Dressing Up is Fun to Do!

Claire's naps have turned into quiet times lately, and that is fine with me because she happily plays in her room for two hours! (And she usually sleeps later in the morning, too, since she's not napping!)

She has been experimenting with dressing up during her quiet times. (Her shirt in this picture is backwards).

This one was after church one day. I came home from a meeting, and she was all dressed up!

Music Time

A while back my mom, Belton, and Claire had some fun music time at our house.

I love music time!!!

Surprise Party!!!

Mel's birthday is coming up, and we totally surprised her!!!! With a week of planning, some serious decorating magic (and more)  from Emmalee, and guest work (and more) from Ashley, we were able to pull off this party - as a complete surprise! (Which, by the way, is a VERY hard thing to do - you know what I mean if you know Mel!)

Have a look at this awesome set-up!

The theme was Mel's favorite things, so we chose lots of her favorite food to serve.

The decoration colors are her favorite - pink, yellow, red.

Emmalee's decorations covered every possible place! They were awesome!!!

Emmalee also planned some fun, fun games - about how well we know Mel. Here, we had to guess her favorite things, like lotion, movie, candle scent, etc. 

I really liked this game! Pictures from Mel's growing-up years hung from balloons. Some of them were numbered, and we had to guess how old she was in each picture. (I did horribly in this game because I was usually off by one year. I think I only got 2 correct!)

We got to fill out a survey about Mel. I actually did pretty well on this one!

Claire and Ryan helped set the party mood by making some noise.

Stephen and Mel went to a movie, and when we saw that they were pulling in the garage, we had people crouch behind the island.

I'm not sure what she was thinking at this point,

But we all jumped out and surprised her,

and she seemed to take it all in that all of this was for her!

Surprise! Happy Birthday!

The kids loved the confetti, of course!

Way to go, girls! We did it!

Kyle wasn't too sure about everything.

 But Evan picked up lots of confetti, put it in his cup, and then threw it in the air!

Eric actually got to attend one of Em's parties! Yay!

Emmalee - in her element, I think! She was awesome! :-) She gave us the answers to all the games.

Prizes were awarded.

And prizes were shared.

Then Mel opened her presents. She got some winners!

Claire seemed bored eating her Rosa's queso; I'm not sure how that's boring, though!

It was a fun party, if I do say so myself!

These two guys volunteered for dish duty! Thank you to them and to everyone else who stayed and helped clean up. That was fantastic!

Most importantly, happy birthday to Mel! I'm so so so so glad we actually surprised you! And I hope you enjoyed your party! (Who am I kidding? - I know you did!) Love you! 

Utah

We went to Utah for Jordan's cousin's wedding. I seemed to forget my camera a number of times, so I only have a few pictures. (And some of these are just from my phone. I still think they show some of the beauty that I saw!)

Jordan and Claire in front of the Manti Temple.

The newlyweds! - Jessica and Justin

And this is the beauty that I'm talking about. From the flowers to the mountains, it was beautiful!

Here is the old Provo Tabernacle. It burned at some point, so now it is being turned into a temple inside. It's nice that the building can be preserved.

We drove around one day with Ashley, Dave, Amy, and Kate. Here are the three little girls.

We had fun with these kiddos!

We ate an amazing lunch at Gandolfo's Deli. - I recommend it! After lunch, Claire found some shade.

We enjoyed seeing so many family members in Utah. One night Claire and I went to bed pretty late, and Jordan was hanging out with his family. A couple of hours later, he came in and said he hadn't laughed that much in years! He had a headache from laughing for two hours straight! I'm very glad we were able to make this trip. We had a great time!