Denise's Wedding

There are so many fun pictures, it was hard to pick! I still uploaded a bunch because I think they are fun. We'll start at the beginning....at the temple. Denise and Dale's engagement was relatively short...7 weeks. They were fairly certain that Dale's temple clearance wouldn't come through soon enough and had planned for a civil ceremony at The Point. About a week and a half before the ceremony, the clearance came through! What an amazing surprise and blessing! They were able to arrange for a sealing in the morning and planned for a ring ceremony at The Point, since a ceremony was already planned there. Besides, Eric was telling everyone he was the ring bearer for her wedding! Here are a few photos from the temple. There are 16 grandkids too young to attend the ceremony, so they were all waiting outside with countless other cousins for the ceremony to end and the bride and groom to emerge.

First....the boredom set in....

Then the creativity and fun kicked in....

With 16 grandkids running around, it wasn't all fun and games. Too many boys, often means trouble. This is so typical...

But then, the bride and groom finally made it outside.

After much running around and loading and unloading, we finally all got to The Point for a quick rehearsal before getting dressed. Here are the cute flower girl (Denise's new step daughter) and ring bearer with the bride before the ceremony.

This is The Point set up for the ring ceremony. We added a white runner down the isle.

So, we were all worried that Eric might bolt instead of actually walking down the isle. This was even better.....don't you think?

Once he got down the isle, he was actually pretty good to stand there quietly with the pillow, even though he did hide behind the best man for a while...

The happy couple.

This was the best part of the ceremony. After much encouragement, Eric finally walked forward with the pillow and promptly covered his eyes with his arm and held the pillow out with the other arm.

Once the ceremony was over, the fun began.

Dinner was yummy, and then it was time for the toasts. I had frantically worked on mine on the way down to the temple that morning, and memorized it on the way back from the temple. If I do say so myself, I think it turned out fabulous! A little bit of sentiment, a little advice, and some good humor. I was seriously glad to get it over with though!

This is the place the children spent most of their night--the candy buffet. The other place was the endless drink bar!

My sister-in-law does wedding cakes, and she did this one. Isn't it amazing?

After the toasts and cake cutting, the real fun began. Dancing....Here are the boys with Denise as the festivities began. Then they all took turns dancing with all of the 9 girl cousins!

As you can see, everyone had a great night! The kids all said, "Let's do that again sometime!" If only they knew how much work it was! I'm so happy for my sis and her great hubby! They are awesome, and I wish them the best of luck!

Pre-Wedding Festivities!

Finally...the event that has kept me busy all summer so that I hardly recognize any of my friends has come and gone! My one and only sister got engaged Memorial Day weekend, and it has been a whirlwind of planning and running around ever since! Huge thanks goes out to all my friends for all of the random help they gave me...from Kim going with me to preview wedding sites, to Amanda and Dawne loaning me tons of scrapbook supplies, to Loralie spending hours with me going through music and helping me while I made the video to show at the reception. You guys are awesome! Thanks!

After weeks of working and seeing very little of my friends and family, it was time for a little reward. The day before the wedding, Denise, "the Bino's" (Bridesmaids In Name Only--guess they really didn't want to wear "the dress"!), and myself--the Matron of Honor (that really makes me sound old!) headed to the spa for a little R & R. We were on a mission to turn "Bridezilla in the Princess Bride"--as one of the Bino's so aptly put it!

Before treatments--don't we look excited?

One of the finished products...matching French manicures.

From the spa, we headed up Provo Canyon for a family cookout. A lot of the family from out of town coming for the wedding got into town just in time to meet us there. Here are some of my aunts, uncles, and cousins I haven't seen for a long time!

My awesome "little" brother who isn't so little anymore.

Denise, the Bino's, friends, my sister-in-law Amy, and myself.

A couple of adorable and goofy boys.

After the cookout, we were on another mission...some kind of bachelorette party....IN PROVO?! Yeah, I know. Not a lot of options. We finally just hit Los Hermanos for some drinks, snacks, some seriously loud and embarrassing singing from the employees topped off with the fabulous sombrero for the bride to wear.

All in all, the day before the wedding was full of fun! The only bummer part came when I realized I had yet to come up with my speech/toast for the next day. AHHHHH!! I seriously began to stress! I haven't been to a wedding in probaby 15 years, and I know I haven't been to one where there was actually a toast made that I heard! I got home close to midnight with no idea! Tune in to the next post to see how it all turned out!

What a month!

No, I am not dead, but some days I feel like it! It has been a crazy month! I have been busy helping my sister plan her wedding (1 day left!), celebrating two birthdays, traveling to California for my class reunion (let's just leave out how many years it's been...), housing and visiting with family from both sides, more wedding planning, and trying to squeeze in all of the regular things in life that keep me busy on a daily basis. Here are a few highlights from the 2 months...

Way back at the beginning of June, we went to the open house for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple with the Fosters...We had a great time touring the temple and grabbing some dinner after.

Tyler worked hard all year to earn his Soaring Eagle award at school. Here he is with a few friends who also earned it.

Eric was so excited to go to preschool this year with his friend Tysen. Here he is at his preschool graduation with Teacher Salli.

One of my many acts as Matron of Honor for my sister's wedding was to throw a bridal shower for her when she was here at the beginning of July. Good times! Couldn't have done it without help from my sister-in-law Amy!

The 4th of July was great fun! We hit Lagoon with several of Paul's sisters, his parents, and one brother that we haven't seen for many years. The kids had a blast at Lagoon-a-beach and riding all the rides with their cousins.

Jordan's birthday snuck up on us! I can't believe he is 12! He was excited to take a bunch of friends swimming for his party before his birthday and even more excited to go to California to visit Grandpa for his actual birthday!

The real reason we headed to California was to go to my class reunion. Wow...it has been a lot of years! We will leave it at that! So fun to see good friends and visit my dad. We don't get to see him often enough. Here are a couple of photos of some of good ol' "Yuba Duba's" finest...I wish I had taken more than 4 pictures all weekend! Oh well...

This one is for all of you out there that might actually know someone in the picture...get out your magnifying glass!

We all had a great time visiting with Grandpa. He has several beautiful dogs, and the kids love to play with them.

And last, but not least, the weekend of the 24th of July! We had a great time celebrating with cousins from both sides. On the 24th, the boys went laser tagging with all the cousins and aunts and uncles from my side. Then we had dinner and fireworks with the cousins from Paul's side. We finished the weekend off with a full day of fun with Paul's family. Here they are down below...notice the lack of girls!

There are things I've missed, like Paul's big birthday (we have no photos as he was in Pittsburg for work), and Brett and Justin heading off to EFY for the first time! Tons of fun. They can't wait for next year, and maybe then I will remember to send a camera with him!

Sorry to all who had to endure the long summary of our lives this summer! It's been a good one so far. We are looking forward to another full month of fun this summer!

Temple Celebration

I've decided I am getting just as bad at blogging as I am at journal writing! Kind of like the same thing, so it really isn't such a shock to me! But I am sorry you have been looking at the same lovely picture of Justin now for 2 weeks, wondering what that was all about! As it turns out, it has to do with the new LDS Oquirrh Mountain Temple that has just been built. We are lucky enough to live in that new temple district, and because of that, all of our youth had the opportunity to participate in a Temple Celebration. It was a huge production, involving about 8,000 youth from the Salt Lake Valley here in our district. For 3 months they practiced every week to learn dances and songs to perform in the Conference Center in Salt Lake for the Prophet and General Authorities of the church as well as thousands of family and church members. Each stake was assigned a different dance theme depicting the history and different cultures of the state. Our stake was assigned the Polynesian Culture. They learned the hula, the poi balls, a Samoan dance, the Hakka, and I believe a Tongan dance. Justin, of course, was demonstrating the final pose in the Hakka in my last post. Everyone worked so hard, and the final result was an amazing production! Youth who did not participate in the dances were a part of the choir--2,000 strong! It was incredible! I was lucky to be friends with the gal in charge of the whole thing for our stake, and she asked me to be a captain over some of the youth from our ward. That meant I was at every practice, helping and watching as it all unfolded and progressed. What a great experience, for myself and our youth! Here are just a few pictures from the day of the event.

For the final dress rehearsal and production days, we were assigned the same kids to ride in our cars. I had the best group of the bunch! They were all so much fun. Their excitement and enthusiasm was contagious! Here are a couple of shots of them.

On the way out to the car after the performance, it was so crowded and busy, the girls were afraid we would lose Jordan among all the people since he was one of the shortest there. They decided to be his protectors....oh yeah, he was lovin' it!

Check out my friend Amanda's blog for photos from the actual performance...she was our stake photographer and has some great shots from inside the conference center.

Rounding out the kids talents

May was a busy month for us! It included lots of performances for our family. Tyler loves to sing and has enjoyed being a part of the school choir called Melody this year. They had their spring concert last month where they sang several songs from popular movies. Here's a picture with one of his friends before the concert began.

Jordan is still enjoying playing the violin in the school orchestra. Every spring the school district does a "monster concert" with all of the elementary school orchestras in the district. It's really exciting for Jordan, and this year they did a spectacular job!

Now, we are a little bit worried about the new talents Justin has been developing....



There is a story behind the photo....more to come soon....

Final Soccer Game...

Who knew soccer could be such a dangerous sport?!!!!

Poor Brett really did get smashed in the face during the final soccer game of the season while playing goalie. I think he took a cleat to the face, to be more accurate. Not only did it mangle his glasses (which luckily got repaired), but it left quite a bloody mark on his face, that unfortunately won't heal quite as quickly as the glasses got repaired! Justin, on the other hand, was reclining quietly in the big rocking chair during the final soccer game due to the fact that he had surgery on Monday. As many of you know, he was born with a club foot. Thanks to an amazing doctor 14 years ago, he walks and runs and does everything else just like any 14 year old boy. However, one of the things that can happen with a club foot is that his feet, calves, and leg lengths tend to be different. To avoid future problems, the doctor put some staples in the growth plate of his right leg to hopefully allow the left leg to catch up to it in length. After they gave him his valium before taking him off to surgery (see pictures below--too bad I didn't video it--he was hilarious!), the doctor came in and talked to us about putting a screw in the growth plate of his left ankle to help even out the growth there as well as help bring the joint more parallel to the ground. Right now it rolls in by about 9%. We had talked about it before, but we didn't know going into the surgery that he would decide to do both things that day! We agreed to it, and I didn't think too much about it until Justin was finally coming out of the anesthetic and asked what the heck had happened to his foot! (It was wrapped up.) He apparently was too doped up when the doctor talked to us about doing it to remember the discussion and was completely cluelss when he woke up! Poor kid! He came out of the surgery just fine, and we were lucky to be able to come home that same night. He is slowly improving each day and is hopeful to make it back to school tomorrow or Friday for the last day or two of school (probably in a wheelchair).

All doped up right before going off to surgery...they give every patient at Shriners a teddy bear...his got lost somewhere between the holding room before surgery and returning to his room after surgery.

After 3 hours in surgery and recovery, he finally came back to the room. This picture is about 3 hours after that, when he finally looked like himself again.

I am woefully behind in posting events from May, but I thought I'd get this one posted so you would all know that the surgery went well, and he is on the road to recovery...hopefully very soon!