A Basketball :)

Last night we went to our ward party and dressed up like this...

Pretty cute if I do say so myself :)

Every Halloween we go with easy DIY costumes.  For this we simply used sticky felt for the basketball on my belly :)

Yesterday was also Jill's 23rd birthday (shout-out to Jill!) so we went to Nielsen's as a family for dinner and then to the pumpkin patch.  

Side note - don't know if you all realized (I know many of you do because I mention it every year..haha), but now Jen, Jill, and I are all 23!  That's right, my parents had 3 babies under the age of 1 once Jill was born.  Crazy, huh?!

Back at my parent's to carve.  With my little pumpkin and "basketball" :)  

The flash really whited me out!

I did "EEK!" on my pumpkin (notice a theme this year? I also put it on my frame!) and Jill got the teeniest little pumpkin and carved "Baby" on one side and "Boo" on the other.  She said it was a pumpkin for our baby :)

Trent got a HUGE pumpkin and did Jack the Pumpkin King.

Our final results.  Too bad I didn't get a picture with them lit up outside.  I guess I still can :)

Jen, Jill, and I really were triplets yesterday - all in black!

Hope you all have a fun Halloween tomorrow!  We're watching "Coraline" tonight with some friends!  Trent loves Halloween!  Maybe I'll get some more pictures :)

T. Swift

Saturday Jen, Jill, and I got to go see Taylor Swift (love her!) on her "Speak Now" world tour.  There was no way we were missing her when we found out she was coming to Phoenix.  After all, she was on my bucket list, and who knows if this will be her last tour (I kind of doubt it, but you never know!).

A picture before we headed off (myself, Jen, and Jill).

Jen wanted this shot..haha.  35 weeks!

We got there and got right into a ridiculously long line for t-shirts, only to finally get to the front and they didn't have the t-shirt I wanted in x-small (prematernity!).  Jen and Jill were able to get theirs though.  I'll be ordering one soon!  I need proof that I have marked Taylor Swift off my bucket list ;)

We finally got into the arena and an opening band, Needtobreathe, was performing. We didn't realize we knew them until they played "Something Beautiful" (good song btw).  They were great!

These first 2 pictures are of Needtobreathe.

And then Taylor was up!  Woohoo!  Bear with me.  I seriously took like 90 pictures of her!  I tried to condense (am I using that word right?), but there are still a lot here!  It was so hard for me not to put them all up..haha.  If you don't care about Taylor at all, you may want to just leave now!

When she first came up through the stage!  SO exciting..haha.

We actually had really close seats, but they were on the very left of the stage - like the farthest you could go - so most of my pictures are profile shots of Taylor.

I put up any of the ones where she was walking towards us or facing us :)

She opened with "Sparks Fly."

Performing "Mine."

Performing "The Story of Us."

Taylor with a bunch of her back-up singers and dancers.

She played her banjo during "Our Song" and "Mean" and dressed the part ;)

I loved her interactions with the audience :)

Performing "Better Than Revenge."

There was a whole wedding scene going on while Taylor was performing "Speak Now"..haha.

Then Taylor went down through the audience to a tree near the back of the arena to get closer to everyone back there.  She covered Michelle Branch's (she's from AZ) "All You Wanted" and also performed "Fearless" (and threw in some of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz), "Last Kiss" and "You Belong With Me" back there.

After she came back through the audience and was getting back on the stage.

Performing "Dear John" on the steps.  Fireworks went off towards the end of this song!

Performing "Enchanted."

Performing "Haunted."

This was a fun surprise!  She brought Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World, who is from right here in Mesa(!), and they performed "The Middle" together. Brought back some great high school memories!  

It was pretty funny because there were a bunch of teeny-boppers there with their parents and they clearly had never heard this song!

And then my camera died :(

She performed "Long Live", "Ours" (which we hadn't heard before), and "Fifteen" after my camera died.  Her final song was "Love Song" and I'm so bummed I didn't get pictures.  This is our (Jen, Jill, and I) favorite song of hers and we were so relieved she performed it.  She got in a balcony during it and it whisked her up and all around the arena.  She got pretty close to all of the people way up in the arena!  Wish I had gotten pictures!

Anyway, we had a great time!  It was an awesome concert!  We had heard people (haters) say that she is awful live, but we were really impressed! Definitely worth it and I would see her again for sure :)

P.S. Earlier today (Tuesday) I had the startling realization that it was October 25th.  This little guy is due November 25th!  That's one month people!

Googly Eyes!

Last Saturday, the 8th, I had some girls over for a Halloween craft!  I saw THIS frame tutorial several weeks ago and couldn't get over how cute it was.  What a clever idea!  

I had Brinly (who I've crafted with before) and Christie from the ward over, and Kristell (who I just wrote about here) happened to be in town so she came too :)  We headed to Michael's to grab our $1 frames (what a steal!), paint, ribbon, little wooden letters, and googly eyes.  The other girls got more creative and adapted their frames with different colors and words, but I pretty much did mine just the way the tutorial has it - I'm just that kind of girl - not very spontaneous..haha :)  The "E's" for "EEK" were all out at Michael's (they sell the letters separately for 39 cents each) so I picked up a whole pack of like 60 wooden letters for about $4 from Hobby Lobby.

Anyway, it's pretty self-explanatory, but check out the tutorial if you need any help.

Christie and Brinly both headed out before I realized we hadn't gotten any pictures!  Luckily Kristell was still around and we actually got a picture together (we've been friends for a good 2 years and I've never gotten a picture with her!)

In the process of creating our cute frames!

And my completed frame!  

 

I guess I didn't follow the tutorial exactly (go me!).  I didn't fill the whole frame with googly eyes and I did my "EEK" in purple :)  Sorry the picture is so dark!  It was hard to get a good one.  It looks much better in person! Now if we just had a picture to put in it ;)

Our Freshman Roommate

Our freshman year Jen and I were both attending Utah Valley State College (now Utah Valley University) so we jumped right into living in apartments instead of dorms.  We lived at the good ol' Riviera in Provo and I think back on it all the time.  It was such a great experience and we were in the greatest ward ever.  In fact, that was where I met Trent!  I miss it terribly sometimes!

Our roommates were Rachel Rose and Marissa Christensen.  There were like 5 different Christensen's in the ward that year!  Jen and I met Rachel first as we were moving in and we were nervous.  She was a few years older than us and seemed so quiet and reserved.  Little did we know that she'd become one of our greatest friends :)

Rach was in town this last week visiting family and we were able to get together yesterday for lunch!  We just wish Marissa could've been here too! Dang!

I was telling Rach that one of my greatest memories from living with her was on an evening right before Christmas break (in fact I'm pretty sure it was the night before Jen and I flew home) and it was snowing hard.  We had decorated our apartment really cute a few weeks before.  Jen, Marissa, and I were always flirting with some of the guys from the ward and I don't even remember how it happened, but suddenly snowballs were being chucked at us (our door was open for some reason)!  They were throwing the snowballs right into our door hinge so that we couldn't close our door and THEN they were throwing snowballs right into our apartment!  Jen, Marissa, and I were just screaming our girly screams and the guys must have thought they were just dealing with us wimpy, freshman girls.  HA! They didn't realize who they were messing with!  Rach has quite the arm and she wanted revenge! It turned into quite the snowball fight!  It was SO much fun and absolutely hilarious how into it Rach got!  Memories forever!

Oh I miss the snow, to an extent I guess, around Christmas in particular! And I just thought to put up some pictures!  I'm pretty sure these 2 pictures are from that exact night!  In fact Rach was our photographer!

And here are a few more flashback photos from that year (2006-2007).  I am seriously having so much fun looking at all of these :)

80's classic skating night!

Our Valentine's decorating.

We were so young!  I could add so many more but I'll refrain :)  Love you girls SO much!

Anyway, back to yesterday!  We were able to meet up with Rachel and her sister, Maryanne, and go to lunch at Paradise Bakery.  It was great to just catch each other up on our lives and reminisce about our Riv days :)

Here's our picture outside of Paradise.  It was so sunny!

We decided to get another one later in the shade :)

Rach, it was so good to see you!  Now move your toosh on down here ;) But really, let us know when you come back down and we'll do the same when we're up in Utah (and we'll get Marissa in on the fun too!)