The Good Life

We had a great weekend last weekend. My mom, Chris, and I went to Utah on Thursday afternoon. First on Thursday, my mom and I went to my cousin Danielle's baby shower. Chris went and hung out with all the guys. The shower was fun. I won a prize for getting the closest to guessing prices of baby items. The funny thing is I almost didn't even do it because I had no inkling of an idea of how much baby food and such costs, so I totally just guessed, and I won. :) Here is Danielle opening up some presents. You can't even tell she's pregnant and she's due in October.

The next day was Family Reunion Day. It started off with breakfast at 10 am at my Uncle Parley and Aunt Marilynn's. Then a big blow up slide showed up that was there for the rest of the day. The kids had a blast on it ALL day. I did go down it a few times. Here I am with my cousins Lindsay, Danielle (still can't tell she's pregnant) and Sydney. We also played some volleyball, as always.

Chris and I got tired of the sun after several hours and went inside and fell asleep on the couch. Danielle was sneaky with my camera and took this picture.

Here is my nephew Ian going down the slide. Doesn't that look so exciting?? It was actually pretty entertaining to watch. I should have put pictures up of my guy cousins around my age going down it-like 5 of them at once. They're crazy.

That night even more people came and we had dinner. My mom and 8 of her siblings who were there all got up after dinner and talked about things my Grandma had written in her journals. My Grandma Hellewell kept a journal pretty much every day of her life since she was about 7 years old. Each person took a year in the 1950's and talked about it. My mom talked about things that happened the year she was born. It was pretty interesting. My mom has a CD with a lot of the journals scanned onto it. I think it's pretty cool.

The next day my cousin Lizzie got married in the Mount Timpenogas temple. While all the "adults" went to the luncheon, we stayed at the house and Chris and I played a good game of The Settlers of Catan with my cousin Katie. (She won). Then Chris and I went to Trafalga (a family fun center) and played Miniature Golf. (He won).

Afterwards we went and saw Lizzie come out of the temple and took pictures with our family. We stopped and took this pic as we were leaving.

We did find a little time to go to the mall for about hour and look at wedding dresses, skirts, ties, etc. Just to get an idea of what we want. :) That night we went to the reception which was held at my Uncle Lester and Aunt Kathy's house. This is a bunch of my cousins who were there. Lots of good memories with these guys growing up. :)

Katie and I, awww...somehow she didn't make it into the last picture.

Here are just some fun pictures we took after the reception....my momma and nephews Ian and Taylor.

This last pic is Sunday after church.

It was a great weekend and I enjoyed seeing lots of family that I had not seen in far too long. I figured out that there were 12 of my cousins not there, along with one Uncle and 4 of my siblings, meaning only 16 of the 50 grandkids were not there. I was also glad Chris was able (and willing) to come and meet more of my family.

Oh yeah...

Somehow this picture didn't make it in the last post but I wanted to share it because it's my favorite one. I think it's so sweet. :)

I have a ring on my left hand

Yes, I'm engaged! :) I am soooo excited! If you've noticed, I've recently kind of sneakily put pictures up of Chris and I, and haven't said much about it. hehe. So I guess first I should explain how we met, since it is kind of a funny story.
It was just right after I had been sick and in the hospital, about the middle of February. I was working the weekend and on Saturday I was at one of the nurse's stations when I met a girl who works at Norco that we talk to on the phone sometimes. She told me who she was, and it was nice to put a face to the name. So we started talking and she was asking me where I'm from, where I live, when I started working there, etc. Then I left and came back a few minutes later and her and one of the nurses were whispering to each other when all of a sudden the nurse started drilling me with all these questions, like how old am I, and am I single, and am I interested in dating anyone, etc. The other girl was all embarrassed and kept apologizing but the nurse just kept talking. I just laughed at some of the questions and didn't really know what to say because I barely knew either of them. After a few minutes the nurse left and the other girl apologized. She said she was just asking the nurse what she knew about me, and was going to ask my boss really subtlely if I was dating anyone. But she told me about her friend Chris and how he's so cute and he's little and I'm little, and how she thought we would be cute together. She asked me if I was LDS and I said yes, and she said that he is too. So without really knowing what I was doing, I gave her my number! I was a little surprised when he actually did call. :)
Her and her husband along with Chris' cousin and his wife hung out with us on our first date. He picked me up from work on a Friday and we went to dinner and played games at his cousin's, then went to a movie...the rest is pretty much history. This picture below is one time when we went to Ross Falls.


So I guess I should also share the story of how he proposed. We went up to Pomerelle to ride the lift up and walk back down the mountain. I was thinking it was just for fun. (I guess some people ride mountain bikes down instead of walk, but we're not that ambitious.) :) After he paid, he told me he was going to go to the bathroom and went downstairs (we were in the lodge). He never came back. I was just standing there looking out the window and the lady taking tickets told me I shouldn't be looking out the window. So I turned around all confused, and I guess when I turned around he ran out and got on the lift. Then she handed me an envelope and it said to wait 5 minutes and then to get on the lift, so I did. The guy at the lift gave me another envelope that was a sweet letter that I read on the ride up. (I cried!) When I got up he was there waiting and gave me another one that explained that he was going to be full of questions tonight, and some were going to be easy, and some were going to be hard. So we walked down the mountain and found more notes along the way. They all had questions that he's asked me before, with some comments on the bottom. For example, one said "What's your favorite color?" And on the bottom he wrote "No answer needed." One said "What should we do this weekend?" and "Where should we go eat?" At the bottom it said, "Pointless, because I always have to decide anyway." (We all know what a terrible decision maker I am!)

We stopped along the way and took these two pictures above. The timer on my camera takes two pictures and he was a little sneaky on the second one. :) So anyway, we got to the bottom of the mountain and found the last one. It said "One last question..." and then he of course pulled out the ring, gave me his cute little speech, and popped the question. Of course when the lady handed me the first envelope, I figured out what was going on, but I was surprised because he had fed me this big story about how the ring was going to take another week and a half to get here, so I was pretty excited that I didn't have to wait anymore.

Little did I know that his stepmom was several feet away hiding and taking pictures of the whole thing when he was asking me! I didn't find that out till the next day! So that was pretty cool.
I think it will be pretty awesome to have these pictures way down the road.

We stopped one more time and took another picture as we were leaving. The people at Pomerelle were so nice to stay there and wait for us to get done. He had of course gone up earlier and hid all the notes and told them we were coming. We were a little late because I was working till about 4:30 and they only let you on the lift until 6. I was thinking we just needed to turn around because we weren't going to make it, but they knew we were coming and waited. :) We got there about 6:10 and they waited till we got off the mountain to leave.

I thought it was perfect and it was pretty much the best day of my life. :) Afterwards we stopped at the Sage Mountain Grill in Albion (yum!) and ate. We are getting married October 7 in the Twin Falls, Idaho temple. :)

Fourth of July

We had a great 4th of July this year. These pics are a little out of order, but oh well. On Monday (the 4th) We went boating with Chris' family. That night we went to his sister's for a barbeque and then watched a good fireworks show at his Aunt and Uncle's. It was a good day. :)

On Saturday (the 2nd) we went up in the mountains with my family. Tysi, Chad, and Kelby were all here. We went up past Pomerelle and actually had to stop because the road was closed because of snow. There was a bunch right above where we stopped and the boys had a blast sliding down it (on a cardboard box) in their shorts and t-shirts!

2 more months!!!

My little brother Kyler comes home from his mission in 2 months! August 31st is the day. I'm so excited I can hardly handle it. I love this kid so much. We are very close and like to do a lot of things together. He is such a good example to me. He has always had such a strong testimony and he lives it so well. I have definitely missed him. Some days it feels like the time has flown by, and others I miss him so much and it feels like forevor since I last saw him. He has been such an awesome missionary and loves serving the Spanish people in Texas. I know that he has made a difference in more lives than just mine. :)

Can't wait till August!!!

Boise

A couple weekends ago my mom and I went to Boise because the girls I did my internship with were having an "Intern Reunion." We got together Friday night and had a barbeque. It was so fun to see everyone again. I spent A LOT of time with these girls and I hadn't seen any of them in a year! All of us but one made it. We had a good time.

It was also good to go and visit my brother Chad and his boys. They weren't able to come at the beginning of June when Brock was here. His boys are so adorable and Landon (the one in the middle) adores me. :)