If i Was Stephanie Meyers...

i'd be furious. Either my hopes were too high or Twilight, the movie, was really just that pathetic. I'm very upset. I spent hours bawling and delving into the character's souls while reading the book...and then i spent 2 hours of my life laughing hysterically while trying to find romance within the movie. What were those producers thinking?! I want my money back.

What Makes The World Go Round

This is what gets me out of bed every day...what makes me smile...what keeps me breathing.

Lovin' BYU Football

Our whole family are die hard BYU fans. Since both Seth & i were little, we've been obsessed with BYU football. The year we were born they were national champions! We're crossing our fingers for that repeat. :) Well, my parents have tickets to all the games but since my dad hurt his arm they aren't able to attend the games this year, so they let us 4 kids divide the tickets between us! (ridiculously awesome, right?! Thank you so much Mom & Dad!) We chose to go to the BYU-UCLA game and it was beyond the definition of incredible! Dad's arm had started doing very well and his physical therapy was progressing, so he decided to (very very carefully) go to the game with us which made it that much more fun! Last year we all went to the BYU-UCLA game together too and it was a blast!! Horray for BYU football memories!!

(If pictures are too small just click to make them larger)

Last year's fun times...

This amazing year!!

Fun times on the long drive through football traffic!

Thank you again Mom & Dad for making these incredible memories possible!

GO COUGARS!!!

Nicci's Wall of Fame!

The worst thing about me is that i'm the world's worst procrastinator. I should win a medal, seriously. When Nicci was 3 months old we took her to get professional pictures done...and then never went back. :( When she turned 2 i promised myself i'd go get her pictures taken and then...never did. Big shocker. Well today Seth, me, & Kaity were walking through the mall and were stopped by a friendly lady from a picture store outside of Dillard's. They were running a special for one free 10x13 and Nicci looked so darn cute we thought what the heck?! At least she'll get a 2 year old picture finally! Well needless to say, we walked out with our free 10x13...$160 framed package of pictures...and a copy of the release they made us sign saying that they could frame and DISPLAY her photo shoot IN their lobby. That's right. Nicci made the "wall of fame" at a photo shop! Why does she have to be so stinkin' cute?! Here are some of our favorites...there's a copyright symbol across every picture but you can still see how insanely adorable she is! :)

This is what sheer beauty looks like...
Could she get ANY cuter?!
Ok. This little girl is known for sticking her finger right up her nose when you say, "SMILE!" This is just so classic Nicci. We love it.
She loves smelling flowers more than anything else. She always says, "Ooooo Mommy! Cuuuuute! mmmm..."
Simply Picture Perfect.

Labor Day Craze

First of all...isn't our daughter the most beautiful little girl you've ever seen?! Mmm. I love her. ...Ok...moving on...Boo on viruses. On Labor day we had a BBQ at our house and right before our friends started arriving i got on my computer to check my email and a message popped up on my screen that said, "You have a virus! Goodbye" followed by a flipping smiley face, and then my computer shut off. I turned it back on and everything was gone. The entire hard drive was d.e.l.e.t.e.d. I went between screaming Seth's name in hysterics and bawling so hard i couldn't talk. All our pictures were on there...over 5000 pictures!! So what does a girl do when her whole world seems to stop? She calls her mom. When i told my mom what had happened she gave me the number of a brilliant guy in her ward who is a literal computer genius. She helped me calm down enough to call him and figure out a solution. Long story short i gained my composure, redid my makeup, and had a ridiculously fun BBQ with our friends. THEN afterwards i took my computer to the computer genius's (Aaron) house, and low & behold he ended up recovering all of my pictures with his fancy software. He is such an incredibly selfless person. Thank goodness for kind and generous people who use their talents to help out little ol' people like me! Here are some pictures of our BBQing fun and some really good friends! (SIDENOTE: i don't know if i ever blogged about it but i surprised Seth with a BBQ for Father's Day. He has wanted one for a while and always looking at them when we go to Lowe's, so i had a pretty good idea which one he'd like. So i had his best friend assemble it for him while he was out golfing and then when he got home i had him open up his first gift- "BBQing utensils"! I've never seen him run so fast to the back door! :) My dad (the master of BBQing) showed him the ropes and he's been learning and doing very well since then!)

Here's Nicci waiting for Daddy to get home to find his surprise!

Seth's 'firing up the grill' for the first time!!

Dad is showing Seth the ropes!
Flying solo on Labor Day!!

Our Labor Day Party
from left: Ryan & Lacie, (little Roxy), Jess & Anton, JB & Kaity, Dan (Amanda had to work :( we missed you!), Me, Seth, & Nicci

My beautiful best friend Kaity & her boyfriend JB. Nicci LOVES JB and always steals his hat when he comes over. So cute.

Sweet & adorable Lacie is pregnant and ready to pop! She is so cute with Nicci and will make such a fabulous mother. Then there's her hubby Ryan & (Amanda's hubby) Dan assembling 2 more of our chairs so we'd have enough sitting room. Thanks boys!

The happy parents-to-be!!

Jess & Anton are such great people! We met them when Jess called me about our ad for selling the Civic. Since then we've been good friends. Thank goodness for selling our car! We feel very blessed to have met them.

Funny story: Nicci walked up to me and told me she needed a napkin. I thought she looked pretty clean but gave her one anyway. Then as i watched her walk off i heard her say, "Dan needs napkin..." then she proceeded to walk up to Dan and wipe off his face! It was SO CUTE!!

We kicked off our night with some serious DDR competitions! Kaity & Seth rocked and JB & Ryan were so brave to try it for the FIRST time! We didn't get pictures of all of us doing it but these pictures should give a good visual. :)

We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends in our lives! Thank you all for coming, and thank you Aaron for saving our computer!

After the partay was over Kaity, JB, Seth, & i decided we were going to have some fun with the camera...and actually some of the pictures turned out really cool! Prepare yourself for pure awesomeness...(or just sheer craziness...)

AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL Tryouts...

I'm Looking Forward...

to finally returning to the blogging world! I've been absent for almost a month due to a LOT of reasons! I'll be catching up this week but in the meantime here are some highlights of what's to come...For starters, the main reason i've stopped blogging- my computer got a virus on Labor Day and completely erased my hard drive, we are utterly obsessed with German cars AND we got yet ANOTHER new car (i know right? Who averages 5 cars in 3 years? um. Us.), the explanation about what happened to Nicci's arms, the amazingness of BYU football, my new ridiculously cute nephew, we gave Roxy to a sweet family with a lot of dogs (which she loved!) and got us a precious little 4 month old Maltese puppy, my 24th birthday, and last but not least how i'm staring my severe complex of getting "asked to quit" serving food because i STUNK so bad right in the face... and the many things learned while doing so- (if you're confused don't worry, i'll explain). Not only will i be catching up on my posts but i'll be catching up on responding to comments and emails as well! :)

Quote of the day:
"It's more important to be trusted than it is to be liked."

"Have fun at friend house, k. Love you Coco...Bye..."

were the words we heard yesterday right before we loaded Coco up in the Jeep to go meet her new owner. Coco is Nicci's amazingly well behaved bunny that we gave her for her 2nd birthday. Sidenote: I don't think i've even blogged about it yet but we got a new little dog. She is a little purebred Yorkie, her name is Roxy, and she absolutely adores Nicci... and Nicci more than adores her. But she's been having trouble peeing in the house so we started kennel training her. Then a friend told my mom that she may not be peeing because she has to, but more that she's just trying to mark her territory because she's sharing it with a bunny. So we decided that since we will be going out of town quite a bit the next couple months for BYU games (thank you mom and dad!) that we can't take a dog AND a bunny...AND if eliminating Coco helped with Roxy's potty problem then it would be wise to find Coco a new home. We were really worried about Nicci saying goodbye to Coco because she was REALLY attached to her but when we told her she was going to a friend's house she responded with, "Have fun at friend house, k. Love you Coco...Bye Bye." Then she gave Coco a big hug and kiss and i drove away with her. I think i cried for 5 minutes. Then i cried again when i gave her away! Nicci was such a good girl it really touched me...and we have so many fun sweet memories with Coco that it was really hard to say goodbye. It was the first pet i've ever had, and it was the first pet i've ever had to say goodbye to. It was harder than i thought it would be. But when i got home Nicci was helping give Roxy a bath and was laughing so hard she had tears streaming down her face, and that made me SO happy! This morning she asked Seth, "Daddy, where Coco?" and Seth told her she was at a friend's house. She was so cute when she responded, "Oh yeah...!" and giggled. We are going to miss Coco, but Roxy is such a fun little dog and has done VERY well since Coco's absence! Here are some special pictures we've taken of our sweet little pets.

Our sweet Coco...

Here's Nicci sharing all her toys with Coco!

This video is one of our favorites with Nicci & Coco!

And this is our ROXY...
...and our FAVORITE!