Fourth of July

Better late than never!  

The fourth of July is just about my favorite holiday!  We always have so much fun, going to the Bethany parade and having a wonderful family lunch, then off to the fireworks show! 

This year was extra special because we celebrated Father's day a little late, 

and.... we had a surprise baby shower for Lisa! 

 Karen hosted it all at her beautiful house.  Her backyard is AMAZING!  Like a resort!  A perfect aqua blue pool backed by a wall of magenta crepe myrtles with a huge patio!  It is wonderful :)

Neil and I got her a Nursing Necklace.  That is a super sturdy, well built, specially designed necklace that babies can play with while they are nursing so that they don't tear out mom's hair, earrings, eyelashes etc. 

Also for her pregnancy celebration Lisa wanted to have a Henna Party!  For those of you who don't know, Henna is a dye that you can get in a paste and then apply to your skin in a design.  It stains your skin for a couple of weeks and slowly fades away.  So all of us girls got some henna!  I painted on Lisa's belly, a shell for Karen Schell, Lisa (and dad) did my back, Lisa did mom's shoulder, and Lisa and Karen did a bird on Lori's shoulder

Here's Lisa with the paste still on.  Isn't she beautiful?! :)  Its really dark and glittery at first while the paste is still on.  It has to stay on your skin for about 24 hours.

Here's me with the paste washed off.  This is the lighter stain that it leaves on your skin.

Here's me and my mom (with her beautiful Henna!  What a cool mom!)  

The flash kinda surprised her in this picture!

What a wonderful weekend!  I love my fantastic family!

(Bryce and "Haha" watching the fireworks.  Bryce pointed at every one and said "Wow!  Look at that!")

Everyday Love

Yesterday I got home from work, and this is the scene that awaited me

Some of you may ask, Wow, flowers and grilling out! What's the special occasion?!  

Well, I'll tell you..... it was Tuesday :)

I'd like to quote from one of my favorite Rascal Flatts songs now:  

It's ordinary plain and simple
Typical, this everyday love
Same ol', same ol' keeping it new
Emotional, so familiar
Nothing about it too peculiar
Oh, but I can't get enough
Of this everyday love

Thank you Neil for making "everyday" extraordinary :)

Worship Emphasis Weekend

Neil's parents came in to spend the week with us in the middle of June and that very same day Neil and I were hosting a Worship Team Barbeque!  That weekend was a big worship emphasis weekend and Neil and I were so busy running all over the place.  Randy and Karen were such a HUGE help in getting everything ready and set out. Randy cooked all the meat and it was delicious :)  The barbeque was a success and I think everyone enjoyed it.  

The next night we had a Gospel Homecoming, which is an event our church has each quarter where we sing old Gospel favorites and hymns.  Its a big hit with the older crowd who is not to fond of our contemporary worship style *grin*  Neil and his dad sang two songs together and they make a wonderful duet :)  Neil also sang in a quartet and he turned out to be quite the crowd pleaser when he decided to sing soprano for part of the song!  I didn't know he could sing that high ;)

(Thats Neil - with the guitar - and his dad singing their duet.  I'm in the choir on the very right of the stage)

We had such a fun time getting to spend the week with Randy and Karen.

Angel Fire

For Memorial Day we went to the mountains of New Mexico with some of our small group friends.  There is just something about being in the mountains, high above a sunlit valley.  Its like the whole earth just seems more calm and still there.  You can hear each bird and showers of aspen leaves blowing in the wind.

The mountains are Neil's favorite place to be.

Neil's uncle has a cabin in Angel Fire and he was so generous to let us stay there!  It was so beautiful, right on the side of the ski slope.

Here are some barbarians :)

Thats Amanda and Jon, Justin and Kimberly, then me and Neil.  I think it was a refreshing and much needed vacation for all of us!  On our first day there we went to Taos, a small town near by.  First we went to the Taos Pueblo which is considered the oldest continuously inhabited community in the US.  

Their adobe buildings were most likely constructed between 1000 and 1450AD.  We met a villager who tried to share her meal with Kimberly, said she thought Justin was cute, and told us her dog's name was "hot dog" and "radar".  We had fun shopping around and taking in the sights.

On Saturday the boys wanted to go fishing, so we girls decided to head to Red River and do some more shopping.

Little did we know that on Memorial Weekend Red River hosts a huge biker rally!  There were SOO many motorcycles!  It was crazy.  

Amanda got slightly stalked by one biker so Kimberly and I had to stay close by.  Then we had a store owner give us some New Mexico Salsa.  (you can barely see it in that last picture, tucked in my arm). We didn't even ask for it or buy anything from his store, he just started talking to us and then ran after us as we were leaving to give us some salsa!  I think that was largely in part to Amanda also.  She is so outgoing, she can have a conversation with anyone!  Way to go for free salsa Amanda! :)

On Sunday the plan was to take the ski lift up to the top of the mountain, have a picnic lunch and hike down.  When we got to the ski lift it looked like this.

See how it just goes white at the top?  That is a cloud.  So we were about to get on the lift and the worker at the bottom gives us this stern speech, "You do realize that it is raining at the top, don't you?  Are you sure that you want to go up?  Do you want a trash bag to wear as a poncho?  Its very cold and wet at the top."  He was a nice man and just trying to look out for us, but he just didn't know how determined we were to hike around on this mountain!  So we started up on the lift and we are literally being encompassed by this cloud!  It was really cool and cold too.  It was raining on us and we were soaked before we even got to the top.  Then we started our descent.

It was too cold to stop and eat our picnic so we just kinda ate as we walked.  We ended up having a good time despite the wet cold.  Now that is the sign of a true barbarian :)

On Monday our friends went their separate ways and Neil's parents arrived!  

We had a great time with them and we ate soo much!  I always have a fun time with them.  I already feel like we are family.

(i was saying, "lets jump when we take this pic" - me looking like a leprechaun is just a bonus *smile*)

We went back to Taos with them to find some pottery bowls for Neil and I and that was the day I ate the biggest meal of my life at my new favorite restaurant, Michael's Kitchen!  I had stuffed sopapillas and ate the ENTIRE huge dish plus another sopapilla with honey for dessert!  I was still full the next morning!

We wrapped up our trip by swinging through OKC for Bryce's birthday party!  It was a great two weeks!

St. Louis

Wow what a rainy June week we have had... kinda feels like a rainy april day.  And what does rainy april bring?  May flowers!  So lets focus on that!  (how was that for a segue?)In May we went to St. Louis with Kenny and Karen! For those of you who don't know, that is my sister who is married to Neil's college room mate.  They also get credited with getting Neil and I together!  Needless to say we have a special bond with the Schells :)  So they came up and spent the night with us on their way to St. Louis for a concert and then Neil and I met them up there for the day on Friday.  

We went all over the place!  St. Louis has this cool place called Forest Park where they have an art museum, history museum, science museum, zoo, botanical

 gardens etc. and its all free!  Isn't that amazing? 

So we went to the art museum, ate a gourmet lunch and headed to the awesome zoo.  I was thinking, really how cool can this zoo be? I mean, its free!  But it was amazing!  So beautifully laid out and tons of animals.  

My favorite parts were the penguin exhibit where they had tropical and cold climate penguins and the tiger area. The tigers were a special treat because they had several tiger cubs all in the same area.  Usually they separate tigers when they are grown, but these tigers were still young, even though they looked full size.  They kept playing and splashing in the water, just having a blast!  

Friends forever, Apart or together!

Blustery Day

Wow!  What an eventful day we had!  This morning I was planning on going in to work to cover the shift of my co-worker who was out of town.  So my alarm when off ("Iiii am a maaaan, of constant soorrroows..." -yes I know that is an interesting choice of songs to wake up to, kinda gives you a hint of how I feel about mornings!) and in between hitting snooze I hear POURING rain and crazy wind and sirens.  So after a few times of snooze Neil says, "well I guess we better get in the closet... its time to get up anyway" he said this with a nonchalant tone as if that was a normal morning greeting for us *laugh*.  So we got in the closet and I grabbed a bunch of pillows, he got the weather radio and some granola bars then I went to get my purse and my wedding ring, then he wanted his book, then I wanted my book, then we both had to go to the bathroom, (you can see how good we would be in a real emergency situation!) 

So once we were settled in the closet we decided to find out why we were in the closet and it turned out there were 85 mile an hour winds flying through our neighborhood!  Ack!  So we didn't really need to be in the closet since there wasn't a tornado warning, but since we were in there we decided to be safe and stay just incase flying debris came shooting through our window!  So then my boss called me to say that I didn't need to come in today since the weather was so bad!  That was good since I wasn't looking forward to driving in the monsoon!  So after the severe weather warning was over we looked out the windows and there was trash all over our front yard and the wind was blowing all the rain sideways and knocking over people's trash cans and walloping over our new little maple tree!  

Yes it tipped our little tree clean over and rubbed it so roughly against the pavers that it looks like we tried to chop it down!  Needless to say we were quite distraught, and had a hard time waiting for the hail and downpour to stop for us to go prop it back up!  The storm abruptly passed and the sun came out, so Neil pulled some of the steaks out of the backyard  that are no longer needed and we put them in the front yard to stabilize our trees. 

This task was harder than it looks, because if you will remember, our yard is made of cement! In the process of securing our trees we discovered another little home that survived the storm :)  

After we were done with the yard work we headed out to run some errands.  We got lunch at Q'doba (soo good!) and then went to flowerama and got a ton of beautiful yellow carnations to hand out to the mother's in our church on Sunday.

Oh and last week we went bowling with Jon and Amanda for Amanda's birthday celebration! 

 I was by far the best at getting my ball in the gutter :)  

It was their daughter's first bowling trip and she had a blast!  

observant

Woah!  So we just came in from a morning of lawn work and tree beautifing and Neil is in the kitchen cooking me a gourmet lunch.  We were looking for a "medium saucepan" which takes a little looking to find, when suddenly he opened a cabinet and there was nothing in it!  A completely empty area!  Can you imagine being in your kitchen, in a home that you have lived in for over 3 months, and not knowing you had a whole cabinet just sitting there unused!  lol that just shows how observant we are!