Yeehaw!

Lately, Karter has been a bit obsessed with cowboys. He even begged for cowboy boots so we got him a pair for his birthday and he wears them everywhere. Zach also wanted some when he saw that they had blue ones (they're blue on top).

My brother told me that the Davis County Fair was having their rodeo on Friday so we decided to indulge in Karter's little obsession and take a trip to the fairgrounds for the rodeo.

Here they are, all cowboyed up and ready to go:

Zachary (moments after he stole Karter's hat)

Karter (after Mom gave him his hat back)

They had fun watching the cattle roping and then the little kids riding sheep. That was hilarious, watching all these kids holding onto the sheep's neck for dear life. A few fell off right out the gate, one held on for a long time because her sheep decided to just stand there and one awesome little boy held on forever when his sheep wouldn't stop running and even when he was getting knocked around by the other sheep. It made me laugh to see the sheep huddle together after they were done.

I guess they really do stick to their flock:

After the kids on sheep, my kids got bored and this is what they did:

Then they announced the "Dash for Cash" where they tape a whole bunch of dollar bills to a cow and let the kids go wild. The poor cow was probably scared to death but the kids had a blast.

Karter's in this pic somewhere (not Zach though, they had to be 7):

We were just about ready to go but decided to stay and watch the bull riding which they saved for last. (You'll notice in the video it's after 10 pm!)

The kids enjoyed it (so did Rich and I):

And here's a video of one of the crazy cowboys that decided it would be fun to piss off a bull and see how long he could stay on it:

We had a good time at our first rodeo but there was one thing that disappointed me. At the beginning a guy rode out on a horse carrying "Old Glory" and rode around to this country song. Now I'm not a country fan but this song gave me the chills (I'll have to find it). Then it's customary to have everyone stand while they play our National Anthem (which also gives me the chills). I actually felt a little bad that instead of paying attention to the song and looking at the flag, my eyes were wandering the many people in the audience NOT PUTTING THEIR HANDS ON THEIR HEARTS AND NOT TAKING OFF THEIR HATS!! One guy even sat down half way through! It's so sad to me that people don't pay respect to their country's flag. I may not be happy with the way things are going in our country right now, but I know that we have it better than most people in other countries. I'll stop there, this could be a whole nother post (and it could get ugly:). I just wanted to say how important I think it is to be respectful of our country and be grateful for what we have.

Dirty Thirty

Well, I finally made it to the big three-oh!

Richard totally shocked me by throwing me a surprise party with my friends and family. There were a few times that it was thisclose to getting blown, but I was totally oblivious.

It was short-lived since I didn't know about it and made plans with these girls. These are my co-worker girlfriends and our birthdays are right in a row (July 16, 17, 18). The cute little one on the left got us VIP entrance to The Hotel where we danced the night away.

VIP baby!

We saw this cool group, whose name escapes me. It consisted of a hip hop guy and girl (look how hot she is!) and a drummer and I'm sure some DJ in the back. It was pretty cool.

After trying to sleep in and picking up these cuties, we headed out to see Toy Story 3 with my brother, sister-in-law and their 2 guests from China. I didn't get any pics at the movie but got a few when we decided to wander around the Junction. (Yes, Zachary had to pee.)

We made our way upstairs to watch the iFly, where both my boys decided they wanted to try it. It was fun watching and we all oohed and ahhed when this tiny little kid did it. When everyone had taken their turn, the instructor got to play around a little and my boys loved it!

In the end, I had an awesome birthday. Probably the best I've had in years. So, thanks to everyone who contributed! I love you all!

Sometimes it's the little things..... (and the not so little things)

Just wanted to share my exciting little find today. I found this totally cool dish strainer at Sam's Club today. It's almost sad how giddy this made me on my lunch. :) But this is thee perfect strainer. Look how big it is, it fits my pans easily with plenty of room to spare. And it was only $14!! (I've seen similar ones for $30 or $40.)

I love when I can find cheap, practical things that make me that happy.

AND, look at my new washing buddy! Our other hand-me-down washer was dying (it was like 20 years old, it'd had a good run) so we decided to upgrade. This thing is so awesome! It's so quiet, sometimes I just sit and watch my clothes tumbling in the see-through door. It's a giant though, look how teeny my poor old dryer looks next to it. I actually wish we would've bought it's mate so I don't have to split up the huge loads to dry them. Soon...

It used to be the shopping trips to the mall that made me this happy (don't get me wrong, those will still do the trick!) but I'm glad I made these practical purchases. No buyer's remorse here!

We're getting there...

I'm still not ready to do the full picture tour of the house just yet. We've been REALLY slow getting things unpacked and put away. I really thought I'd be totally done the weekend we moved in but here we are, three weeks later, and still not done. Anyhoo, here are a few pics:

Rich fixing the shelves in our little pantry.

Karter didn't wast much time getting down to business. (His businees is art.)

My living room looked like this for THREE days!

Getting rid of the purple bathroom.

Wa-la! It's so pretty.

Our "dining room"

That's better!

I'm still working on the deco part. Here's some cute stuff for my fruit stand kitchen.

My awesome IKEA bookcase.

My scrap space. There's still a few shelves to hang/pick up from Annie, etc.

Oh yeah, we have a rat problem. Luckily they were lying down so we could capture them. But now they spend their days in Zachary's bed. :)

We're in!

So we are finally in our new house!
There was a bit of stress actually getting to move in (due to realtor communication issues, I won't go into that..) but we made it! And now comes the fun part- lots and lots of unpacking.
And cleaning. It was fairly clean when we moved in but they had a cat and there is cat hair everywhere which is totally grossing me out. And the usual deep cleaning and painting. We painted over the ugly purple walls in the master bath with a lovely color of blue that was supposed to match my pretty new shower curtain but dried a bit dark. Oops. I think it will look okay when we get everything up though.
I still can't get in my living room or my bedroom due to all the boxes and such but I am getting there, slowly. I'm taking some "in the process" pics for my scrapbook (I know, I'm a nerd) but when we get all settled in I'll take some before pics. Then I'll post the after pics when we get our house credit $$ back and buy some new furniture and take on a few more home improvement projects. Good times.

my next project..

Look how cute!! I'm so doing this for my kids' new room. Yes, if you haven't heard we are buying a house!! Yay for us! We are so excited and I lay awake at night thinking of all the fun things I want to do to my very own house and this is one of them- the banners (and perhaps the names on the wall). When we get all moved in, I'll be able to keep my sewing machine set up instead of tucked away in a corner so hopefully I'll be able to tackle things like this.

PS. I will post pics of the house as soon as we get in. It's so cute. It's a townhouse but it's like a castle compared to what we're in now. :)

Our new toys

 So, once a year there comes a day when I am officially thanked for my efforts in a very busy and extremely demanding job (I wish type picked up sarcasm...). I believe it's now officially called Administrative Professionals Day. But I still like to call it Secretary's Day. This year my generous bosses took me and another secretary out to a very classy lunch (according to them) at the good ol' Olive Garden.

It was nice and I filled myself up on breadsticks as usual.

Then my boss (who's seriously the best ever) presented me with an envelope from the "Weber County Collections Dept"- yeah I know, hilarious. Inside the envelope was a gift card to one of my favorite stores: Roberts. And this is what I got:

Now, it may not look exciting to you but I have wanted this clip it up thing forever so I don't have to keep digging through a completely jam packed basket full of stuff. I love it- now I just need another one to hold the rest of my junk.

And then I decided to by myself my own little token of appreciation. I found this at Target and had to have it. I actually want to go back and get the whole set. So cute!

Oh yeah, one more thing. The Merrills finally broke down and bought a Wii. Yep, we are finally on that nerd wagon. :) My kids love it. Here are some funny pics I snapped of Zach playing it this morning. The kid cracks me up.