I <3 My Family.

Last week was super nuts but I loved every second of it. My little sister got married and my brother Billy and his family flew out for the wedding and to spend time with family in general. The wedding turned out really nice, I honestly didn't get to enjoy myself much, but it was Wendy's day to not have to worry about a thing so I think that I accomplished that! She looked really beautiful in her dress, and Chris performed the ceremony. He got a lot of compliments on it and I think it may have been a neat enough experience for him that he wants to do more.


The younger kids all wore their halloween costumes (the wedding was on halloween!) and they all looked so cute! Lora was a pirate, I made her the costume and she seemed to really like it! Its the third costume I've made for her.. last year I made her "a very real" looking Sally costume.. even hand painted the exact patterns on the different colors of fabric.. and the year before I made her a cute fairy princess costume. Its fun to be able to make stuff for her, I can tell she feels extra special in the handmade costumes and knows that most kids have to wear gross plastic cheapo ones. Billy and Christy's kids went as minnie and mickey mouse and were totally adorable!
I was so happy to get to spend as much time as I did with Billy and Christy and their kids. Its crazy that you can love little kids so much that you don't even get to spend that much time with. I feel like Alana (minnie mouse!) genuinely gets it that I'm her Aunt and I feel like we have a fun little bond even though I only get to see her a couple times a year.


Sunday night after the wedding everyone came over to my house to just hang out and eat wedding leftovers. We managed to get everybody there so of course we had to take a picture.. there is a lot of us and this is only the 2nd time in probably a decade that we've all been in the same room together! Last weekend was great and really made me so thankful for my family. I can't imagine ever having as many kids as my mom had.. but I really feel like people with super small families are missing out! My family rocks!

This feels much different than 4 years ago.

I have a lot to write about and many pictures to share from the last week or so of my life.. my little sister got married and my brother Billy and his family came out to visit and while both are extremely important to me, this is really important too. For as long as I've been aware of politics and government, George W. Bush has been the president of this country - It's pretty mind boggling to try and even think that tomorrow we will have a new president-elect and there is absolutely no chance of it being Bush. 4 years ago I voted and hoped and waited and hoped and watched and I went to bed that night knowing that Kerry had lost and it was going to be another 4 years of W. I feel very different today than I did 4 years ago. I really feel like I just went and voted for the next president of the united states.

Straight Outta Compton! Or the Mountains.. whatevs.

That picture pretty sums up the most recent camping trip. No, just jokes. It really was a great time, mostly due to the fact that my awesome friend Maddie came along for the fun! We were awesome and drove up just the two of us in my brothers truck and brought two big ass dirt bikes in the bed up into the mountains vagina.

Well its only 13 miles into the mountain but half of it is really fucked up dirt with rocks and a straight up cliff style drop off one one side that apparently 16 year old boys that drive jeeps that they really can't drive and Dodge Neons navigate up.

Both stories (the dumb boy driver, and neon) are really to stupid and long to even repeat. Pretty much, us girls rule and kicked that mountains ass. TWICE.

Smoked too many cigarettes, enjoyed lots of applefuntimegoodness, had really good almost therapeutic conversations with a rad girl, built the fire all by myself, had magical moments in the forest, was cold, was hot, almost annihilated my hymen, and fed Cuz lots of dog treats.

Camping RULES.

The evolution of making a creepy cute bag.

I'm participating in a few craft swaps right now on craftster (no more Archuleta to consume my time every week.. so I've gone back to crafting!) and one that I'm doing is the "Cute + Doomy" swap. Last night I decided to work on a bag.. it wasn't really planned out I just added stuff as I went but i really like how it turned out.

Here is the process.. in pictures!

I finished it and I still felt like something was missing so I added the pink Ric Rak and it really pulled it all together.. and besides.. EVERYTHING is better with some Ric Rak!

Definition of Disturbing.

The definition of disturbing is finding your sisters undies in your brothers truck.

At least said brother has been letting a male friend drive his truck.. but that still means my sister is a hoskank... haha.

Don't Mess with a girl with a gun.

Last sunday was Lo's birthday party. Her parties are always fun and interesting. The only small children that are ever there are one that are related.. last year it was the half english half russian speaking daughter of my brother Doug. She is cute but I really can't understand what she says. This year, Scott and Sophie brought their son Luke - cutest kid EVER. Even when he thought the party was for him and he should help Lora tear the paper off each present. Still, the adult to child ratio.. at a childs birthday party always makes me laugh. Our adopted sisters Sarah and Maddie both came too, but I think they were just mostly there for the cupcakes. Once the grown ups left I had to start the water war that Lora had been wanting. I thought I had come prepared to be victorious.. I had a ton of water balloons and a big squirt gun but little did I know that Aimee had just armed Jon with a huge, high pressure, if you get squirted with it, it hurts water gun. Game over.

If you want to see the rest of the birthday party pictures just head over to my flickr.. link box on the right!

flickr funtime

i stole this from maddie.. who stole it from someone else..

Its pretty much a neat little mosaic picture made up of your answers to 12 basic questions..

Go make your own! Its fun and easily kills about 10 minutes of boredom!

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

6 years.

Chris bought me a pretty bouquet of pink roses on sunday. Sunday marked 6 years together. I really can't believe its been that long. I've spent what i feel have been some of my most definitive years with Chris. He really has seen me grow from being practically a teenager (get those thoughts out of your head!) into (i hope) an awesome, smart, strong-willed woman. I was 18 when i met him, and i will be turning 25 in just a few months. What a strange, amazing, sometimes horrible but mostly awesome 6 years. He probably more than anyone has seen me at my highest highs and truly low lows. For some reason he still likes me. <3