24th of July - Bear Lake w/Friends

We went to Mel's Grandma's house in Bear Lake, Idaho and took 3 of our closest friends and their families. We played at Bear Lake the first day (forgot our camera at the house, so will have to post boating pics later). The second day we hiked to one of our favorite spots.


We went up Bloomington Canyon on a short hike.

We hiked up to this beautiful Lake at the top of the mountain called Bloomington Lake. There was still a bunch of snow, so the water was FREEZING!

There is a rope swing that we play on every year. Branden had to show Chaden how it's done!

Branden played a little too hard on the swing and has a nice sunburn to prove it. More Rope swing pics below.......

Chaden

Brian

Brian

Brian

Branden

Lauren and Branden (and Sandra and Rebekah in the background)

Tess

Lauren

Kabrynna

After we were done with the rope swing, we posed for a pic on our way back to the parking lot.

After playing in the sun all day, we made Dutch oven chicken and potatoes and then Branden made some Peach Cobbler and the Stephens made a Pinapple upside down cake.

Vegas (July 4th) and Boating (July 9th)

We went to Vegas over the July 4th weekend. We took my little brother with us and drove to our Grandparents' house in Vegas and hung out with family for the weekend.


We went to Fremont Street in Vegas with my dad and my little brother Braylee (both are in the pic above with Branden) where there is a huge screen that arches over the sidewalk for a while city block. There are all sorts of crazy people down there. There were a ton of people dressed up as famous people posing for pictures. (We're cheap, so we just took pictures of us :) )

After Fremont Street, we got in the car and it said that it was 112 degrees at 10:54 at night...and if you look at the windshield...it was even raining a little...HOT!

Braylee, Branden and my dad were trying to land on this floaty in the pool (yes, only one of them is a teenage boy, but all of them were acting 17). I caught Branden in this perfect superhero pose!

We had tons of fun in Vegas. I am a total water person. I could swim all day long. Was so good to see my family...Love 'em!

Then this weekend, Branden had the Father and Sons campout, so I hung out with some of my friends in the ward and we had a girl's night! Then Saturday morning Branden and I went to help with the adoption float in the American Fork Parade. After the parade, we went Boating with our friends.

We are so lucky to live in the greatest neighborhood/ward. Branden's calling as YM President has blessed our lives SO MUCH! When he chose Brian (left) and Doug (right) to be his counselors, he didn't know either of them very well (in fact Doug was new to the ward). Turns out that has been a HUGE blessing. Their families have become close friends of ours.

Not only are Branden, Brian and Doug friends, but Kim (Brian's wife) and Amanda (Doug's wife) have become my great friends. It has been a really rough month for Branden and I. Without these families support, we'd be much worse off! I drove to Amanda's house after work just to have a good cry many times! Thanks Brian and Kim for the boating day....1st time in a while that I didn't worry about a single thing for hours at a time ;)...CAN'T WAIT FOR BEAR LAKE WITH THESE FAMILIES OVER THE 24TH!!!

Youth Conference - AF Canyon

We had so much fun at Youth Conference this week! We went with our ward up AF Canyon. The camp theme was "For the Strength of You". Our T Shirts had the chinese symbol for Strength on them and they said "For the Strength of You".


There were presenters (adults in our ward who volunteered to come up and help) that presented on all of the topics in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet (FSOY) (yes, even sexual purity). We each had our own personalized journals that the youth made during an activity earlier in the month.

We each got a personalized cover page with our name on it so that we could make our own personalized FSOY journal.

The presenters talked about their assigned FSOY standard and then gave everyone papers that had stories, quotes, and scriptures that had to do with each standard. Then at the end of each packet there were questions about the standard and a place for the youth to write their testimonies.


(Branden is paying special attention during the repentance workshop :)

Each "family" had a color. Branden and I were the "Ma and Pa" of the green family. We got green shirts and bandanas and we made a Green Family flag. Our flag contents were in a box in the bushes about halfway through our hike. We had to use the contents to make a flag.

We decided to cut our hands out of fabric and decorate them and make a "Family Tree". We only glued the palms of our hands to the flag and let the fingers flap in the wind like leaves.

We had so much fun. We get so many blessings with Branden's calling! Our "family" was fantastic and we didn't want to come home.

Our Nephew Blake

On Sunday last weekend we went to a family BBQ with Branden's extended family. Blake kept trying to play Cowboy Golf with the big kids.


Branden and Kevin played lots of volleyball.

Blake loves puppies and Cheetos, so naturally feeding the puppy Cheetos was so much fun!

Last night my mom and I watched Blake while Kevin and Amanda went to dinner for their anniversary. My dad and Branden had a "Man Day" yesterday. They went fishing at Strawberry and then went to a fight in Salt Lake.

It was so nice outside that we had to go for a walk. I wanted to try out my monkey basckpack and it worked wonderfully. Blake loves to play with buckles so he liked the buckles in the front. He was so dang cute that I had to have a picture! WE LOVE THIS LITTLE MAN SO MUCH!!

i love my birthmom

I have been looking for cute "I love my Birthmom" onesies and haven't been able to find very many. The ones I have found weren't super cute...so I decided to design my own at CafePress.com. It turned out cute. Now we just need to find a little person to wear it!

Branden's Bday BBQ

Branden is 30 today! Wow, he's old!

Last night we went to a Birthday BBQ at our friends' house. We had 6 May birthdays to celebrate between the 4 families. My friends Kim and Amanda had their birthdays yesterday and Branden's is today. The other 3 were earlier in the month.

We are so lucky to have these people as our friends. All 3 of the dads serve in the YM with Branden. We are greatful for his calling so that we could have an opportunity to get to know these families better!

Branden playing a little football with the dads and kids

We were trying to shoot red solo cups with one of the kid's BB guns. We were doing great at first, and not so great after a few shots. We about died laughing when we figured out we'd been trying to shoot for at leat 20 min without any BBs in the gun.

One of our favorite summer passtimes...Badminton! Branden also threw the frisbee around for a while (and of course it got stuck on the roof which required all of the YM climb up on the roof to get it).

Estate & Gift Basket Business Inventory Sale

So, all of my grandma's Gift Bakset inventory and tons of Estate stuff is being sold on May 20th and 21st in Farmington at 248 E. 200 N. from 8am to 2pm.

Check out the ad on KSL.

Ad name: "Estate Sale and HUGE Gift Basket Inventory Sale May 20 & May 21 Farmington"

Ad #: 15575074

There are about 20 pictures of various things including:

-Huge rolls of gift wrap and cellophane

-Hundreds of colors and sizes of ribbon

-Hundreds of baskets/containers/crates/tins of varying sizes, colors and themes including Christmas, teacher, baby, cars, other holidays, plain, colors, etc

-Christmas trees varying from 2 feet to 10 feet tall

-TONS of Christmas gifts including Christmas Statues, Christmas Blankets, cookie cutters, books, snowmen decorations of many sizes and variations, a nutcracker collection, christmas decoration in bins by color themes, etc.

-TONS of school themed baskets and decorations (Davis County School District was one of her largest corporate clients)

Birthmother's Day Walk & Our Bday BBQ

We went to Provo High this weekend for a Families Supporting Adoption walk in honor of Birthmother's day. Each "walker" filled out who they were walking in honor of.






Branden's family and my mom came to support us. Everyone got a balloon and we walked 2 laps.

And we got sexy "Families Supporting Adoption" T shirts

Mike (Brother-in-law), Kami (Branden's Sisiter), Ronnie (Branden's Dad), Kevin (Branden's Brother), Amanda (Sister-in-law), me, Colleen (Branden's Mom), Branden and baby Blake in front.

At the end of the walk, we all gathered in the middle of the track and everyone released their balloon in honor of birthmoms. (I was conflicted, I could picture the little bird or racoon that is going to choke and die on my latex balloon that ends up in the mountains)

Cosmo was there to play with the kids. He played the field races/games with them and posed for lots of pictures. Branden tried to get him to hold a red balloon, but a little kid wanted the balloon and Branden was too nice to say no....lucky for Cosmo!

There was also a fire truck and an ambulance for the kids to play on.

After the walk we went to a Polynesian festival across the street. Then we went to the Mall (YUCK - one of our least favorite places in the world) and bought branden some jeans for his birthday. Then we went to Mapleton to Don & Leah's (my pseudo-parents) house and had a birthday barbeque with family and friends. Leah got us a transformers cake which Branden LOVED.

Our friends, Steve and Rachel, came and let us borrow a baby for the evening. Samantha is 4 weeks old and is so sweet! We had a really neat experience at her baby blessing a few weeks ago (no, I'm not going to share). We were so glad they came!

And we had to get one blackmail foto of Branden with the mask from the cake on. Who is that you say?....It is Optimus Prime of course.