D Day

today is delayna's day, aka, D Day. we had a lovely shower for her at the church this morning. it was put on by her dear friend aprihl shapiro. there are a few more pictures on my facebook page if you are interested. it was fun to watch delayna in the spotlight because she usually tries to shy away form that sort of thing.

wedding blossoms

this morning we (larissa, my mam, and myself) worked on wedding preparations. we were able to put together all of the center pieces, pictured below, the coursages for the mothers, tony's boutenier, and delayna's bouquet. we were very productive! and, if i say so myself, they all turned out rather lovely.

i made my mom do this...she's the greatest :)

sorry the lighting wasn't the best. these pictures are a bit washed out, but you get the idea. it will be a VERY pretty wedding.

year book awards

yesterday we finger painted and here are the results!!! (cheers in the background)

Most messy

ellie bellie won this with flying colors...literally

Most likely to Succeed

i think ev looks like he could walk straight into an office, sit down to his computer, and start barking out orders, dont you? or maybe just his highchair...for now

Most Artistic

jenna was the only one who understood the concept of painting

Cutest Couple

Best Dressed

seeing as she was one of two that were dressed, this wasn't a difficult choice

Class Clown

wait, what the?! how did this get here! oh well! this just happens to be my all time favorite picture of my sweet little sister alli. hahaha, it is hilarious!!!

bloom bloom POW!

this beautiful bird of paradise bloomed within one hour this morning. we have been waiting for our first bloom all summer, so we were pretty excited about it! i LOVE living in florida!

our day consisted of splash parks, naps, and eating breakfast for dinner...this is the life! we went with everett, jenna, and dani. jenna and dani belong to our dear friend katie smith from our ward. jenna and jack will have to meet up again in twenty years. he would have some awesome in-laws!

last night i couldn't sleep. i had "the itch" to make something. so i decided to make an apron for the greatest niece in the entire world! kayla, this one's for you!!!! and it will be in the mail tomorrow...i hope you will be able to use this while spending time in the kitchen with your mama!

tastes and sights of the fourth

we had a fun ward party on the 3rd. our building has a spectacular view of a fireworks show put on by an outlet mall a little ways away. we had hot dogs, cookies, a marshmallow fight, a balloon toss, a bounce house (provided by frank fernandez), and the kids had a wonderful time. it was HOT and HUMID and HOT!

on saturday morning, larissa and i had a girls day out!!! we started bright and early and headed to downtown naples and went to the farmers market off 5th. (its really off 3rd, but you know). i was expecting it to be a bit bigger, but we did enjoy it nonetheless. i bought a german scone and some freshly made guacamole and lari bought some veggies, homemade soap that smells divine, and a french crepe. this little french lady practically made her buy the crepe for 5 BUCKS! so we split the cost and the crepe...it was heavenly! but what isnt when its filled with nutella!?

we walked to the beach from the market and saw two neat creatures. the first being this crab. it was much bigger than it appears in the picture. its legs were hairy like a tarantula, sick! larissa almost stepped on it, otherwise i doubt we would have seen it. and we also saw a manta ray while we were walking down the pier.

a couple more shots from the market:

after adventures off 5th ave, we went to the coastland mall. i havent been there since high school i think. of course it's completely different now. we played dress up and each ended up purchasing a few things :) none of which we took pictures of. *funny story* when we got in the car after the mall, we both started gagging a bit because the smell of the veggies from the market. well, after gagging, we both started laughing really hard and larissa accidently hit her head on the horn, which led to much more laughter!

at one store we split up, picked out a "nasty outfit" for the other person, and met back at the dressing rooms to try on our nasty new diggs. im sure we could have been even more ruthless, had really really immodest outfits been allowed! here is the result:

ok, these pictures dont do these outfits justice, seriously! larissa is WAY TOO CUTE in ANYTHING! i know, its not fair!

when we went to the dressing room, the lady asked "do you want to share a room?" hmmmm. tempting, but NO!

i think the cheapest item was this shirt at $88. ok ok, i really cant remember how much it was, but its close to that. but i do remember that "love kills slowly"

after the mall guess what else we did? you guessed it! we went to the next mall! we hit up anthropologie at waterside shoppes and i picked out a few shirts for my birthday...which is coming up...just so you all know...august 3rd...its a monday...just so you know ;)

after our adventures we went home to mom and dads and helped prepare a barbeque. yum! dad grilled ribs and chicken and all the trimmings! complete with chris' root beer keg! then we all, of course, jumped in the pool! it was a perfect holiday! jack can now swim the length of the pool. he is very slow and wears water wings, but still! my little hooligan is growing up!!!

i always enjoy spending time with larissa. she is one of those people that you cant help but have fun with. i am sooo lucky to be stuck with her forever, thanks to bo! no really, she is a wonderful person and i find myself thinking "what would Larissa do?" quite often. i love love love being so close to her, in friendship and location!

birthday bash

ok. for some ridiculous reason, i have not been able to rearrange these pictures so that they are in any sort of logical order. this happens occasionally. i dont know why my computer has an attitude problem!

well this past weekend we celebrated my mom's birthday (saturday) and chris' birthday (monday). it was a wonderful weekend. it started out with a surprise visit from my mom's brother and his wife. we havent seen them in...maybe 6 years...i think. my mom loved having them, as did jack. my aunt mary ann was very playful with jack, he just adored her.

jack has started taking lots and lots of pictures. he LOVES to take pictures. most of them are close ups of silly things like outlets, or the tv. but the first three pictures of this post were taken by the little photographer. maybe someday he will be as good as his aunt rik.


for my mom's birthday dinner, we all went to outback. surprise surprise. my kids are NOT very good at restaraunts. ok, who am i kidding, THEY ARE NIGHTMARES! well, this outing was NO exception. they were screaming, throwing food, ellie spilled a FULL glass of ice water right on my lap. i was soaked through, front and back. when we left (which, by the way, we had to have our food boxed up and leave while everyone else was still eating) i literally sloshed out of the restaraunt. it was a party i will never forget.

ok. here are a couple shots of my mom's present. i wrapped it in white paper and then let jack draw on it and put...well, whatever he felt like on it. there are a ton of robots, a few guitars, some fish and butterflies and TONS of rhinestones! he had sooo much fun decorating it and i had a lot of fun watching him! i thought it turned out pretty cute.

admiring his work

next up, chris man! chris turned 29 this year. all he wanted was an iphone (go figure...hes such a techno gadget geek) and to go fishing. so that didnt leave me too many options in the gift area, but we made it work. he went fishing with my dad in the morning and so my mom and i put up this sign in their living room. sorry the pics are not very clear.

it says:

happy birthday (picture of chris)

its that time of year

to make a wish,

maybe an (pic of an iphone) and gear

or perhaps a big (pic of fish)

cheesy cheesy cheesy, i know. but i had to do SOMething! that afternoon we went and got his phone and had lunch together with out the little villains.

sorry this is waaaay longer than i wanted it to be.

then we had presents and cake and ice cream. actually, it was just the left over cake from my moms party. we just turned it for the pictures so it looked like a whole cake :)

then after that we all went swimming in the pool at about 9pm. that was the best part of the weekend. we had a blast!

these were taken with THE new iphone

delayna got him a root beer party keg! isnt that awesome! we are waiting till the fourth to bust open that puppy!

i made him an "isock" for his new phone. its not very cool, so i didnt take any pictures of it. its made from the same material as rikki's birthday apron and lined with turquoise felt.

speaking of birthday aprons, here is a picture of my mom's. it has two big pockets on the front and back so she can put all her crap in it while helping at missionary luncheons. the green material has white polka dots and the blue has white scissors all over it. if you know my mom, you know she ALWAYS has a pair of scissors with her!

i never posted pics of rikki's apron, so here you go! i think this was my favorite so far...sorry everybody else!

we have some fun plans for this holiday weekend... i hope you all do too! dont get too close to those bottle rockets and fire crackers!