Bridal Shower

Last week my sister-in-law and I threw a bridal shower for my little sister.  She's getting married in less than a week!  We had a lot of fun planning the shower, especially the food.

Here is the bride-to-be (on the left) with one of her friends before the shower started.  Love it how she always has a big smile for the camera!

Here is the food table.  We had a spinach artichoke dip, greek salad skewers, caprese salad skewers, cucumber dill sandwiches, strawberry cheesecake bites, chocolate raspberry cheesecake tarts, lemon crumb squares, personlized sugar cookies, and raspberry lemonade.  It was delicious!

 Of course we had to have a candy bar.

I had such a good time with my fun sis-in-law Rachel.

The bride and groom-to-be.

Half Marathon

Mark and I ran our second half marathon yesterday.  I was amazed at how much easier it was, mentally and physically, than my first.  Not to say that it was easy, just a little easier in comparison.  I almost cried again when I crossed the finish line, but managed to hold back the tears this time.  It just always feels like such a huge accomplishment!

Here we are before the race.  Mark was taking the picture so he wasn't in it.  I think he was glad since he felt a little silly being in a picture with all the girls.

And here we are after the race.

Afterwards we all met at a BBQ place overlooking the river for lunch.  

I still can't believe how much I've grown to love running.  Mark and I are hoping that we can make this into a family tradition with our kids when they are old enough.  And we're already planning our next race!

Philly

Mark recently had a business trip to Philadelphia for a couple days, and I got to go along.  We had such a great time, although I think I got the better deal... while Mark was working during the day I got to have fun and relax.

After dropping him off the first day, I went shopping for most of the morning and then got some lunch and took it to a nearby park to hang out and soak up some sun.

While I was there some street performers came and showed off their moves.

That evening Mark and I explored Philly a little.  

We saw some historic sites.

Ate at a delicious Asian restuarant.

And enjoyed some Fro yo.

The view from our hotel room was pretty spectacular the next morning.

After Mark left for work, I went for a morning run and of course I had to run up the Rocky steps and get a picture.

Then after a little more shopping, I went on a Taste of Philly food tour.  One of the highlights was getting to try an authentic Philly cheesesteak!

It was such a fun trip and many thanks to Mark's dad and wife for babysitting the kids and making it possible for us to have a little getaway.

Roadshow

This past weekend was my stake's Roadshow activity. Our stake does a 24-hour roadshow, which meant that the youth in each ward have 24 hours to learn and rehearse their own roadshow (8 minute skit which includes singing, dancing, and speaking parts). Then each ward preforms their roadshow on Saturday night. The 24 hours also includes making the set and costumes. We met at 5pm on Friday and practiced until 10pm, and then we were back bright and early at 8am Saturday morning and practiced all day until our preformance at 7pm that night.

I was one of three "roadshow specialists". We had been planning the roadshow for months and were so excited to get started. Here is a picture of what we handed out to the youth at their Tuesday night activity before the roadshow weekend to get them excited.

We also dressed up and acted out the roadshow for them!

Here is one of the dress rehearsals on Saturday.

A last minute rehearsal in the parking lot outside the stake center.

Hair and makeup.

Joran, Sara, and me. These are the amazing ladies I got to work with on the roadshow.

The youth. Our roadshow was Romeo and Juliet meet America's Best Dance Crew with a little West Side Story action and an 80's theme. It was a blast!

I was so proud of the youth and amazed at how hard they worked and how quickly they learned. It was so much fun to work with them!

Dress Up

Cala loves to play dress up lately and loves it even more if she has someone to play it with... and most days Ethan is the lucky one that gets to play with her. But... we don't have any boy dress up clothes (I'll have to work on that). Cala had wanted Ethan to be Flynn Rider, but since we didn't have anything like that she settled on Ethan being a princes and she would be the witch. In the first picture she was trying to be funny and pull the hat brim over her face (notice which finger she is using).

Come soon Spring!

Even though this has been the mildest winter that I can remember I'm still longing for spring. We went for a hike over the weekend and the trees were bare and brown. I just can't wait for new leaves to sprout and flowers to bloom. Spring, we are ready for you to arrive!

Happy Valentine's

I love Valentine's day! The decorations are so fun, all that pink and red. I love the candy and telling those I love how important they are to me.

Cala and I made and decorated some sugar cookies.

The kiddos waiting to eat some cookies... notice Ethan's teary face... he wasn't waiting so patiently.

Decorating the cookies.

My valentine's treat for Mark. I mixed up all the cookies in a bag and he had to figure out what they spelled. It didn't turn out to be as easy as I thought it was going to be :)

Cala all ready for the Valentine's party at preschool. Mark accidentally took the wrong set of car keys when he left for work that morning, so when I went to take Cala to preschool I didn't have keys to the car! Thankfully, grandma Chris saved the day! She dropped what she was doing and came right away to pick Cala up for her party.

Mark and I ready for a date. We went out to dinner and one of my favorite things was getting to talk to him with no interruptions from kids. We probably could have eaten fast food and I would have loved every second... it's the little things in life. Thanks to Mummi for babysitting the kids!