happy birthday malakai...

we had a little party for malakai today at nana & papa's. after we had cupcakes and malakai opened a few gifts we all headed to the pool at eric's apartments.


the kids swam for about 2 hours.


of course they would have been happy to have a little more time.

i love a fun musical...

we just got home from seeing hairspray and it was wonderful! it was missing a few of the things that made the original movie great, but in general it was fabulous!

i bought the soundtrack a few weeks ago and have barely listened to it...but i have a feeling it's going to be a favorite for a while!

a little about vegas...

so, vegas was fun.

it's so crazy and overwhelming and truly over the top in excess, but as a voyuer of sorts i really enjoyed myself.

the thing that will make this trip (my first if you didn't already know that) live forever in my mind is that we (christina & i) actually met the lead singer of the band snow patrol (the reason we went to vegas). i took a picture of christina and him. i wasn't thinking straight or i would have had one taken of me with either him or nathan (the guitar player) who was standing right there also, but still we got proof that we met him. what a cool moment and it made the concert even better.

i have to wonder though how christina is going to manage to marry him since she couldn't even get a word out of her mouth. i ended up doing all the talking (which was mostly nervous chatting). she was going to be content just standing there looking at him and so i asked him if i could take a picture. he looked tired and a little worn down, but he kindly consented and didn't even run screaming from us like we were crazy...and I am sure between her silent worship and my inane chatter he thought we were!

so tired...

i got back from vegas last night at 9:30pm and went STRAIGHT to the barnes & noble downtown to join the enormous crowd waiting for hp7. got the book after a 30 minute wait. got home about 1am started reading and kept reading until around 5am (when jason made me stop). slept for 4 hours and resumed reading. FINALLY finished around 9pm...what a great book!

i am SO ready for bed now...more about vegas later!

today i'll find out...

what happens in vegas!!

christina and i are off today for our vegas trip! i am sure the highlight will be seeing snow patrol, but you never know...right?

we will be back in time to grab our harry potter and the deadly hallows books friday night at the barnes and noble downtown...a perfect way to end our little trip!


have a great week!

a perfect saturday in the park...

jas, kial & i had a great time saturday hanging out at the park with kiki, ally, travis and lots of other people at kiki's family bbq. the food was FABULOUS and the company even better.






makes me tired just looking at the photos!

can't hardly wait...

only 12 and 1/2 more hours and i'll see HP5 on the big screen AND only 11 days until the book is here. it's the little things that REALLY make life fun.

ceb is leaving tomorrow morning for a pioneer trek with her church youth group. i am seriously concerned she's going to get heatstroke, but otherwise hope she has a great time. she is going to harry potter with us tonight at 12:02am and then has to be ready to go at6am tomorrow morning. her plan is to sleep for the 5 hour bus trip...good luck cebby. I love you!

movies and July 4th...

so in the last week i have seen 3 movies in the theater.

last sunday we took the girls to see ratatouille. it was great; fun, sweet and a wonderful message. we all enjoyed it. not that we'd have expected any less from pixar and disney.


the girls left the next morning (at 5am) for montana. they went with my parents who took ALL 8 grandkids to visit my mother's brother and his family for the 4th.
from all accounts it sounds like they had a fablous time, hiking, swimming, watching fireworks and just playing. since they were with my parents pretty much no pictures were taken, so i'll just have to try and imagine it all.
i was also informed by kial that she was never reminded to brush her teeth, so that never happened either. gone 5 days and she didn't brush her teeth the whole time. she actually commented to me how nice it felt to brush them when she got home...hmmm. i am not sure WHY a 12 year old kid needs reminding to remove the sweaters and food from her teeth, but there you go.

with the girls gone we decided to see live free or diehard on tuesday night. we got to the theater, got up to the front, requested our tickets and they had JUST sold out. i knew i should have used fandango, but for some reason i didn't. so we went to dick's got cheeseburgers and rented a few movies for jas.
we went back wednesday morning (after buying the tickets on fandango) and watched and really enjoyed the movie. it was just fun, no thinking required, just action and a little humor. i really liked justin long, who was the dorky side-kick, he was hilarious.


after the movie jas and i putzed around until it was time to meet up with jason's cute (because jas REALLY cares that he's cute) work buddy chris and his darling girlfriend sarah for dinner at my new FAVORITE pizza place, tutta bella. if you haven't tried it you should and if you have you know.

then we proceeded to a "secret location" where we watched the fireworks with chris, sarah, dylan, allison and wes; all great people from jason's work. the view was awesome and we had no problems with parking or the drive home.

but my FAVORITE thing all week was the movie transformers. yeah, i know i am totally dipping into super dork territory, but it was SO COOL! the graphics were amazing, the characters were awesome and the movie itself was really well done. in my opinion it was the perfect action flick; fast paced, interesting and FILLED with humor. i may even need to go see it again. it's ok, call me a dork...i can take it.


now i just have to pace my self until tuesday night when we are all going to a 12:02am showing of the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

yep, i already fandango'd those tickets!