My 23rd Birthday!

I felt like this was my first real, "adult" birthday. Trevor was in Las Vegas, I went to work and stayed late, and then watched the Bachelorette as a treat to myself :) However, it wasn't completely devoid of fun!

At work, my friend Alyssa had her birthday on Sunday July 18th and I had mine on Tuesday July 20th. So, the week before, we planned to make each other birthday cakes and celebrate on Monday the 19th! Below are a picture of the cakes we made-

I made the cake on the left: white cake with fudge chocolate frosting and hand-done flowers! Haha, okay, so it was my first time, but I was pretty proud of them!

Alyssa made the cake on the right: chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and awesome decoration! And pink, of course! How did she know my favorite color?!?

Here's a closer look at my birthday cake with two candles on top and three on the bottom for "23":
Here we are in the break room at work with our candles lit. After a lovely rendition of "Happy Birthday", we got to blow out our candles and share our cakes with everyone. I was surprised at how good white cake is!!
On Tuesday, my actual birthday, despite having absolutely no plans to celebrate, my best friend Chris Kyle came to my rescue and invited me to lunch at her work at APX. They have a really cool "cafeteria" of sorts on the bottom floor of the office building. It's really contemporary and had pretty good food, but the best part was the company! I love you Chris, thanks for making my day!
Also, you can notice in the above picture that I'm wearing a bow in my hair that was the actual bow wrapped around a present I got from my in-laws. Haha. I try to celebrate in STYLE, baby!

Anyway, about a week-ish later, when I was at the beach in NC with my mom's sister Kristen and her family, we got a cake and sang again. Aunt Kristen's birthday was about a week before mine, so we had a joint cake!

Blow out those candles!

My Aunt Kristen's nickname is Boo and here's our cake!!
So, I guess, overall, it turned out to be a pretty good birthday - spread out - but good!

More for my record than yours, here's a list of my gifts (so far):

Lip gloss and a cookbook - from Trev's parents and crew
Rook cards for playing Nertz - from my parents
Beautiful silver bracelet - from Aunt Kristen and fam
A great birthday lunch - from Chris Kyle

And I still haven't gotten my gift from Trevor yet! He says I'll have to wait until next weekend to find out and says I won't expect it and I'll love it. I just can't wait to find out what it is, and I'll keep you posted! :)

Happy (Third) and Fourth of July!

Trevor and I had a lot of fun this year celebrating Independence Day with his family. On Saturday the 3rd, he went to play golf in the morning while I spent a few hours at the pool with some friends. Then, later in the afternoon, we went to his family reunion in Heber City at the park. It's always a really fun time, and this year the weather was perfect! All my cute nieces and nephews were there. I only have pictures of a couple of them. Most of the girls got their faces painted. Here's Callie looking so cute as usual: And my cute little buddy, Cohen:
My uncle-in-law, Shane, had made a candy gun so he could shoot candy at the kids at the reunion. In this picture, you can see the end of the pipe of the gun, the kids, and if you look really hard over by the gun, you can see the smoke and the candy where I caught it shooting in mid-air. It was so fun because the candy would rain down on the kids' heads!
Collecting the candy:
I had a lot of fun going out in the field with Cohen to help him try to collect his candy. Whenever he'd find a piece, he'd pick it up and then try chewing on it. I bet the wrappers didn't taste very good! I finally taught him to put the candy in the paper sack that was provided. Here's Cohen with his daddy Steve:
After the candy collecting, all the kids put on bathing suits and participated in the forming tradition of having water balloon fights. This year, Trevor got involved and got his butt kicked by Caden and Kanyon! Haha. I haven't seen Trevor smile that big and have that much fun in a long time!

On the way home, we drove back through the canyon and it was just gorgeous how green it was! Almost like we weren't even in Utah!
I have to take a car shot of myself at least once every six months ;)
That night, we went to Meg and Steve's house to do fireworks. We had a couple small illegals, including firecrackers (who knew they were illegal??) and a cop came and took them :(. Oh well. It was still really fun. And then after the kids were in bed, we watched some UFC fights on TV that Steve had ordered and recorded. So fun!
On Sunday, I conducted my choir at church and we sang a really pretty rendition of "America the Beautiful". After church, we went back to Meg and Steve's for a barbecue (aka grilled steak and chicken yum!) and just hung out with the family for a few more hours. It was a really great way to enjoy the holiday.

My red, white, and blue outfit:
Happy Fourth of July!! I hope yours was as fun as mine!

Who Needs Kids...

When you have a Trevor? :)

The other day, I was walking around my house, picking up clothes and other such clutter that had found its way onto our floor, when I almost stepped on this little friend, left behind by my wonderful husband:Yes. That's a Cheerio. Most women don't experience cheerios on the floor until they have young ones running around the house. But I had to smile, and realize how happy this little Cheerio made me. I mean really, who needs kids when you have a Trevor?

Double Decker

That's right. I just discovered that my steamer can be a DOUBLE DECKER steamer! :) Talk about steaming mushrooms and asaragus at the same time -- Yum!And thanks to my lovely steamer, Trevor and I made this wonderful, healthy meal full of vitamins and Omega-3's:
Yum. I LOVE Salmon. To cook, I just rubbed the top in olive oil, sprinkled on lemon pepper, and broiled it. And it was AMAZING! (This picture looks ALMOST good enough to be in a food magazine!)

How do you like to cook Salmon?

Alex's Adventures

So May kept both Trevor and I very busy, but since he was in Las Vegas during the week every week last month (and he will be in Vegas during the week every week this summer as well), I had to work on figuring out things to do during the week to keep me busy and happy. Some of those things include:

• Yoga classes
• Working more
• Church activities
• The occasional mingling with friends

On Saturday May 22nd, I attended the baby shower of my practically-lifetime friend, Victoria Bramwell. We grew up in NC together and now she's all "growed up" and havin' a baby boy! :) I'm so excited for her and I was glad to be a part of her shower, and to give her a Lamaze Moose toy that will surely provide hours of entertainment for baby Bramwell for years to come! Here are the NC girls, Allyse, Victoria, and me at the shower:Then, on Memorial Day weekend, Heidi and I drove down to Vegas to hang out with our guys for the weekend (and to give them a break from having to drive up to Utah). Although I can't say it was easy driving 6 hours with a 4-month-old who hates her carseat, it sure was worth it! It was fun to "live it up" in Vegas for a few days!

One fun thing that Heidi and I did was visit the M&M Factory off the Strip. It's 4 stories tall and we explored every one of them! Kate (Heidi's little girl) just loved it, and she provided many "ooohhhs" and "awwwwws" and "oh how cute!'s" for the other patrons in the store :) Here are Heidi and Kate smilin' for the camera:
And here are the girls in front of the big colorful M&M wall. Heidi and I couldn't help but spend FAR too much money to make a pack of our own color choice of M&Ms. Heck, why not? It's Vegas! :)
I'll make sure to keep you updated on some of my other recent life adventures, like attending a MMA fight night up in SLC last weekend. I saw 7 fights - lots of blood, broken noses, knock outs, bruises, and good times. A girl like me shouldn't like things like that.... but I really really do! :) Haha!

April Showers Bring May Flowers...

... and I planted them on my porch!
They really do bring beauty and happiness to my plain cement porch, and I love them!

From pansies...
To petunias....
And more!!

I really really do love spring! :)

Strawberry Freezer Jam!

Just to prove to the world that I can be domestic when I feel like it - here's some proof:I made homemade strawberry freezer jam! Mind you, it's really not too hard to make. Just buy the yellow box of pectin, some sugar, and strawberries, and follow the directions! Then, VOILA, you have very cheap, tasty jam that you can store in your freezer for up to a year. And it really is so tasty without all those preservatives that you get with the store-bought stuff! For mine, I used a potato masher on the strawberries instead of blending to get those nice-sized strawberry pieces! SO good on Great Harvest bread or homemade yeast rolls. MMMMMM!

Are you drooling yet?