Rachelle's Wedding

On Saturday evening, after Jake's wedding and luncheon my niece Rachelle got married. We hurried from the luncheon and drove to SLC and met my parents at their hotel. Addie and I slept for about and hour while Allen {somewhat grudgingly} took the big kids for a quick swim. We were so hot and tired after the long hours in the sun at the temple. Originally I had planned for all of us to wear our Jake wedding attire to Rachelle's wedding but after wearing those clothes for 2 days we were in dire need of showers and fresh clothing.

Anyway, we rushed to Cactus and Tropicals, a nursery in SLC where Rachelle's wedding was held to help set up for the reception. It was chaotic but thanks to my parents and sister, the whole thing turned out really nice. My sis and mom made some AMAZING desserts for the reception and the setting of the wedding was beautiful.

Unfortunately I did not take as many pics as I wanted to since we were helping with food. Here are the three good ones that I got. All the pics I took at the ceremony turned out bad. Rachelle left disposable cameras on the reception tables and needless to say, my kids had a REALLY good time with those. She posted the pics on her Facebook page and Allen and I laughed our heads off looking at them. I will try to get copies so I can post them here. They had a really fun time taking pics of each other, the other guests and everything else you can imagine.

After the wedding it was late but we were hungry for some non-dessert food so we headed to In N Out for a quick bite with my little bro and his girlfriend. We had never met Christina so it was fun to chat with her and get to know her {she's an avid reader too so we had a ball comparing books}. We finally got back to the hotel at about 11:00 p.m. where we crashed for a few hours before driving to Portland the next morning.

The wedding turned out beautifully and we are so happy for Rachelle and John and we are so happy we could be there for their big day!

Jake's Wedding

We started our whirlwind 17 day trip by traveling to Utah for Allen's youngest brother, Jake's , wedding. We had originally planned to fly to the Pacific NW for our family reunion this year but when Jake got engaged and planned his wedding the weekend before we were planning to go, we decided to drive since we would be half way there anyway. The timing worked out great. It worked out even better when my niece decided to get married the same day as Jake's wedding. We basically killed 3 birds with one stone!

Anyway, we drove up to UT (a 10 hour drive) on Thursday afternoon and made it by about midnight. We stayed with Mindy and stayed up WAY too late talking that night. The next morning we slept in a bit and then had lunch at Cafe Rio. Hooray for yummy and cheap Utah food! After lunch we headed over to Erica's house (the bride) to help with reception preparations. Jake and Erica decided to have the reception the evening before their wedding ceremony. The reception was gorgeous and filled with lots of yummy food. My favorite was the cookie table they had with about 20 varieties of different cookies! It was so fun to try everything (and when I say we tried everything, I mean it!).

We took tons of pictures the hour before the reception began:

Family Picture attempt #1:

Family Picture attempt #2:
{Neither turned out stellar but baby is definitely making it's presence known in this pic!}

The loves of my life:

Some of the grandkids:

Grandma with her granddaughters: The guys:
Jake and Erica had a fun dance party at the end of the reception {where I got some amazingly hysterical footage of my kids dancing) and then we headed back to Mindy's tired, sweaty and full of yummy treats {where we stayed up way too late talking once again}.

The next morning we had to be at the Provo temple bright and early for the ceremony. It was a lovely ceremony and we were all emotional watching Jake and Erica make their sacred and eternal covenants to each other.

After the wedding we took more pictures!

It was a HOT day and the kids played and played in the fountains - no matter how many times we told them not to {at one point we actually had to fish Addie OUT of a fountain - yeah, good parenting there}:

Part of Frost clan:

The bride and groom with the siblings:

Allen's mom put on a lovely wedding luncheon for the family and friends at a beautiful new reception center in Provo. The food was fab (catered by Magleby's) and it was fun to be together for a few more hours. This was the lone picture I took at the luncheon of our new niece Madeline. She kept giving me these adorable grins that I just couldn't resist.

We are so happy for Jake and Erica and are excited to get to know Erica even better! She is a smart and fun girl and is a great addition to our family!

Next up, my niece Rachelle's wedding! {Hoping/planning to get caught up on my blogging this week. If only my daily afternoon nap would quit getting in the way!}

The Truth about our Summer

Yay! We are home from our epic 17 day vacation. We had a grand time but I do not recommend coming home the day before school starts. It's been a bumpy start to the school year. I have been busy with laundry, getting groceries, unpacking and making sure my kiddos get adjusted to our new schedule. I have A LOT to blog about though and I'm going to go in chronological order.

At the beginning of the summer I was so jazzed about having a fun and productive summer with my kiddos. We were planned and scheduled and things went smoothly for the first couple of weeks. But then.... we got this:

And everything besides SURVIVING this summer went right out the window!! Surprised? Yeah, I'm still feeling a little shell shocked about the whole thing, even though this is a planned pregnancy. I spent the majority of July feeling like I wanted to die and my poor kids took the brunt of it. I tried hard to keep some semblance of normalcy around here but I'm pretty sure I failed miserably! Luckily, my "morning sickness" usually hit around 3 p.m. so I was able to keep it together until then and Allen was able to take over when he got home. In short, we ate out way too much, my kids watched way too much TV and my house was messy for the better part of a month! Allen also got a BIG promotion at work this summer so he has been working an insane number of hours adjusting to his new job making that first trimester rough on everyone.

The good news is that at 15 weeks most of the MS seems to have passed, though I still have my moments most days. This pregnancy feels pretty similar to my pregnancy with Carter - extreme nausea unless I am eating, plus being starving most of the time. It's been a weird combination - nausea + hunger. I've managed to pack on a few (haha) pounds already. It seems that no matter how hard I try or how much I swear "this time will be different" I still gain lots of weight. You'd think by my 4th pregnancy I would just accept that's how my body does things.

Most people know I was pretty adamantly against having a 4th baby so I will just address it right now. Allen felt very strongly that there was another baby out there for us. I felt pretty content with 3. I was so sure that we were done that I worked my tail off last fall and lost the rest of my baby weight and felt awesome. But his nagging feeling wouldn't go away. I prayed and prayed and prayed about it a lot and didn't ever really feel a definitive answer either way. So without going into a lot of details I will just say that I could have sat on the fence for the rest of my life and am pretty much going on faith with this one. I am HAPPY that the decision is made and that I'll never, ever have to think about it again.

To say that the kids are thrilled to pieces would be an enormous understatement. We told them pretty early on because I just felt so lousy and I felt like they needed to understand why. Carter and Makenna have been praying for another baby for a long time and just couldn't understand why their prayers were not being answered. The first thing out of Makenna's mouth when we told them was, "oh mom, Heavenly Father FINALLY answered our prayers." It was the cutest thing ever. She is forever kissing my tummy and they have been great helpers. Addie has no clue what is going on even though we talk about the baby all the time. Carter is 100% convinced that he is getting a brother this time around and prays about it every single day. I guess we will know in a few weeks!

Anyway, that is the truth about how our summer really went around here. I try not to think too much about having a nursing newborn next summer too but I'm sure this baby will be a huge

blessing to our family. I did already post my pregnancy news of Facebook so most of my friends already know our news but I wanted a record of this pregnancy too!

Pioneer Day Party

Last Saturday our ward had a really fun Pioneer Day party. A BBQ dinner was served and then there were a bunch of Pioneer-ish activities planned. My kids had the best time trying everything out and being with their friends.

Crossing an "icy river" (aka baby pool filled with water and ice - brilliant!):

Potato Sack races:

Making/Eating Butter:

Tug-o-Wars (YM Presidency v. EQ Presidency - the YM were victorious!):

Stick Pulls:
Hanging with Friends:



Looking Cute:


There was also candle making, another pioneer craft, 3 legged races and hoop roll races. We had a wonderful time and hope this becomes and annual tradition for our ward.

Zoo Music

Gosh, it has been forever since I posted anything on the old blog. We're just busy enjoying summertime - lots of swimming, playdates, popsicles, bike rides, afternoon reading, and trips to the park. I should take more pictures of our day -to-day activities but I never seem to remember my camera.

Last Friday we picked up dinner at one of our favorite local spots and headed over to the zoo for their Friday evening live concert. The zoo here has different local groups come in every Friday night during the summer to perform. We had a really fun time. We got set up in a shady spot on the lawn and enjoyed our dinner. We still had a little while until the concert started so we spent some time looking at our favorite animals (the adorable baby elephant, giraffe's and sea lions) and then settled on the lawn to watch the concert.

(ignore Al's full mouth in this picture!)

The group we saw was a Celtic group that were billed as Celtic rock. It ended up being VERY mellow Celtic music. Allen and I really enjoyed it but the kids were a bit restless. They ended up playing with the kids that were sitting next to us for most of the night. We'd really like to go again for a date night and hope we can squeeze it in before the summer is over. We will definitely be making this a family tradition every summer.

We only have a couple more weeks of our summer break so my posting will probably be minimal as we try to squeeze in as much fun as possible. And I hope to have my 365 blog updated in the next couple of days. I'm taking my pictures but am slow getting them off my camera!

A festive Fourth

We had a super fun and relaxing 4th of July weekend this year!

First, a few pictures of my patriotic decor. We are almost always traveling over the 4th so I usually don't decorate so it was really fun to have my stuff up this year.

On Saturday morning we attended the local 4th of July parade. It was perfect weather and we had a great time. The kids took their Trick or Treating bags to the parade and brought home about as much candy as they did this past year ToTing. It is crazy! After a quick stop at Sonic for drinks and treats we spend most of the afternoon lazing by the pool before watching the fireworks from our backyard balcony.

Parade goers:

On Sunday we got decked out in our red, white and blue and headed to church. After naps we had dessert with some friends and then headed down to watch the ABQ city fireworks from Allen's work parking lot. It was a late night but the kids had blast.

On Monday we hosted a big BBQ with a few friends in our ward. It was so much fun and we had delicious food and great conversation. When it finally got dark we put on our own fireworks show in the front yard.

Carter and Noah in their matching shirts!

A few of the party goers:It was another late night and my kids miraculously slept until 9:30 this morning recovering from all the festivities. It was a perfect weekend - family, friends and fun - and made me wish for a holiday every weekend.

Galloping Graces

A couple weeks ago I was able to take the kids, along with some friends horseback riding. A couple here in town opened a non-profit horse ranch for kids a few years ago that offers FREE horseback riding to kids several times a month. I have wanted to take the kids for awhile but wanted to wait until summer.

They had an amazing experience! We were so impressed with the entire organization and with the couple who generously offers their land and livestock so kids can have this experience. Our day was broken into three stations. At the first station the kids were asked to make thank you cards that are sent to the people who donate the food for the horses.

Our second station was our service station where the kids got to pick up horse poop. Hilariously, the kids loved this part of our day almost as much as their time spent on the actual horses! The kids proved to be hard workers and even the littlest ones chipped in and scooped poop

It was finally our turn to ride the horses and the kids LOVED it. Carter and Makenna both proved to be quite adept at handling the horses on their own. I was so proud of how brave they were and how patient they were with the horses and the process of steering them through the obstacles in their pens. The surprise of the day was how IN LOVE with the horses and riding Addie was. She could not get enough of it. Of course she was just walked around the ring with the horse for about 15 minutes but she cried and cried when they took her off the horse. She is STILL talking about riding the horsey.

After the organized activities the kids spent quite a bit of time playing around their amazing playhouse, barn and play structure

Carter, Noah and Jay practicing their roping:

Thank you Galloping Graces! We had a wonderful time and can't wait to come back!

Camp Invention

I'm a *little* bit behind in my blogging but I'm vowing to get caught up this weekend!

The 2nd week of summer vacation Carter was able to attend an all-day science camp at his school called Camp Invention. The camp focused on getting kids to look at science and creating in a new light. He LOVED his week at camp. They built roller coasters, took apart electronics and put them back together, created spacecraft that they raced, planned and built a city, created rides for an amusment park, played games and learned about scientific advances around the world.

On the last day of camp, families were invited to see what the kids had been working on all week. Here are a few pictures of Carter's teams projects:

The city they built:

Carter's invented carnival ride, the icecream scoop twirl:The roller coaster wall (they raced marbles down these tubes):We hope Camp Invention comes back next year because he had a great experience. It is a national camp program so if it ever comes to your area, we highly recommend it.