Only 268 days...

Catch up...

It's been a while since I posted. Life has just been so busy. I have started my summer semester at UVU and my classes aren't hard they just require A LOT of reading so when I'm not at work I am usually doing homework. I try to spend as much time with the kids as I can too. We have been going to the park a few times a week and they just love it. Joe and I also bought Lagoon season passes! We bought them last year but didn't use them as much as we would have liked to so this year we decided we would buy them and go on the weekends the kids are with their dad. We've only been once so far but we are planning on going alot more. We took a trip to Denver to visit Joe's mom over Memorial Day weekend. It was tons of fun. We got up at 3:30 on Friday morning so we could be out by 5! It was crazy but worth it to have the kids sleeping for half of our long drive. They did really well until we were about 30 minutes away. I think that they could sense that we were getting close and they got really anxious. We got there about 12:30 and just hung out at his mom's house. We went to a restaurant call The Elephant Bar for dinner and it was so delicious. The best part was the desserts. They were so good that I would plan a trip to Denver just for the desserts. On Saturday we went to this really cool ampitheater called Red Rocks, it was gorgeous! We took the kids to a park and went shopping. We went to dinner and watched the Lakers/Nuggets game. On Sunday we went to a town south of Denver called Breckenridge. It looks just like Park City. They had a main street just like Park City that has a bunch of little shops that were all way cute. It started to hail and rain really hard. We were quite a ways from the car and we covered the kids with some jackets and ran all the way to the car. We were soaked but the kids were pretty dry, Cadence actually fell asleep. I don't know how you fall asleep in a stroller with a jacket over your head and pouring rain but she managed. As we were on our to Joe's mom's house it was still raining but now there was lightning and thunder with it. I've never seen so much lightning in my life and it was so close to us. We went to dinner at Carinos which was really yummy. Cadence was stealing my salad and noodles off my plate, she didn't want her own dinner. She is the only 2 year old I know that likes salad, most of them just spit it out. After dinner we went back to the hotel and decided to go swimming which was a really bad idea. There was WAY too much cholrine in the pool and hot tub and it gave all of us chemical burns. I felt so bad for Braxton he had it really bad. It mostly just burned his private areas, and we tried to put him the bath to wash the chlorine off but he just wanted to take a cold shower because it felt better. Poor guy. I was so mad that the hotel didn't test the water before letting people in the pool. We were all pretty much better by the next morning though. Monday was Memorial Day and Joe's mom and Cousin Julie were running in the Bolder Boulder which is a 10k race they hold every year. It was a really fun atmosphere to be in and they did great. We enjoyed cheering them on and watching them finish the race. There were so many people there, they had about 50,000 people in the race and then all of the people that were there just to watch. It was crazy. Joe and I are going to do it next year, I am really excited. After the race we went to downtown Denver and walked around, ate lunch and bought souvenirs then Julie had to catch her flight back to Ohio. We just hung out at the hotel for the rest of the night. We had to be up at 6 so we could catch our flight (Joe's dad flew out and was driving the car back). Braxton was really excited to fly. We made sure to get window seats and the kids got to watch us take off. They loved it! Braxton thought it was the coolest thing ever and Cadence wasn't really sure what to think. They were surprisingly good, I thought they were going to disturb everyone by being loud and obnoxious but they didn't. It was a fun trip and it was great to spend time with some of our family.

Easter

We go to the Benjamin Easter egg hunt every year instead of trying to fight the people at the Spanish Fork one. It's short and sweet and every kid gets a prize. On Easter we woke up and the kids found their eggs and baskets. After church we went to my grandmas house for another easter egg hunt. It was a great day and they had lots of fun.

Cadence's 2nd Birthday

Cadence's birthday was on the 8th so this is a little late but I finally put the pictures on my computer. We had the whole family over for her birthday and she got lots of fun stuff. My mom gave her a little princess chair that she loves and we gave her some clothes and a cute pink baseball glove. She loved everything and had tons of fun.

VEGAS!

We went to Las Vegas over the weekend and it was tons of fun. It is a tradition in my family. They go to the Nascar race every year. (I go shopping =D) Everyone but me, Joe and Cadence went down on Wednesday night. I couldn't go because I had a test for math. Braxton wanted to ride down with my mom so I let him. Wednesday morning they had a parade of all the semi-trucks that haul the cars to the different tracks. Braxton loved it. We left Thursday and had a nice trip down and stopped in St. George for In 'N Out. I love their burgers they are so good. We finally got to Vegas and into our hotel. We were staying at the Stratosphere so we decided it would be fun to go to the top to the observation deck. It was gorgeous. Then we decided to go on the rides. They were awesome and scary at the same time. They next day we went to the pool it was really awesome. It was on the roof. It was kinda chilly because the wind was blowing but we had fun playing and I tried to teach Braxton to swim. He didn't really catch on but he had fun. As we were leaving the hotel we were trying to catch an elevator but it was pretty much impossible so when we finally got one all 19 of us decided to squeeze on. It was really funny to see peoples faces when they saw how many of us were on it. I was in the corner so I decided to take a picture of everyone. We wanted to take the kids to see the fountains at the Bellagio but they didn't start til 3:00 and we were there at 12 so we just decided to go to lunch at In 'N Out again. After lunch we went to the race track and walked around and looked at all the different trailers with the drivers merchandise. It's also a great time to check out all the really redneck people. You can find a lot of them when you are around Nascar. We had to drive to Mesquite because that's where we were staying the other 2 nights. We went to a Mexican restourant in Mesquite, it's really good. We were pretty tired by the time we got to our hotel so we just went to bed after. Saturday morning the guys woke up and went to the first race. We didn't want to fight the crowds or traffic in Vegas so we decided to go to St. George and go shopping and then take the kids to the sand dunes in Snow Canyon. I got some great deals on clothes for the kids for summer and bought some toys for us to play in the sand with. The sand dunes were lots of fun. Cadence had fallen asleep and was really cranky when we first got there and didn't want to touch the sand but she came around and she really loved it. We buried each of the kids in the sand (except Cadence) and dug a really deep hole. We all got really dirty but really enjoyed it. We drove back to Mesquite and had dinner as the Casa Blanca. The kids wanted to go bowling so my mom and my aunt took the kids and we decided to do some gambling. I don't gamble much because I hate to lose money. My brother was the only one to win any money but we all still had fun. On Sunday the guys woke up and went the 2nd race and we again went to St. George for more shopping. We got home at about 9 that night exhausted but happy from a great trip with the family.