Berkeley's Blessing

We had the joy of blessing Berkeley on March 10th. Thank you to all of our family and friends who came to enjoy the day with us! It was fun to be able to have everyone over afterward for brunch at our new place. A huge thank you to my mom for baking homemade cinnamon rolls for everyone. We also made some blueberry muffins and an egg casserole courtesy of pinterest. Catherine made 2 super yummy fruit dips (btw, I want those recipes!) and we had the most perfect weather. It all made the perfect day.
 

I made her dress, and am proud to say I finished it a week before! Thanks to this super cute dress from etsy/pinterest for the inspiration. Check out the etsy shop. SUPER cute stuff.

Thank you to Sarah at Little Penelope Lane for the headband and matching flower for her dress.

And thank you again to my mom for crocheting the most most beautiful blanket!

Awkward picture, but the only one I got of the whole dress and where you could see the blanket.

Fun fact: My blessing dress (the one Brighton wore) had a cream ribbon in it, so I incorporated a cream ribbon in both Boston and Berkeley's dresses.

Eternity: Mike, Sundee & Baby Van

Mothers Day weekend we were blessed to witness the sealing of my sister and her cute family in the Las Vegas LDS Temple. We are so happy for them! If you are not familiar with the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I invite you to learn more here.


We brought our girls with us on the trip, and stayed at a hotel for the first time. I was anxious that it was going to be horrible... kids up all night crying, etc. But it turned out to be really fun, and the girls did better than I could have ever imagined.

We drove up to Vegas Friday day and attended the temple that night with Sundee to receive her endowment. Then Saturday (at 8am, holy early...no pun intended), we attended their sealing. The spirit was so strong as we witnessed this cute family be sealed together for eternity. Such a special day. Something I will always remember.

Some of the outtakes. Feel free to make up your own captions.

Afterward we took the girls to play at Tivoli Village and wasted time until we met up with more family for a luncheon at Mimi's.

Then over to Sundee's for some afternoon swimming. Both of my girls love the water, and had a blast. I really need to get them into swimming lessons!

For dinner we ate at Cafe Rio (Braden: "It tastes better here because it's closer to Utah." *thick sarcasm*) and then went back to Tivoli Village to play and have a treat.

With so much playing the girls fell asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows.

Sunday was Mothers Day so we went with my parents to Hash House for a deliciously huge breakfast. Man alive, I love that place.   Then we hit the road back to California.

No trip would be complete without some teasing from my papa.

I hope all of you awesome moms had a fabulous Mother's Day. I am truly inspired by each of you and am blessed to have you all in my life! For real.

It was a great trip, and am so happy we were able to go!

A Billion Clicks

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Time Out For Women in Long Beach this past weekend. What an amazing experience to hear from so many truly inspiring, spiritual people. My bucket has been refilled, and I can't wait to go again in September with my mom and sis!

Thanks Sarah and Tracy for letting me tag along!

One of my favorite presenters was Hillary Weeks.  She sang so many songs it was like a concert. So fun. But she also gave an amazingly funny, inspirational talk.

During her talk she told us...

"I heard someone say we think over 300 negative thoughts a day.  I was compelled to find out if that was true.  So I bought a clicker - and started counting.  Each day for one week, I clicked and counted my negative thoughts.  After seven days of clicking each discouraging, gloomy, depressing thought - I felt discouraged, gloomy and depressed!

With that realization, the experiment changed.  What would happen if I clicked all of my positive, uplifting, optimistic thoughts?  Would I feel positive, uplifted and optimistic?

That is exactly what happened.  Clicking heightened feelings of motivation, strength and confidence I had never felt before."

Hillary began sharing the idea, founded a billion clicks website, and wants all of us to click and report to reach that billion!

Aren't our own thoughts our own worst enemy? Why not make them our biggest support system? You better believe I came home with a clicker. I haven't been using it 100%, but when I have carried it with me it has made the biggest difference in my mood. I consciously focus on good thoughts so I can click more, and it has made my day go so much better!

So go order yourself a clicker here and see for yourself. And then lets talk :)

A Night in Italy

If you didn't know, I am the 2nd counselor in our Young Women's program at church. Every year we put on a dinner and auction to raise money for them to go to Girls Camp.  This year we did "A Night in Italy" as our theme. All of the girls made either spaghetti, lasagna, or fettuccine to bring. And we provided an awesome salad and toasted garlic bread. The cost was $5 per person or $30 per family.

Members of the ward brought baked goods for us to auction off live, and we also had a silent auction going in the back with services the YW were auctioning off (babysitting, dog walking, window washing, etc.).

Between the dinner, live and silent auctions, we made just under $2700.  Covering the cost for all of our young women, including an awesome non-member, to go.

I was put in charge of the decorations, and thought they turned out cute.  I mean, there is only so much you can do with a gym, and a limited budget.

I found this awesome website and printed 99 cent 8x10's (thanks to a promotion Walgreen's was running) to hang along he back wall, like an art gallery. I glued them on cardstock and then on 1/2 sheets of poster board to make them bigger. 

I found chef hats for a good price on amazon, and had them shipped and on my porch in 2 days.  I love amazon.  The girls were awesome to comply with my request that they wear them :)

Our menu.  When I think of an Italian restaurant, especially in movies, I always picture it with a chalkboard menu. (Thank you Megan!)

I saw an idea on pinterest (of course) to chain together tissue poms to hang along walls at different lengths. Although probably just as cheap as balloons, you couldn't pay me enough money to make 114 of them (the number of balloons we blew up...thank you Justin for your air compressor).  I ended up really liking the balloons though. They reminded me of grapes, which makes me think of Italy as well.

But we did make 6 large poms to hang on either side of the stage.


My favorite, the centerpieces. Vases from the dollar tree, carnations from Flower Works, Italian parsley and a lemon slice.  I bought red damask fabric from Joann's to make squares for each table, and printed more Italian photos in wallet size to scatter around.


To complete the "mood", I downloaded an album of Il Divo (Pop/Opera) to play while everyone ate.  

Some of our girls performed a Samoan dance as entertainment for our guests. And we ran a slide show of pictures from our different activities.


I think people enjoyed themselves :)

I am so glad it is over though!

I Love To See The Temple

Brighton is always asking to go "bye bye", so I've started asking her where she wants to go. Today and the last few times she's said, "The temple!". So today I said, "Sure!".

It was a beautiful day, and we didn't have anything pressing to be done. We hopped in the car and headed to Newport.

When we first got there Brighton yelled out, "Jesus, where are you?" 



Brighton loved roaming the temple grounds, and Boston loved her mommy carrying her in the moby. We all enjoyed getting out in the beautiful so cal weather.

 

You've got to love how amazing camera phones are now!

Nothing like ending a trip to the temple with a prayer.

Brighton's favorite Primary song is I Love to See the Temple (words above), so I think this was an extra special day for her :)

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