FIVE Years!

On Friday my sweet husband and I celebrated our fifth anniversary!

(More to come on that later)

Sometimes it seems like just yesterday we were at the temple being sealed.

But then other times it feels like we've always been together. I love being with him!

He teaches me so much! He is such a great husband! He's caring, gentle, supportive, loving, hard working, amazing, tough, smart... I could go on and on. Best of all, he's mine!

 One fact about my sweet husband is that he loves to learn. And he continues to learn, even though he is now finished with his undergrad and his graduate degree. When he works on a project or goes running or whatever he is doing by himself, he listens to podcasts because he likes to learn about new things. He is always enriching his mind in some way it seems. Recently, I decided I wanted to be more like him. Usually when I work on a project or clean or whatever I have a show or a movie or pandora playing so that I have some background noise. I don't like silence. But those things don't often teach me anything. So I decided that I would try to listen to uplifting or educational things. I came across this program called Gospel Solutions for Families on the Mormon Channel. It is awesome! It has so many episodes that are applicable to my life, or anyone else's life for that matter. It has episodes about marriage, children, grandparents, dating, being in a long distance relationship, teaching gospel principles, etc. I like that it has episodes for people of all different stages of life. 

I particularly like the episodes about strengthening marriage (episodes 1, 2, 29, 30, 36, 37, 59, and 60) or the episodes about cleaving to your spouse (episodes 19-22).

I love the things I am learning from them. I love how listening to these uplifting words is strengthening my relationship with my sweet husband. In one of the episodes they talked about how in the scriptures the only person besides Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ we are told to love with all our hearts is our spouse. I don't know why but I hadn't ever thought of that, what an amazing blessing, we get to love our spouse as much as we love our Father in Heaven and our Savior! I love my sweet husband! I am so grateful for him! He makes me so happy! 

These have been the best five years, I can't wait to see what the next five (and eternity) will bring!

The Happiest Place On Earth

You thought this post was about Disneyland didn't you.

Wrong-o. My happiest place on earth is this beautiful lake!

Family Reunions: Part 2

Over labor day weekend we got to go to the lake twice. It was awesome!

My sweet husband's older brother's family stayed at my parents' home with all of us for the first night,

but then they headed to visit more family. 

I forgot to get pictures of those little cuties.

The first day my camera battery was dead, so thankfully my little brother had his iTouch with him

so we were able to get some pictures with that!

That handsome man in the air on the wakeboard is my sweet husband!

 Some of the group

 A little more

 And more

 My sister's boyfriend

 Me

 My mother-in-law, sorry, apparently we didn't get a picture of my father-in-law

 My youngest brother

 My younger brother

This looks like it's going to hurt, don't you think? Lol, trust me, it did. 

  My brother-in-law

 Me on the slalom ski

The traditional ice cream stop. It's a great way to end a great day!

Actually it wasn't quite the end of the day. My paternal Grandparents returned from mission in South Africa on August 29th... well, actually the 30th, they missed one of their flights.

After the lake they gave a fireside and told some stories from their mission since that Sunday was Fast Sunday and they wouldn't be giving their report until the next weekend and several people came from out of town to see them. 

(I'd like to thank my aunt for posting this picture on Facebook so I could swipe it and put it on here.. lol)

On Labor Day we were able to go again! It was an even better day. It started out a little rough,

but ended much better!

Here's my papa!

 The next several pictures are of my handsome man!

 This is me

 This adorable little guy is our little nephew, he went kneeboarding! Don't worry, I was with him (that's my head in the back) and we didn't go very fast at all! And only went for about 5 seconds. 

Here's his papa

 This was a pretty awesome fall!

 Family picture

 My brother

 Isn't this one of the cutest pictures you've ever seen?! (Just wait)

 My youngest brother

 My momma and our little nephew

 My brother and our little nephew CRACK ME UP in this picture! Click on it to make it bigger!

I think they are both screaming at the top of their lungs.. lol!

 Our little nephew and his momma

 Little guy chillin' on the kneeboard, this was before his big ride

 Here is the traditional ice cream stop the second day. 

Behold the cuteness.

This little guy had my family wrapped around his little finger!

 Seriously

Family Reunions: Part 1

As promised, pictures from our family reunion. We've been to a couple family reunions in the past month, so that is why it says part 1.

We got to spend two days and one night at the family reunion. One of the great things about spending time in the mountains with family, is sitting around chatting with everyone, and just relaxing.
Here I am with my beautiful mama.

  As we were sitting around chatting, my sweet husband whittled me a bookmark. He's so sweet!

 
 We also played some games.
This particular family reunion is pretty big, it includes my paternal Grandma's side of the family. All of her brothers and sisters and their families come up. So we split into families of my Grandma's siblings and then we had a paintball sling shot competition. Our family is not competitive at all (please recognize the sarcasm). One of the targets was worth 500 points, on the few occasions that someone hit it, they would run around the group in a huge victory dance! Lol! It was really funny!

These boys are OBSESSED with "he hes" aka horses. They came up to my dad and asked them to find a "he he." So he found this log and they would sit on it and he would make galloping noises, it was SO cute!

 My little brother helped out when my dad was busy.

 Here is our canoe ride, my sweet little cousin came along.

 My little cousin's face in this picture CRACKS ME UP!

 On the lake

 Another cousin, who we dubbed the canoe sniper, I swear he tried to tip us several times!

 The fishermen

 And fisher-woman. These two got engaged at the reunion (they aren't cousins, sheesh, it's not like that). He proposed on the canoe, they "fished" out a sign that said, "Will you marry me". It was really cute. It wasn't at this time, it was later on in the day.

And these two, look an AWFUL lot a like, even though they are like 2 cousins once removed or something like that!

Another great thing about camping is the yummy food!

 This is after those two got engaged, apparently my brother (who is sitting in the middle) now needed to keep an eye on them... lol!

 I also love sitting around the campfire singing songs and telling stories!

 Isn't this picture just the cutest, these two brothers are sweet, aren't they.. lol!
 It was even more cute when they added their baby sister to the mix.

As we were packing up, this little guy got to ride in the back of the truck while it pulled the trailer. He was in HEAVEN!

These last pictures are of the drive home. It was just SO pretty, I couldn't stop taking pictures!