4th of July and Landscaping

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. It's got to be one of my favorite holidays with the parades, carnivals, bbq's, swimming and FIREWORKS! I LOVE fireworks. This year we went down to the parade and met up with Matt, Dani and their two kids. That made the parade so much better. Lexi kept pointing to all the royalty and saying "Look it's another princess in her castle". And everytime there was a marching band or loud music playing, Jax would start bustin' a move. So stinking cute! After the parade we headed to Dustin's store for a few hours. I decided I would go wave a sign around outside to get peoples attention and we ended up putting a monster sak on top of the van and I layed there, got a sun tan and wiggled the sign around a bit. Got lots of honks and hopefully some people will come back! There was a nice breeze that would cool me off occasionally. Then we closed up shop and went to a bbq at Roxanne's club house. It was really nice and they had an outdoor pool. We ate then went swimming with the kids. We then came home and took naps until Matt, Dani and the kids came to our place and we watched fireworks from our roof again. It was a gorgeous night until about 10 minutes before the fireworks started when it started raining. We had big blankets so we covered up and braved the rain to watch the fireworks (it wasn't raining too hard). Fun night with lots of great conversation! ha ha Sunday we went to Kaysville to celebrate my little sisters 17th birthday. We had a delicious dinner then played croquet and washers and just relaxed outside. I love the summer! Sorry I didn't take my camera.

In other summer news, I finally finished landscaping our front flowerbeds. What a project that turned out to be. My mom came down to help me plant everything and when we tried to dig a hole we hit nothing but rock. Long story short, two 8 hour days digging down a foot of rock and clay, 1 8 hour day putting good dirt back in and planting everything and now I can just go sit and enjoy it! Thanks Jim and Mom for all the help in getting it ready! Here are the pics.
Digging out the bad dirt. Yeah, all those rocks came out of the flower garden.This was one of the biggest boulders we pulled out! And the finished product. Everything is really small this year put it will all come up again next year. Also, there are bulbs that are just starting to pop through and we planted ivy to cover the tall gray part of the house and the stairs. I'm so excited to watch everything grow!

Oh and all the rocks in the flower garden are rocks we pulled out of the garden.
Hope you're having a great summer!

Welcome to the World!

This week we had two new additions to our family! Dustin's sister Rachel had their twins this week. A little girl, Zoey Ann and a little boy Zachary Cole. (I LOVE their names!) They are two months early and are just over 3 lbs each but they are doing good. I can't wait to meet them! Congrats Rachel and Brandon!

Vacuum Nightmare

Dustin and I have had the WORST luck with vacuums. Since we've been married we've bought multiple vacuums. They all last about 5 five times then they break down. Just so you don't think that we've vacuumed 15 times in the three years we've been married, we have a big shop vac that Dustin used for Monster Sak. That is the best vacuum ever but it's a pain in the but to drag around. We have been using that in between the regular vacuum purchases. This last vacuum died on the second use. The third time it started spitting stuff out. WE ARE SO DONE WITH VACUUMS!!! We've tried Dirt Devil and Eureka. Does anyone have a great vacuum that will last forever?

Schools out for the Summer!

Well I survived another year. In some ways this year seemed long but I can't believe it's over! This last week of school was pretty fun. Dustin always teases me that I don't work the last 2 weeks of school. The last week (one week) is a lot of cleaning, wrapping up and playing. We had water day yesterday. The kids take their desks and chairs outside and we scrub them down with soapy sponges then spray them down. Then in the afternoon we do rotations with water. The kids don't get really wet, maybe a few sprinkles here and there. I had about 5 kids that walked in Thursday morning and we almost in tears because 'Teacher, we forgot our swimsuits'. If only you could have seen the concern on their faces. It took me telling them a few times that they didn't need their swimsuit before they would calm down. I was in charge of the water balloon toss. It was a lot of fun. And I might have tossed a few right next to their feet. One of the little boys chased me and popped on on me though. Good times! The last day is always a little bitter sweet. The kids are so cute. A bunch of them made me cards. My favorite one said "Thanks for being a great teacher for first grade. You teached me a lot." (Guess they missed some grammar lessons :) Two of my girls made me a giant (like 12 papers taped together) poster of the three of us. I am very excited for summer though... sleeping in, staying up late, spending time with Dustin, playing with friends and family, camping, jet skiing, BBQ's... I could go on and on.

HAVE AN AMAZING SUMMER!

My Absolutely Incredible Husband!!!

I just have to take a minute to brag about my hubby. Dustin never ceases to amaze me. I seriously don't think that there is anything he can't do. When people ask me what he does I think it would be faster to tell them what he doesn't do because he really does it all. He has started a successful business from the ground (or our little first ghetto apartment), he is now expanding Monster Sak to sell furniture (really, really nice furniture for way less than R.C. Willey), he's a real estate agent, a loan officer, a property manager and I could go on all day. One of his recent goals was to get a book published. When he told me that's what he wanted to do I couldn't believe it. I mean really, who does that. Well I shouldn't have been surprised when Cedar Fort told him that they would publish his book. That's right... DUSTIN IS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!! His book is called 'Learning to Prosper'. It's a self help book aimed at helping returned missionaries use the skills they have learned in post mission life, school and how to graduate from college with no debt. You can see a picture at cedarfort.com then click on the new release link on the left hand side (sorry, I don't know how to put a link). It's on the second page, #17. I just searched on-line and Amazon and a few other online book store already carry it! I am so proud of him!

Seven Pounds

We just finished watching this movie and if you haven't seen it yet, maybe you shouldn't read this yet.

I was really excited to see it and now that I have, I wish I wouldn't have watched it. I really liked it up until about 15 minutes to the end. I don't really want to say to much because I hate it when movies get ruined but frustrating. It had an overall good message and it did a great job getting you totally emotionally invested but I feel completely empty. Not happy.

Have you seen it? What do you think?

Yes we're still alive

From the looks and sounds of it, we're not the only ones who have hit a wall with blogging. It's not that nothing exciting is going on, I just haven't felt motivated to blog about anything. But by request of my cousins ... here is a quick update.

We've had two birthdays in our house and 6 in just our immediate families in the past two months (all but one in March). Dustin turned the whopping 2-8 and I turned a quarter of a century. For Dustin's birthday we had a little get together with his family/going away party for Rachel and Brandon (man that seems like FOREVER ago). He was sick on his actual birthday which was kind of the pits. He got a fish for Christmas (long story, ask him). My birthday was a school day and my first graders wanted to sing to me like every 5 minutes. They were really cute. We went to Outback with some family and friends. Dustin got me beautiful Gerber Daisies, and a bike and I'm so excited to be able to ride all over town as soon as it warms up. Funny story, he got me an ice cream cake that looked heavenly. It was called Mud Pie and it looked like chocolate and peanut butter. He cut it and served it and we all started eating it. It was then that we all realized, that isn't peanut butter, it's coffee flavored! Ha ha! We had a good laugh over that one.

In other news, as many of you know, we can't stay put in one place for very long. We moved into our new place and it was a nightmare!!! The first night, our neighbors had quite the party and were blasting music until all hours of the night. A few mornings later someone went cruising up our street, very early in the morning honking their horn. Other times there were teen aged boys peeping in the basement windows, or grown couples coming right up to the window to look in. Needless to say... kind of a scary place, especially for me! So we put in some time there, trying to make it work and now have decided to move back and keep it vacant for a little while. Oh, the adventures!

I am very excited for General Conference this weekend. I LOVE conference time! I love the energy boost that I get. We are so blessed to have living prophets that lead and guide us and remind us the things we can do to make our lives better than we ever thought possible. And here's keeping our fingers crossed that it gets warmer by the weekend!