"Our Little Family"

I'm trying, trying, trying to do more blogging for records sake. When I read posts from years past, I just love it. I forgot so many moments happened and just get so excited to read about them again and look at the old pictures. Anyway, here we go. Two posts in one week...wow!

Spirit of Boise Balloon Glow 

So this totally is a pet peeve of mine. When people use the phrase "our little family" in any type of sentence of reference it just bugs. I've thought about this many times and even talked to Mindy about it the other day. When I think of little family (which the phrase bugs in any use of it), I think of a mom and dad and one small child. But when I see people using the phrase often, they have like 3+ kids and they are all like 4 and older. Now that drives me nuts. There is no little in any sense of the word when it comes to their family. Their kids are by no means little and their family sure is not little. I don't even think two kids counts as little. That makes 4 people total. It just drives me nuts. When I see it mentioned, I just think "Here we go again...". People just need to stop using it. Period.

The month of September brought more Paparazzi fun. I did a huge women's expo in town and boy was it insane! The entire thing was our target market so it was nutso but so much fun! I can't wait to do that one again. The very next day we headed to Vegas as a family for the 1st ever Paparazzi Convention. We had to make it there by Sunday because I was a special guest to the Leadership Dinner. We stayed Saturday night at my aunts house in St. George. I just love those cousins. I so wish we all lived closer. There would never be a dull moment for sure. Sunday we headed to Vegas. Checked into the hotel and I got ready. Okay, so those casinos are ridiculous. Really not a fan. We stayed at the Rio and honestly I did not find anything really fun about that city expect for a ton of people and chaos. That's just how I felt. The hotel was so smoky gross. Pretty bad when your two year old is coughing because it's nasty. I'm pretty sure that for most people, it's all fun.

The Leadership Dinner was SO fun! My very tippy top upline invited me as her guest and boy was I thrilled. I got a fancy invitation ahead of time and everything. Then days before I got to Vegas, she let me know that we were riding in a limo to dinner! How fun is that. Plus we didn't have to figure out how to get to the restaurant and/or pay for a taxi. When we got there for the limo, we assumed everyone got a limo ride. We were wrong. She is one of the top 5 consultants in the company thus got the limo ride. Woohoo! It was so fun and I already knew some of the people in the limo so it made it even better. Dinner was at Fogo de Chao, one of those super fancy Brazilian restaurants. It was even spendier than the one here in Boise and I thought that one was expensive. We ate and ate and ate and ate some more. We got to order whatever we wanted, even dessert that was so beautiful. I am so bad at pictures, so I don't have any sadly. We got a Paparazzi ring at our place setting and mine has not been released since the very beginning of the company, so that was fun. Rachel and I had a blast. If we lived closer, I can totally see us being closer friends. We laughed and had a great time.

All ready for the night. I actually put makeup on. You can't really tell and yes this is a big deal for me. Obviously I don't put enough on to look like a drag queen in real life but pretty good in pictures.

When you rounded the corner, you saw this. All of the consultants that have ranked Director and above. It was pretty fun.

This was on the floor at the very start of the corner. It was huge and exciting! Along the windows in the background you can see the huge banners that were put up for Paparazzi.

There I am! I'm a Premier Director! I counted, there were about 90 consultants that have reached this rank out of about 9000 worldwide. I was pretty darn proud of myself after I saw this display.

Rachel Kirby, the one I went to the Leadership Dinner with. I love her!

The founders, Misty Kirby, Trent Kirby, Ryan Reeves, and Chani Reeves. The two ladies are sisters.

My boys had a lot of fun. They got to get a lot of dad time in because I was gone for something or another. He wore them out pretty good. Sunday night they went and visited Jeff's friend that he hadn't seen in about 12 years. Monday they swam all day and Tuesday they went hiking to Red Rock Canyon Interpretive Center. Gunnar was excited to tell me all of the cool things that they saw from that. Don't let this fool you. Brecken never, ever slept in his own bed. That stinker slept in ours and he is the WORST sleeper with people. It was aweful! Wednesday we left and stopped by the Las Vegas Temple before heading back to Utah.

This temple reminded us a lot of the Boise temple in design over all. We were able to walk completely around it and see the pretty landscaping.

If you don't get pictures the first time around, Brecken is pretty much done after the first shot. I just look tired and ready to head home.

We love palm trees! So neat how you can see this one trimmed up.

We wanted to make it as close to Salt Lake as we could because we figured this was a great opportunity to stay stop at Temple Square. We just never get to Utah. So we stayed with my cousin Jessica and her family. Our boys met Emma in St. George when they were there. They were SO excited to see Emma!

Taking pictures of two two-year olds is nearly impossible.

They were copying Gunnar in the background.

You can tell we stayed in a girl house. We love goofing off with girly things.

Jeff had to stop at Cabela's. They had a lot of dead animals.

On top of the Conference Center. We've never been on top. We realized that every time we tried it was winter or raining and they won't let anyone up there for safety reasons.

We had a lot of fun on our quick trip to Vegas. We made Gunnar go to school the very next day and we got back late the day before. I just had too. He had the entire week off for Fall Break and just missed almost a week. It was fun to get away and I couldn't imagine leaving my family behind.