I'm Back

A few weeks ago Phillip, his brothers, and his dad went on a backpacking trip to Buckskin Gulch (see pics below).

  While they were doing a 'guys weekend' the wives decided to have a 'girls weekend' scrapbooking and watching chick flicks!  

Now if any of you have been to one of my scrapbook parties or scrapbooked with me you know I never get more than a layout or two done.  Well my friends, I sketched, printed pictures, put together materials, and had zero sleep for 24 hours in preparation for this particular weekend.  I had 47 pages planned and guess what...I finished most of them, including the journaling!  I only have a handful of scrapbook pages done from the time we were married and I finally decided that simplicity and not being a perfectionist is the only way to get our scrapbooks done.  None of these are in chronological order, and this is only half of the pages I completed (I promise to get the rest uploaded).  I am proud of myself for just letting go (aka not worrying about what others think of my style), getting pages done, and not spending exuberant amounts of time on each layout!  I feel a sense of accomplishment!  I will say though, having a blog helped with quite a few pages because the 'journaling' was already done and thought out.  The colors seem a little off in the scans, but I am posting them anyways.

After our fun weekend we got to enjoy an entire week at home in Logan!  We made a goal to get involved in our new ward as much as possible.  We started with the Bishopric coming to visit us Sunday to get to know us.  Phillip hit it off with the 2nd Counselor immediately and they began going mountain biking every other morning.  Then Wednesday the Relief Society came to get to know me.  Immediately after, I went with them to book club, which I made homemade cookies for 'just because'.  The next morning I went with some girls from the neighborhood to a fun little class while our husbands put in tile in the 2nd counselors home.  That evening we fed them because they couldn't get into their kitchen and then we all went to coed softball (which was a blast!).  We fed them breakfast on Friday and then got a call in the afternoon because their house flooded.  Needless to say I made 4 fish and talapia stretch for the neighborhood (hmm sounds like a familiar story) for dinner because no one had eaten and everyone was just trying to help them get everything out of their house and dried.  I realized (and this has always been my moms motto - and it was mentioned in the Ensign) that if you just jump right in...what you put in is what you get out.  It was an amazing week and I felt so happy and involved!

What have we been up to since then you might ask?!  BABYSITTING!  We just got done this evening (7 days) and I am ready to go to bed for a few days!  My own comfy king size bed has never looked so inviting!  So to all my friends who read my blog (does anyone?!), I am back from my blogging hiatus!