My sister is married!

Last weekend, we headed down to Logan, Utah (Northern Utah) to see my sister get married. We had two weddings in two months in our family! We left Boise on Thursday June 2nd, the wedding was Friday June 3rd. The cool thing about the date is that my grandparents got married on June 1st, 1948 in Logan, my parents got married June 2nd, 1976 in Logan, so my sister was able to get married on June 3rd, 2011 in Logan. I had always thought that would be really neat to do, but it just didn't work for me. =)

Here is my sister, Natalie and her new husband, Adam! The amazing thing, is that she made that cake all by herself!  Here's a better picture of the cake,

Isn't that awesome?

Her 3 year old son, Joey and our 7 year old niece, Emma got to be ring bearer and flower girl again! They did a great job for a second time! Joey stood up with Natalie and Adam during the ceremony and it was super cute. 

The wedding took place in a beautiful park with a stream going through it. They got married in front of black and silver tinsel and after the wedding, Joey started playing in the tinsel.

In fact, he enjoyed playing in the tinsel so much, that we had to bring it over to get him into a family picture. I'm not sure how the professional pictures turned out, but this is the best one I had on my camera. 

 

I'm sure the photographer got a much better picture. LOL

It was a long day, but we had a good time.  The night before, Kelly and I were playing with the kids. Emma and Joey and my cousins' kids, Hailey, Lauren and Greyson. They wore us out! 

 Emma got stuck in Joey's swing. hehe

We played all sorts of games with them, tag, freeze tag, red rover, and running hold hands. lol We really did have a lot of fun playing with them, though. Here are some pictures from that.

 

The day after the wedding, we spent time playing with the kids again, this time at an indoor fun park. You pay $2 or $3 and you play on this big padded jungle gym with slides. 

 This is Hailey (My cousin, Kurts' daughter) and Lizzie (My cousin Melissa's daughter)

 I kept trying to get good pictures of them coming down the slide, and I got a few, but I already have plenty of pictures on here, so I'll just show my one of my favorites. I love this one, because Emma looks like she's having a blast!

 My cousin, Melissa and her daughters, London and Lizzie getting ready to go down the big slide! She said they went really fast because of the weight of the three on them. lol

Lauren, Hailey and Lizzie at the top.

Sorry I made this so picture heavy. It's a problem I have....lol Kelly and I had a good weekend. We left Logan about 11pm Saturday night and drove back to Boise through the night and got home about 3am. It was good for us, because it opened up Sunday, so we could get some things done and relax before going back to work. It seems to be the year of the wedding, we were first in April, then my sister in June, I have a friend getting married next weekend, (We can't go, though. =(  ), one of my oldest friends is getting married in October (!!!) and I'm sure there are more to come! =)

Mini-Moon to McCall!

Kelly and I are lucky enough to have some friends who have a house in McCall, Idaho and offered to let us use it for a weekend after our wedding. McCall is in the mountains in central Idaho, and is about 2 1/2 hours north of Boise, where we live. It's a resort town, and I've mainly visited the town during their winter carnival in the snow, so it was nice to see McCall without snow covering the ground.

 This was the view from the front door of the house we stayed in. It's so beautiful! I love Idaho! =) The house is on a fairly new golf course that used to be a ranch. It's really nice because they tried to keep the golf course woodsy and it makes you actually feel like you are in the mountains.

This is the view from the back yard, there were a few ponds and a little stream connecting them. We went outside one night and even though it was kind of cloudy, you could still see some stars through the clouds and it was so quiet and peaceful. (Except for all the frogs...lol)

We headed into McCall on Saturday and went down to one of the beaches of Lake Payette. It was too cold to swim, and it started raining while we were there, but it was great to see it and just enjoy nature. =)

We went to the McCall fish Hatchery and it was really cool to see 1.5 million baby fish all in one room! We were driving around trying to figure out what to do and we saw a sign for the hatchery, so we thought we'd stop by. We went on the little tour they had, and it was actually pretty interesting! (For an Idaho girl like me, LOL)

We took a "hike" through the golf course. We wanted to take a real hike into the mountains, but it was raining off and on, and it was probably a good idea we didn't only because later that day it poured! So, we set out to explore the golf course. Like I said, they kept it pretty woodsy, so it was kind of like a hike...lol

 This is as far as both of us got before we turned back. Maybe if it was a warmer day we wouldn't have been so nervous to fall into the creek. lol

 We didn't have to worry about falling into freezing cold water on this log!

We just happened to be down by Payette Lake again right at sunset, so we walked along the beach and watched the sunset. 

This is what the view from the front door looked like the morning we left.

We called it a mini-moon because we plan to go to Las Vegas in September for our real honeymoon.  We didn't do much in McCall, we ate at a few places people recommended and just walked around the town, and took in the scenery. It was nice to get away for the weekend with each other. I can't wait to go to Vegas for a week in September! =)

Happy Birthday to Clyde!

We put his PugPossesed tie on for this special occasion. =)

Clyde turned one year old on either Thursday May 26th, or Friday May 27th! I feel horrible, but all 6 of the puppies were born before and after midnight and I've got it written down somewhere, but I just haven't found it. (I'm pretty sure I know where the paper is, but there is SO much in that room, I'm scared to look!) I spent Friday mostly happy for Clyde, but there were thoughts in the back of my mind of the 3 puppies we lost that day a year earlier. (You can read the story here, but it's sad, so I don't recommend it.) But, anyway, we thought we would have a birthday party for Clyde, so we scheduled it for Saturday afternoon and it was a blast!

We invited his sisters, Olive and Elsie (who is now Izzy) and his dad, Royce. Elsie's family couldn't make it, which was sad, since we haven't seen her since August, but I totally understand people are busy. We also invited some friends and their dogs, Simon and Yang who own Toro and FeiFei, a Boston Terrier and Pug, and my friend, Maribel, her daughter, Stephanny and their poodle, Canela.

 Olive! She's a silly wild girl!

 Maggie, the mommy!

 Toro, our Boston Terrier friend! He is so well behaved!

 FeiFei and her daddy, Simon.

 Canela!

Royce, the daddy!

Olive and her family arrived first and Clyde had to lay down some ground rules. We thought it might be a disaster because he was growling at her and would get upset if anyone paid attention to Olive! I think he remembered it was his sister and something snapped in his head, but after a few minutes, they started playing and it seemed like they were having a lot of fun, phew! 

 People brought gifts! We didn't even think people would bring gifts!

After everyone arrived, we brought out the cake! I had made a cake the dogs can eat, it has flour, peanut butter, carrots, honey and vanilla in it, and then the frosting was cream cheese, cinnamon and agave nectar. (it was supposed to be honey, but we ran out...lol) The dogs loved it! (Sorry about the horrible frosting job on the cake, I forgot to let the cream cheese soften and ran out of time...LOL)

 (Oh, I forgot to mention that I chopped 13 1/2 inches off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love the week after the wedding!)

Then we opened presents, Clyde didn't quite get the hang of unwrapping presents. Maybe we'll work on it... We got Olive a Busy Bone since it was her birthday, too. =)

 Clyde kind of checking out his present....

 Olive loved her busy bone!

Towards the end of the party, Clyde came and sat next to me. he was sooo tired. LOL

I don't think I've ever seen him nap for so long. =)

We had so much fun with our party! We are hoping to do it again sometime later this summer when we can actually have a BBQ outside when it's warmer. (Yeah, it's still averaging in the 60s here...(It was about 53 degrees for our party) we will get hot...sometime... I don't know what Mother Nature is doing, but I guess I'll take it, because when it's 100 degrees later this summer, I'll be wanting it back. LOL ) Sorry this post is so picture heavy, I'm just kind of like that. I need to post about out mini-moon to the mountains of Idaho (not that we roughed it, though...lol) hopefully I can do that tomorrow night. My sister is getting married this Friday on June 3rd, so we are heading to Utah on Thursday for that! (Yes, two weddings in 6 weeks... my poor mother... hehe!) 

I'm so glad we had Clyde. We had such a hard time trying to figure out if we were going to keep him or one of his sisters, but there is just something special about this little guy. We had always planned to keep a girl puppy, but he latched on to my heart and didn't let go, so we had to keep him. I love him so much! =) =)

Here are some pictures of him growing up.

 This is him at 25 days old. His eyes were open and he was figuring out how to walk.

He would always crawl into my lap and play with his sisters from there. =)

 How could you say no to this face?!

 Here he is with his mommy looking especially cute.

 See? Always in my lap. He is still like that. He constantly needs my attention. lol

 My baby boy. =)

(Sorry, I added more pictures...hehe!)

Lewis and Sally

We have ducks that come visit us in our front yard! I just thought the female looked like a Sally (Kelly agrees) and I named the male Lewis because I work for Homewood Suites and the mascot is Lewis the duck. (Named after Meriwether Lewis, for some reason)


They just started showing up in our front yard, so of course we started to feed them, and even filled a kiddie pool with water for them!

They checked out the pool...

 

Drank from it....

Then got in for a swim! I mean, their feet touch the ground, but they still like to be in the water, right? =)

We had to put a rock there as a step so they could get in, but I think they like it! We don't know a whole lot about ducks, but from what we've read, bread is like junk food for them, so we feed them thawed peas and corn, but they still prefer the bread. If they are there when we get home or go outside, they quack at us to feed them! It's really funny! Honestly, I hope they aren't too dependent on us as humans, though and can find their own food. I think they are okay, though, because we actually haven't really seen them in a few days (not like we have in the past month, but we've seen them a couple times), and from what I've read, that probably means their baby ducklings hatched somewhere (I guess they can leave their eggs for a little while... at least that's what I think I've gathered from what I've read, I hope to learn more!) I hope they bring their babies for a swim sometime!

Please let me know if you know any more than I do, we really want to take care of them (Not like pets or to make them dependent on us) and we want to educate ourselves on them so that next year we can be prepared. =)

Hard Work

Chewing on four toys and licking three spots on a couch can make this little guy really tuckered out. Just sayin'.