You've Had A Birthday Shout Hurray!

Here's to the second best birthday I've ever had! I'm not sure that anything can top my last birthday, getting engaged was pretty awesome for a birthday. And two years ago, Scott gave me a New Kids on the Block CD, a John Wayne movie collection and a "date I would never forget". Scott is really good at the birthday thing. He's always made me feel special.

My birthday started out with Scott keeping me awake until midnight on Tuesday night so that he could give me his present. He bought me this plant, a Braided Money Tree. It's supposed to bring me a lifetime of good fortune which is great since we're working on our "Total Money Makeover". Luckily this tree is pretty hard to kill so hopefully I won't kill it like my flowers. It's so fun to have some color in the house, and he went around to all the flower shops in town to try and find it. They had to special order it in. It made me feel pretty special.
Unfortunately I had to work that day so Scott brought dinner at work. We got to eat Arby's. We don't eat out in Price, ever, so this was a big treat for us, but it makes us appreciate fast food a whole lot more. We had a nice picnic.

When I got home that night Scott had another treat for me. It was an awesome ice cream cake from Cold Stone. He had remembered last March when it was Amber's birthday, that I told him that we always bought ice cream cakes for each other on our birthdays. So he knew that this birthday wasn't going to be quite the same, but he made it so great. By the way, it's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream cake, my favorite!


I really have the best husband ever. He is so good to me and I count myself the luckiest person alive to have him. Way to go honey!

So You Think You Can Dance?

This is more of an outlet for myself more than anything. During the summer I only have one show that I watch on a regular basis and that's So you think you can dance. This season has been great so far, but I have to tell America that they got it wrong! Will should not have been voted out last week. He was by far the most talented male dancer in the competition and maybe should have won the whole thing and then this week Chelsie gets voted out? Come on American, are we going on talent or popularity? Chelsie was by far the best female dancer on the show this season. So, now I've been disappointed with So you think you can dance and American Idol, all in one year. Ok, I feel better!

I love to see the temple

I love this temple, to me it looks like a castle and inside is just as gorgeous as outside. Yesterday was ward temple day and we got to make a 2 hour drive to Manti to attend a session. This required us to get up at 5:30 in the morning (which is the middle of the night for me). This was only the 3rd time that I had been to this temple but it is probably my favorite Utah temple along with the Jordan River. The first time I came to this temple was 2 years ago with my favorite cousin Laurel. We took a Utah temple trip to the Manti, Monticello and the Vernal Temple. It was such a fun trip and so spiritual. I went to the Manti Temple again a couple months later with Scott. I had had my birthday a few weeks before we went and he gave me a couple gifts along with a coupon for "a date you will never forget". This was only our 2nd official date and it was a surprise. He took me to the Manti Temple and then we went to his grandparents cabin a few miles away and spent the afternoon there with some of his family. We had a really spiritual talk when we went there and we were able to talk about some great principles found in the temple. After that day, that temple had a special meaning to me. If we had gotten married in Utah, that's where I would have chosen. The spirit of the pioneer heritage is very strong there.

You hear stories of people having to travel many hours to get to the temple and we got to experience a tiny bit of that yesterday. We left at 6:30 a.m. and got home at 3:30 p.m. I know that's nothing compared to what some people have to do but we used to live in a place with 8 temples within a 2 hour drive (soon to be 10 temples). And I don't think that we realized how lucky we were or how important it was to take advantage of that. We had a really good turnout from our ward and many people spent the day doing temple work. We feel really lucky to be in such a great ward with so many faithful people. And we do feel lucky and blessed that we only have to travel 2 hours to attend our temple. We are really excited to have Manti be our temple.

Oh Baby!

Saturday we had a baby shower for sister-in-law Rhonda. Her youngest just turned 7 and she is having boy after having 2 beautiful girls. We are so thrilled and can't wait to see what this little guy looks like. Here are some pictures of the shower.

Rhonda's mom made a cloth book for the baby. It's about the jungle. They are doing a jungle theme for the baby's room.


We had a breakfast shower at a restaurant. We only had moms, sisters and grandmas at the shower. It was so nice to have an intimate setting where we could talk to each other. Thanks to Michelle and Laurel for putting in the work for this.

I'm also excited to be getting a niece on Scott's side. We wanted a boy for Rhonda and a girl for Sandra, so I'm hoping that it will be that easy when I have a baby, to just wish for the gender.

Also thanks to all for the sympathies. As time passes on, we know more and more that we did the right thing. Being home was so different without Lady, and there is this void in the house. Cosmo is a little depressed but it helped to have us there with him for the weekend. You can tell he's feeling down, but we're hoping he gets over it soon.