LISTEN TO THIS

Barenaked Ladies – Snacktime

Your favorite 90's band has created a kid album with catchy beats and clever lyrics your kids will laugh while not annoying the crap out of you (I'm talking about you, Barney)

I dare you to not get the Popcorn Song running through your dreams after hearing it just once.

BUY THIS BOOK

My friend Don Kilpatrick illustrated a children's book, which his mother-in-law wrote.

It is called "You Can't Go to School Naked" and tells the tale of a boy who does indeed want to go to school naked. When I showed the book to my emerging reader, Caleb, he said each word of the title until he got to Naked. He then covered his mouth and laughed for about a minute and a half. It has since become THE bedtime book of choice for about a month.

It's prose is very clever and the illustrations remind me of old-school books from my youth.
If you don't buy it for your kids, i'll be sending out copies for Christmas to those of you lucky souls that I buy presents for.

Karissa's cupcake birthday

Recipe for a crazy night

12 nine year old girls

48 cupcakes

4 containers of frosting

10 kinds of candy toppings

1 piñata

Invitation

The Wedding Planning

Seeing as we don't have trust funds set up to pay for a wedding, we are finding ourselves trying to balance the fine line of having a nice memorable day, while not going broke doing so.

With this in mind, we came to the decision to have a small family soiree. For the wedding itself, we are renting a room in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It is very nice, and the rental fee for just a wedding is very reasonable. It can actually hold quite a few people. It also has a nice view of the temple, which we hope to get sealed in the near future.

Our options for the reception are to either spend a lot of money for an open house and have limited food and maximum stress in planning, or to take the immediate family (which on April's side is about 40 people) to a nice dinner. After much debate between hurting people's feelings and hurting our pocketbooks, we decided to do first option. Seeing as this is the second wedding for both of us, we are foregoing the pomp and circumstance of a big celebration. 

Now we are trying to figure out if it's proper etiquette to invite people to the wedding and share in the moment with us, but without the reception. Or do we just say that it's for family only. Any thoughts??

July

I've gotten behind again on my blogging. This summer is flying by.

At the end of June, the kids and I flew to Chicago for a family reunion planned by my parents.

It was nice to see all my brothers and sisters in one place, and it meant a lot to my parents.

Here's Caleb and his dog 'Tuffy' enjoying the plane ride. Caleb had a lot of fun flying the friendly skies and was a non-stop chatterbox. This conflicted a bit with my usual plane ride ritual of catching up on my sleep, but I enjoyed sitting by him.

Here's a picture of my parents with almost all of their grandkids.

Josh, their oldest grandkid, was in Peru filming a documentary.

Deciding not torture April with 4 days of my family, I waited until after the reunion to fly her out to see what Chicago is all about.

We went to the Taste of Chicago on July 3. The crowd was estimated at over a million people, and it felt like it. It was at that romantic secluded spot that I asked April to marry me, and she accepted!

We are currently planning an October 15th wedding.

I'll keep you posted on the deets.