Baby Girl Baby Shower

My family and friends are so awesome. My sisters and moms, plus Heidi offered to throw a shower while I was in town, and I was so grateful for their kindness. We got together on a Thursday night and it was so much fun! This baby girl and I are so blessed to have the love and support that we do. My sister Haley is always a wonderful hostess, and this was no exception!

  

I love, love this blanket and am going to base the little bit of nursery decorating I do around it.

Heidi has such good taste!

I don't think that Wes quite knows what's coming his way with baby girl--

Bows, dresses, shoes and more!! Prepare yourself, big brother!

Aunt Haley and Wes are still best friends--Can't you tell!?

And then there is Kevin.

Wes LOVED the Doyle's new cat named Kevin. He sat in that spot for about 20 minutes and entertained us all with his ramblings to and about the cat. If you are ever at my house and want to see a video, it was pretty awesome!  

I can't say thank you enough to everyone that came and especially the special women that took to time and effort to celebrate this baby girl and me. It really was such a wonderful night in a beautiful home with some very special people. You are loved, Baby Girl Monsen!

More Utah Fun

The weekend of the wedding Birtley and his family were so awesome and made a trip to come and see us. If they didn't come down we wouldn't have seen them until Christmas, and to go almost 18 months without seeing some of our favorite people would have been terrible! Luckily Tiff agreed and it worked out perfectly for them to make a visit from Boise that weekend.

We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with them, but as you can see from the pictures, the time we did have was well spent! Our kids had a ton of fun together and it didn't feel like it had been that long since we had seen them. How grateful we are for family that makes the time and sacrifices to see us. We love the Boise Wilsons so much! 

 And this is what happens when Brian gets a hold of the camera! 

I figured...why not?!

Father's Day

I know I talk a lot about how these boys adore their dad, but they really do!

I feel bad that his day maybe wasn't as special as it could have been, but I think this guy knows that we love him dearly and that we don't know what we would do without him. This baby girl is so lucky to have him as her daddy and I have no doubts their relationship will be a special one.

We had dinner with the Whitehouse/Monsen clan and dad was able to have some fun with his boys.

Happiest Father's Day to our most amazing daddy!!!

Before Brian went back to Texas for a couple weeks, we met up with some of our besties-

They told us to pick a spot to eat and after turning down a few of our suggestions, we ended up at Pizzeria Limone. It's a fun new pizza chain and it was a last minute decision, but we all ended up loving it! We could have spent every night with these two (and Lucy, of course!), but the couple of nights we did get with them were some of the best! We sure are thankful for life long friends.

After dad headed back to Texas the fun sure didn't stop. We went and saw How to Train Your Dragon: 2 with Grandma Teresa and the boys loved it!

These boys love just about anything to do with their Grandma Teresa, so it was no surprise at all.

We also spent a lot of time with these goonies:

My boys adore their Henrie cousins! I'm sure Thad wouldn't mind if I shipped him to Utah to spend the whole summer with them. Maybe I'll have to do that some time...

We didn't want to delay seeing these east coast friends of ours:

We went and spent almost an entire day with them, and we could have stayed longer. The Russ' are just the best and Thad asked several times if he could live with them. Their house is super awesome and I kind of want to live with them too, so I don't blame him.

And though Brian went back to Texas to get lots of work done on his summer projects at school, that didn't necessarily happen. 

The A/C at our house started acting up and the repair man had to come out two different times to fix it. That means that there were a few days that Brian had to suffer in our sweltering house. And to make matters worse, this happened:

We had to sell the Neon for $500 because it wasn't worth putting another penny into. But that also means that Brian wasn't even able to escape the heat of our house and go to the air conditioned school. When it rains, it pours, right??

We were pretty bummed to see the Neon go, it served us well for the first 8 years of our marriage! It drove us across the country a few times and all over the east coast the three years we were there. I hope our next car serves us just as well!

I thought this was a funny text conversation that Brian had with a guy from Craigslist about the car:

Pretty impressive for just using Google translate!!

He also sent me some fun images of stuff he was up to. 

He has pretty much perfected the art of making a green smoothie. I don't even think I dare make one after trying his.

Yikes!!

And if we can't have our daddy with us, this is the next best thing:

Brian didn't think we could catch him in the act of pulling funny faces, but I have about 10 more screen shots to prove it! I love how Thad is trying to imitate his crazy eyes in the last one.

We sure love this dad of ours and are so grateful that he dealt with all of our problems down in the Lonestar State (and all of our problems for that matter) while we had lots fun up in the Beehive State.

Pieper Wedding

June 14th  was a perfect wedding day for a wonderful couple! Stacie and Jared had one of the most beautiful sealings I have ever been to. Their sealer talked a lot about ordinances in the temple and how they are vital to our eternal salvation. He challenged those in attendance to not take them for granted and told us how he and his wife have attended the temple once a week for the entirety of their marriage. He reminded us that a lot of us tend to think that after we go through the temple, the rest is just a cake walk and we have it made. That is not so. I thought so much about how with privilege comes so much responsibility -- responsibility to teach and help my family and especially to help my children gain their own testimonies, and also to share this wonderful truth with others. It was truly a blessing to be there.

After such a spiritual and wonderful ceremony, it was off for pictures and lunch!

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Jared Pieper!

I love how victorious their faces look!

It really is a major victory to make it to this special place to be sealed for time and all eternity.

Cheers to such a beautiful couple!

 It was a tad chilly, so I just ran around snapping pictures to keep me occupied.

I could probably dedicate a whole post to how much I love Brian's grandpa, but these pictures will have to suffice.

He is such a good man with a good heart and I'm so blessed to have known him for 12+ years.

Brian and I were lucky enough to pick him up in Sandy and escort him to the temple. He was so cute talking about how he loved holding onto my arm and made jokes about how slow he was walking. 

I just hope my life can be as joyful as his and that I can be privileged to see my posterity the way he has. We sure love you Grandpa C!

After pictures, we Monsens headed to City Creek to kill time before the luncheon. We made a mistake and ate too much at Kneaders, but we were SO hungry!

  

On our way to the luncheon, we stopped at West Elm to see Kelsie's awesome display of her work for sale that they were featuring from local artists. We have such a talented family!

Before entering West Elm, I harassed Brian about never giving change to homeless people. So he gave all his pocket change to a guy in a wheelchair wearing a tie die shirt. As we walked out of West Elm, we were chatting about our parking decisions and made sure we all got parking tokens at the temple. As we spoke, Brian realized he had given his parking token to the homeless guy along with all the other coins in his pocket!! EEK! He had to run back and explain what he had done and the guy was nice enough to let him rummage through his change collector! 

He found it! And luckily we didn't have to pay $10 for parking.

The luncheon was held at Christopher's Steakhouse and it was classy and delicious. 

(It probably would have been a little more delicious if we would have skipped the Kneaders brunch)

After this wonderful luncheon, we hustled back to Riverton to get the boys from Aunt Haley (and kids), who were so kind to take them on all day! When we arrived they looked perfect in their bow ties, black socks (I didn't have black socks and she couldn't handle grey and tan with the black pants and shoes, so she was Supermom and tracked some down!), and gelled hair. We are so lucky to have such awesome family!

They were excited to par-tay and we spent the evening at a beautiful venue, with beautiful scenery and with some of our favorite people in the world.

 

   

As you can see by the middle picture, Stacie is clearly the one who instigated the cake smashing. Just in case there is any question, Jared has solid proof!

 

Then there's this handsome stud that was brave enough to start the crowd for the garter toss!

I kinda wish it would have stayed just him, but that didn't happen. 

He was joined by a few others, and they had some obvious advantages:

He didn't catch the garter, but he came out with a big kiss from his mama!

What a beautiful day it was! I don't think Stacie and Jared could have done anything different to make it more perfect. A job well done by a beautiful couple!

Congratulations, Stacie and Jared!!