"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.

McCall Bound

Jeff's brother and family just moved up to McCall, Idaho for work. So it only seemed logical that we would head up there for Memorial Day weekend and every one from this point on. It is only a 2.5 hour drive. Gunnar was excited to see his cousins again. Unfortunately the weekend was a little rainy but that did not stop us from having fun.

The day we got there, we went to a lake close to their house and hiked a little. It was fun to get out and breathe in the mountain air.

My niece Rubi is one tough nut to crack. It takes a miracle to get her to smile. I am so used to my babies that smile so easily but man this little girl loves to study out the situation first. I loved being able to hang out with her.

 Jeff took 5 kids on a bike ride nearby. They had a blast and it was a great workout for all of them because they had to ride up or walk up in some of their cases this massive hill to get back to the house. Stephanie and I enjoyed some quiet time with the babies.

 Dylan, Adam, Gunnar, Reese, and Bridger

 We walked a really fun loop down from their house. It was easy for the kids, with great weather and a lot of fun.

 We have a picture just like this with Gunnar in the backpack. I should dig that up to compare.

 Our family can not go to McCall without stopping at the candy shop and getting their ginormously yummy carmel apples. We bought two and headed to the sandy lake beach. The kids earned taffy for some race Jeff made up while riding bikes. They headed to the farthest rocks to eat it.

 Brecken LOVES to stick his hands in hit pockets and walk around. He looks like such a cool dude when he does it. It cracks me up because he is completely serious when he does it too. He is one cool blue eyed, blonde haired, totally tan kid.

 The town started closing off roads so we walked over to the action on the main street. We arrived just in time to take part in the Memorial Day celebration. They did a gun salute and a fly over with two jets. It was pretty awesome. The kids were all given spent shells at the end. They found that to be pretty neat.

We had a great Memorial Day weekend. It was fun to spend time with family. We've never done that before since all of our siblings and parents live in town. It was nice to get a way and we plan on doing it many more times.

Bend 2012

We love Bend, Oregon. We just do and it helps that every year for the last 3 Jeff has had a work conference there. The rest of us tag along and play all day for several days. We just love it and we have lucked out with beautiful weather every single time. We took a little walk down one of the resort paths and encountered two deer just hanging out around the condos. It was fun and the kids were just intrigued.

I love how deer have these pretty long eyelashes and can do amazing things like whip their heads completely around the check you out. Pretty crazy if you ask me. The thing has got to have a neck ache from that.

When in Bend, we do lots of playground adventures. Mainly because they have lots of really awesome playgrounds every where but because my two boys need to get their energy out. It was fun chatting with local nannies or chatting with stay at home moms that I totally clicked with. There was this one that I would seriously become friends with because our kids just clicked, were about the same age and she was easy to talk to.

I was determined to spread the Paparazzi love in Bend. I was pretty sure that nobody carries it there yet and I was going to change that. I researched my target boutiques first which were mostly downtown, loaded up Brecken in the stroller with Gunnar in tow, a bag full of Paparazzi to show and we were off. Gunnar was so over walking all of downtown Bend. It was nice weather and pretty fun walking the sidewalks. 

One day I did go to nearby Prineville. A lady that used to live there directed me to several places so I had to go. It was also fun to see where our really good friends moved from. They have a rental house there. Prineville felt like a blast from the past. We went to Arctic Circle to eat lunch and I seriously felt like I walked into a place that just opened in the 70's. It was so old school but fun. The entire town was like that. 

Our last day there, I just had this nagging feeling that I needed to visit one last boutique that I spotted earlier but it was not on my list. It was in the lower level of a building so I knew that my stroller would not work and from prior experience it was hard to contain my boys and do a sales pitch before I felt that I needed to get them out of there as fast as I could. I needed to visit this boutique. So I dropped Jeff and the boys off at the very top of this really large butte called Pilot's Butte in the middle of town. They were going to walk down it while I went to this boutique. I am SO glad that I did because she signed up with Paparazzi before we even drove out of town and has been doing great ever since. She is one awesome lady and we just clicked. I'm excited for her because she said that she had been thinking of getting a jewelry line into her boutique but not sure where to start and had not had time. And then in walks me. Seriously, I was the answer to where she wanted to go. It was awesome and I made a great friend and team member from it too!

The timing was great. They were done walking the butte and I was done with business stuff. But the walk did not come without a mess. They were SO dusty! But happy and tired as can be.

 I am so surprised that Brecken even let Gunnar that close to him. Don't let him fool you. He is a little stinker and very picky when Gunnar comes around. It is probably a result of Gunnar being such a turd towards him. The joys of being brothers.

 Jeff said that Brecken just reached a point where he was so done with it all. He wouldn't move. As you can see he is totally ignoring Jeff.

 So what do you do when you are tired you might wonder? You lay down in the super fine dirt of course to take a rest.

Then you get up, grab a pile of brush to play with and act like nobody else is around you. He is a character for sure.

The ride home was actually nice. Both kids fell asleep. You see on the way there Brecken did not sleep once! The entire 6 hour ride over he was wide awake. He was a pleasant wide awake just starring out the window and everything but he was wide awake. We were shocked. He is like me and does not want to miss anything. Gunnar did sleep a little on the way there. But on the way home they were exhausted. Here is hoping to another trip to Bend next year!

Hawaii: Part 3

September 19th was just a day of whatever. Mindy and Rillz had random stuff to do with family or for their wedding so we did our own thing. We packed a lunch and headed out. We wanted to head to North Shore and go to the beach. Along the way, we stopped at the Dole Plantation. I wanted to show Gunnar how pineapples grew. I remember when I went the first time with my family and was amazed at how they grew. I guess growing up I never really thought about it. I think they are cool. And to know that it takes about 2 years for one to mature is incredible.

As we made our way around the place, we knew we were in trouble. We had plans to spend like $0. When Gunnar heard the sound of the little train, we knew we were in big trouble. We ended up forking over $20 something dollars to go on that. We figured if that was Gunnar's big splurge, it would be worth it. It also rained while we were on it and cleared up some when we were walking around.

They have a huge pond with tons of koi fish. Gunnar and I had fun feeding them and watching them fight on top of each other for food. We also had fun taking pictures in those silly little displays.

After the plantation we made our way to the beach. The drive through the island this way is really pretty and rural. I enjoyed the drive. The weather was awesome again. We found a great spot to play. It was right next to these people running a board rental on the beach. It was really interesting watching people rent surf or paddle boards and give it a shot. This was also the day I rolled my capris up to my knees and didn't put a lot of thought into it...until later and I had burned legs from the knees down.

This little dude was not happy. He had sand in his mouth and all over so we would have to take him in the ocean and dunk him in the water and try to clean him off. He still hasn't learned on day 3. One of the problems is that he still crawled. He would crawl through the sand, then rub his eyes or get a little bit in his mouth, go to get it out but his hand was covered too. It was a never ending problem.

This guy and his wife were the ones that ran the rentals on the beach. He took his son way out there at one point to practice surfing. It was fun to watch and this little guy had great balance. This guy had crazy tattoos all over and was SO dark skinned. They also had a newborn. The baby looked to be a couple of months old. He also took the baby out in the shallow waters and laid him belly down on a board. It was so cute!

We had so much fun in the sand. Thanks to someone else the day before, we found sand toys unclaimed on the beach. They provided ours of fun for us. Gunnar also hit it off well with another little boy and loved playing with him. The interesting things was that their family including the little boy and girl did not speak any English. I love how language is not a barrier for little kids at all.

Our boys were so exhausted on the way home. I loved the picture of Brecken in the car seat. He was so relaxed making his face look so fat!