Anniversaries and Fall Adventures

I have been really bad about keeping up on my blog! I still have much to catch up on, but I'll begin with our most recent fall adventures, starting with . . . 

. . . our annual fall picnic up the canyon! It was such a beautiful evening, and we had a wonderful time eating KFC, playing games, and enjoying the amazing fall leaves.

Later that week we got to celebrate a very important occasion: Mom and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary!!! To honor this important milestone, we celebrated with some frozen yogurt at Orange Leaf. You can tell that Ben was especially excited. We are so happy that Mom and Dad were married 40 years ago and are grateful that they are such wonderful parents and grandparents!

The day after Mom and Dad's anniversary, I flew to Springfield, Illinois for a fun visit to see friends. Here are Laura, Emma, Jenn, John, Linda, Rose, Chris, and me at Olive Garden. It was great to see everyone!

I had an especially fun time staying with my cute friends, the Atkins. Laura, Emma, Connor, and I got into the fall spirit by carving pumpkins for the annual Spooktacular at Washington Park. Connor and I made a pretty amazing Batman pumpkin :) We also got to celebrate Emma's fifth birthday while I was there, so that was extra exciting. We had a great time watching movies, having dance parties, going out for doughnuts, and just hanging out together.

Laura Atkins is a really dear friend. I'm so glad that I was able to go visit her and her wonderful family. I have missed them a lot!

This past weekend, Greg and I got to celebrate our #5 anniversary! For this special occasion, we spent a couple of nights in Park City. The weather was perfect! We ate some delicious food and had a wonderful time together. We were especially excited that the St. Louis Cardinals won their game on Friday night and secured a spot in the World Series!!!!!!

This morning we left Park City bright and early so that I could make it back in time for our ward Primary program. As we were driving, we saw this beautiful fall scene--what a pretty place!

Labor Day Birthday

Happy Birthday yesterday to my cute niece, Riley! Her birthday was extra fun because it was also a holiday :) I can't believe that she is already nine! Time flies when you're having fun ...

Summer Sentiments

I realized that I should probably write about the summer before it's over! I have been a major blog slacker lately, but hopefully this catch-up will help to bring everyone up-to-date. 

Showing how behind I am, I didn't do a Father's Day blog post back in June--sorry Dad!!! I am lucky to have the greatest dad in the whole world! Thank you for everything, Dad!

I also neglected to post about Camden's birthday back in June! June was a month full of birthdays including Camden's, Lindy's, and mine. We had a lot of fun parties!

In July, we got to watch the July 4th fireworks from our front yard!!! Greg and I really do live in a great location--we are close to restaurants, the train station (I can walk from here), and we have a perfect view of the Thanksgiving Point Christmas lights and fireworks! I think that this will be our new Fourth of July tradition.

Also in July, Mom, Dad, and I went to the classic car show for the American Fork Steel Days celebration. I think that Mom and Dad need a '57 Chevy!

Right before we went on our fun Grand Canyon/Zion family trip for Pioneer Day (which, amazingly, I did blog about!), the new Boy Scouts and Norman Rockwell exhibits opened at the museum. For the exhibit opening, we had a fun celebration outside on the museum plaza. One of my main jobs was to serve popcorn. I love my job!

Greg and I have been enjoying going to baseball games this summer--the Salt Lake Bees and the Orem Owlz. At the Bees game pictured here, we were actually cheering for the team playing the Bees: the Omaha Storm Chasers, since they are the affiliate of the Kansas City Royals.

This summer, Mom and I have loved going to the farmer's market at Gardner Village. They have yummy food, tasty produce, and lots of fun things to see.

It's also been fun to hang out with the Barrett kiddos this summer--they are as silly as ever!

The other night, Camden, Riley, and Sidney joined us for an Orem Owlz baseball game. We got to meet hall-of-famer Rollie Fingers before the game. He has quite the mustache!

The girls weren't sure about the giant owl :)

Mom has been spending a lot of time this summer going through Grandma's things. She has found a lot of great pictures, including this one of Sarah and me with Grandma in the background. The funny thing is, this morning when I dried my hair with the blow drier, it looked almost as big as the wig I'm wearing in this picture!

Rich had his birthday earlier this month, and Riley's is coming up in September, so there will be more celebrations to come.

It has been a great summer, and I look forward to the last couple of weeks before fall arrives!

Zombies

Preparations for the upcoming Fantasy Football season are continuing around here. I re-designed the Utah Yellow Jackets logo:

...and created one for Rich's cool team--the Detroit Zombies. It should be a great season!

Oh wait, I came up with an even cooler one for the Yellow Jackets:

And here is the logo for my fantasy basketball team: the Salt Lake Skullzz:

Fantasy Football

Greg and I have had a great time playing fantasy baseball online with our friends this season, so we've decided to keep the fun alive by playing fantasy football during the upcoming football season. I am uploading our team logos here so that I can paste them to our team pages. 

 

 

Greg will be the Kansas City Chefs, a name which comes from the funny Snickers commercial where a guy is painting the end zone at Arrowhead Stadium, and he accidentally paints "CHEFS" instead of "CHIEFS". When he realizes what he has done, he says, "Great googly moogly!" Then the tag line of the commercial is, "Gonna be a while? Grab a Snickers."

 

 

And my team will be the Utah Yellow Jackets. I've always thought that Utah should have a professional football team and that their mascot should be the yellow jacket--it's perfect mascot for the Beehive State, and goes well with the Salt Lake Bees. I have also always thought that when the New Orleans NBA team was the New Orleans Hornets (before they became the Pelicans), they should have switched mascots with the Utah Jazz, so then it could have been the New Orleans Jazz and the Utah Hornets--that would have been awesome (and made more sense)! :)