May 2015

At risk of stating the obvious, I'll just say that focusing on taking pictures of what we're doing has made me really appreciate all we are doing!  I'm eager to get this post up since I'm out of space on my phone.  :)  I may have to start posting every two weeks.

(PS Hi Linds!  I didn't know you're expecting - when are you due?  And hello, Noggin - thanks for reading!)

Picture #1 - a Snapchat from Froggy - she graduated!!  I am so stinkin' proud of her.  I was totally bummed to be on (another) work trip on actual graduation day.  This is the only picture I saw of the event.  I am so proud of her for finishing her degree and ecstatic for her to have a baby this fall.  I was telling her yesterday that I thought she already knew it was a boy.  She groaned and said "that's what EVERYONE is saying!"  :)  She finds out this week if, as she says, "It's a pink or a blue."  Can't wait to hear.

I was in Des Moines for one of our regional events from April 30 - May 3.  On the way home I had a window seat (rare - I fight for aisles) and I was mesmerized by the landscape.  These are phone pictures, but I could not figure out what was causing the striation on the ground - it was almost as though these Texas farms (this was from Dallas to SLC) have set up their watering like rice fields!  Your first thought will be that it's elevation changes, but it isn't - they were like this everywhere, on specific "squares" of farmland.  So interesting.  Still can't figure it out.  (Look at the bottom right in the first picture, the center tan "square" in the second and the lightest square in the third - so cool.)

When I was looking for my car at the airport (gotta love stop zero!) I saw this mini cooper and had to take a picture for Max.  It says "Max S. Cooper" and Max's name is "Max Spencer."  It wasn't until I showed him the pictures that night that someone pointed out that his brother is Cooper, haha!

Austin played volleyball this year - we loved going to watch him!  So sorry we only saw two games, darn it.  We think he's pretty good.  I love watching him serve (you can see his lucky "ball bounce" before he serves - love it).  

After dinner we drove to one of our (TJ and Rachel's) favorite restaurants: The Dodo.  I had a super fabulous pasta that I still can't get over.  So fun to be with family.

One of my favorite people in all the world is Sister Quinn, Paige's best friennd.  TJ and I (and all the rest of our family) absolutely adore Madi.  We had the delight of going to Madi's reception in May.  She and Aarone were sealed in the temple and we were delighted that Dave Jaffa was able to photograph their day!  (Dave was our wedding photographer five years ago and it has been so fun to recommend him to every single couple we know that gets engaged - he is absolutely fabulous and deserves as many referrals as we can possibly give him!)  This is funny: Paige said she was at the temple and when she laugh Dave turned to her and said "I'd recognize that Milar laugh anywhere."  Ha!  We do love to laugh.  :)

Isn't Madi gorgeous?  Doesn't Paige look beautiful?  Isn't TJ a good looking man?  So fun!

Madi had a photo booth at her reception that printed two copies of all the pictures - one to keep and one to go in their book.  LOVED that idea and also loved going to a photo booth with TJ for the first time!  Sadly, his feelings about the whole thing were not all good, so this may be out LAST photo booth opportunity.  :)

After the reception Tiny and I rushed to Elaine's house for our last piano practice before the recital (the next day).  As we walked in, she was talking to everyone in the family room, telling how much she appreciated everyone that helped pull the event together: the piano tuner, the UMTA chair, etc.  Because this is her last year doing this recital, she broke down in tears saying how much she loves all of her students and that she "hopes we can all be best friends always."  I, of course, cried.  How I love that woman!

I love this picture.  It took me about ten years of taking piano from Elaine to realize she is a wicked good pianist.  When the group started playing this song they told her that she was going to be playing the primo part and she responded, "Oh, okay.  Let me read the music real quick so I know what I'll be playing."  

I couldn't help but make this recording - filled with so many people I have years of memories with, in that piano room where I have spent so much time!  :)

And this - this is Elaine.  Don't you love her??

And this last song is here because it's just cool.  Two pianos, four parts.  Tiny convinced me to do it, though the rhythm was hard enough for me she had to tell me every time it was my turn.  :)

When I came home from piano practice this gorgeous bouquet of flowers was on the table.  (As a side note, TJ was DYING because it seriously took me 3 minutes to even see them and they were 4 feet in front of me).  He gave me the sweetest card wishing me a happy mother's day as the mother for our (someday) children.  It melted my heart and I just loved those flowers!  I think flowers are delightful.  It was so FUN to wake up to them every day.

We babysat Tyler for a little while one day.  Look how adorable he is (and look what happens when you have no toys in your house!)

Introducing: Beckham and Raegan Rollins.  Gosh, I cannot get enough of these kids.  They live five doors down.  They moved in a couple years ago and Raegan had me at the neck rolls - I have never seen such adorable neck rolls in my life.  Every time I see her (without fail) she asks when we can make cookies.  Well, we had time on a rainy day, so we had both of them over!  

In retrospect, I am not confident it's the cookies they love: I think hide and seek takes the cake.  They helped with the first sheet of cookies and spent the rest of the time with TJ.  :)

Raegan: How many should we count to, Beck?
Beckham: 40
Raegan: Okay.  Fowty, fowty one, fowty two, fowty fow, fifty.  Fifty one, fifty two, fifty fow, sixty.  Sixty one, sixty two, sixty fow, one hundwed.

It appears Raegan has a great time folding laundry with her mom, as evidenced by her requesting to fold with me instead of playing hide and seek.  I died a little about how she folded this towel.  I kept it this way.  :)

She'll kill me for this, but how can you not be obsessed with sisters that send you stuff like that?  BA HA HA.

And then - Mother's Day!

Sweet Debi at church (our Primary President) gave us all some potpourri, which gives me a dreadful migraine.  So TJ hung it out the window on our drive to meet family - I figured someone there would like it but I didn't want it in the car!  Punny as can be he said, "Look, a real air freshener."  :)

Milar dinner.  Can you tell how much TJ loves pictures?

Gosh, this little man has my heart.  How I wish I could keep him little forever.  He melts me.

Pregnant sisters!  You can tell in the second picture that they feel ridiculous getting pictures together but I don't care!  Mary is due in 4 weeks with a little girl.  Holly finds out tomorrow if - as she says - it's a blue or a pink.  :)  Due the end of October.  I'm DELIGHTED for both of them!  Aren't they beautiful?

A bunch of the girls.  How I love them!  This is at Tara and Danny's beautiful home.  So fun to be together.

I just love Papa's face in this one.  :)

Trying to get a good picture with Tiny and Papa.  I can't get over how many different faces he made.   It cracks me up to look through all these.

And though it's blurry (and looks like he's attacking her - caught it a little early), the last one with him giving her a kiss just makes me a little teary.  His baby.

Some of the kids on the trampoline.  I yelled "SMILE!" so many times.  Thank you, Kate, for being the only one to listen - I had to include them all just to show her diligence.

Check out that squinty grin.

Babies!  Brocky is learning to say "Cheese!"  So is Robby, it looks like.  ;)

I cannot put into words how much I love these two boys.  Holy smokes.  My little artists.

After the Milar dinner we went to the Morris dessert!  How I love this family. I seriously lucked out to marry into the most wonderful family I could imagine.  Love, love, love them.

Love Dad's face here:

 And Taylor's here:

Dad did his own wrapping - can you tell how proud he is?

A new Bosch bowl from Dad.  Mom explained, "Dad put my bowl into the dishwasher.  Again."  Ha!

I feel so lucky to be married to a man who loves the arts like I do.  We have not gone to any sporting events since marrying (aside from Austin's games, which we love!), but we have been to countless plays and concerts.  Here we are at Hale Center Theater's Over the River and Through the Woods.  How I hope our home will be centered around the kitchen, just like the family here!  :)

May 18 was our five year anniversary.  I feel so incredibly lucky that TJ consented to marry me.  :)  Life is so much better with him at my side - I am grateful for him every day.  

To celebrate, we went to Disneyland!

For the first time, we forgot to pose on Splash Mountain, so this is how we REALLY feel about that hill!

Ha - I saw this banner and had to take a picture because this is exactly what I do when I fly.

Sara and Lettie met us one afternoon to play!  So fun to see them.

I took Lettie while Sara and TJ went on some big kid rides.

Not pictured: Lettie screaming about the ride ending.

I think TJ looks so handsome in this picture.  What a good looking guy.

We LOVE Animation Academy at Disneyland.

I have to include this just to remember that it rained most of our time there.  :(  Total bummer for this sun addict.   We'll have to go back.

Isn't this tree incredible?  Check out that bark.  I couldn't get over it.

Buzz Lightyear!  A favorite for us.  I must have intentionally hidden the "3" that starts TJ's score.  ;)

We ate at The Cheesecake Factory every day of our trip.  Love that it's a mile away.

And, as our present to each other, we splurged on annual passes again!!

As evidence (may she never forget!) that we love her dearly, we cut our California trip two days short to make it to Tiny's last dance performance.  Oh, she's gorgeous.  I, of course, cried.  Isn't she beautiful?  

Here is her solo.  She is just so gorgeous - I keep watching this over and over.

And then, two days later, I left on another business trip - this one to Jamaica.  I was so impressed with how kind everyone was there.  We seriously talked with very few people that weren't overly kind.

Could not get over these plumeria (not pictured: 20 other photos of them).  I think I got pretty good lighting here!

View at dinner one evening.

Birds, birds, birds!

It also rained in Jamaica (I had 4 weeks straight of rain - bleh!!)  During one of our hotel tours there was a gorgeous storm and I kept stepping away trying to capture the lighting.  These have no filters (since I don't even know how to do that) - it was so pretty.

I was missing TJ so much with this picture:

Do you spy the sailboat?

I rerouted my flight home to have a long layover in Dallas and catch up with Emily.  Bless her for piling the kids in the van for a LONG ride to see Rach Rach.  We had about 90 minutes so we ran to this delicious Mediterranean place - seriously loved it.  Emily and Donovan are moving to Illinois this weekend, so I'm glad I could catch her before she left - I don't foresee a ton of layovers in Peoria in my future!

Lizzie drew me this picture.  Don't you love it?

I got home just in time for Memorial Day weekend, which I mostly ruined by having us do a good 16 hours of yardwork.  :)  TJ called a few of the young men from the ward and paid them to help us - I just want the blasted yard done!  But isn't it a gorgeous oak tree?  I think we are done buying trees!

On Monday I figured we could just redo the garden "real quick."  :P  Because of the never-ending gopher issue, we dug up our garden box, pulled up all the weed guard, releveled (thanks to the gopher mounds), laid chicken wire, redid the weed guard, and then did the garden box on top and filled it with new dirt (and plants!)

We are way too much of perfectionists to have a hexagonal garden box, but TJ pointed out it maximizes our growing space, so we spent 30 minutes measuring and moving and measuring and moving to get it just right.

We celebrated our hard work by getting a delicious dinner at Settebello.  And cookies.  Always cookies.  Which, of course, there are no pictures of.  We ate them.

On the walk back to the car I gave myself the bad wife award for this:

Yowzas.  That is still peeling...

This is Kate.  She's cute.

Dominion with the Madsens - a favorite tradition!  I just told Robert "I want to record my life to show I lived."  He thinks that's totally normal.

Look!  Opposite matching with Sasso on another Dominion night!

Whoops, back up to Sunday - we had the Morris clan over for a birthday dinner for Mom and Dad.  We ate outside - loved being out in the sun.  So fun to be together.

Austin killed it with gifts for Mom:

I killed it with dessert:

Dea is having a baby any day, so we got together for dinner and chatting.  Love these girls.  So glad to live close to them and see them.  I lucked out with really amazing roommates at BYU!

And, we saw a ton of this in May, in case you missed it:

I think we really did set a record for how much rain we got.  12 days straight.  

On May 30 we got together with a few other couples to celebrate Jenni's birthday.  I am kicking myself because this is the only picture I have to remind myself of that fun night:

Yes, that is the chocolate cake I destroyed.  I ate it and made a new one for her.

So grateful for good friends - Jenni has stuck by my side through an awful lot.  It was fun to take an evening to celebrate her!

Sheri had her dance performance (I need to get the other pictures off TJ's phone).  She did a great job.  I am so proud of her for all her work with her studio!

More time with the MacKays (check out TJ's impressive hiding spot).

I die a little when I see this picture of the tattoo Evan was so proud of.

And, on Sunday, we went to Mom and Dad's to celebrate Dad's birthday.  We pulled out the tandem bike for our first ride - so easy going (all downhill) and so sweaty returning.

We played Four Square again - so much fun.  Also, randomly ran into (not literally, thankfully) Jared and Leslie Nehmer on our ride home.  Fun to talk with them for a few minutes.

 Love Mom's new flowers.  Can't get enough of that vibrant color.

Other news, I'm starting to get into this running thing.  I've done this four times now:

Which makes me look like this:

And feel incredibly proud.  I always have a hard time not telling everybody I see "I just ran 8 miles!"

And until I get the pictures from TJ's phone (filled mine up - shocking!) that's it for May!