Blue and Gold Banquet: Western Style

We had our Blue and Gold Banquet on the 27th.  February was a pretty stressful month for me.  Aaron was out of town for two weeks of it and both of the weeks he was gone, I had a big thing at Church to be stressed out about.

So the Blue and Gold was no exception.  I did a little driving (that I may or may not have had another licensed driver in the car with me for) and felt like a real adult being able to get stuff done on my own.  So that was good.  I've been feeling more and more independent lately which is awesome!  Being able to drive helped me get all of the stuff done that I needed to and everything, on my end, shaped up nicely.

Check out how the cacti ended up looking when we were done.

All of the big cacti showed where the games and activities were going down.  This one is where they were doing a lasso.  It is really hard to see the lasso and the pink thing they were lasso-ing but...it was what was happening.

Our cubmaster showing them how it's done.

Another activity was shooting bottles and cans with rubber bands.  Our assistant cub master was manning that booth.

It was a pretty fun night for the boys and everyone got some amazing cobbler.  I made two of the cobblers and both of which ended up completely gone...which was good since I didn't need to eat it at home by myself but at the same time....it was REALLY yummy and I would have loved to try to eat it all by myself.

Another successful Blue and Gold for our pack. It's amazing to think that it is the third one that we've been to.  We are going to be amazing at this game by the time our kid is old enough to be in scouts.

Valentine's Time!

It's Valentine's time! Which means that it is time for everyone to prove how much they are in love by the amount of craft projects that they get done. I found an idea on Pinterest for heart shaped fruit filled pastries....which gave me the idea for Aaron's favorite dessert, strawberry empanadas, in a whole new shape.

I spent an hour and a half working on these.  It might have gone faster if the crust that I was using wasn't so springy.  The cookie cutter wouldn't go all the way through so I had to cut them out with a knife...which slowed me down.

But they came out looking adorable.

When Aaron saw them...he stared.  And I said, "They're strawberry empanadas".  And he said, "Oh....okay....I guess they look good."

Higher praise, I couldn't ask for.

The craft for my preschool Valentine's was loads faster to make thanks to Pinterest.

Printed out this little template...hot glued the bubbles on....A THOUSAND TIMES better reviews than the strawberry empanadas.

I'll let that be a lesson to me.  Valentine's Day isn't really worth the effort.

Or maybe the lesson is that children like bubbles.

Blue and Gold Prep

Our theme for the Blue and Gold this year is "Western Cowboys".

Aaron and I are currently getting things in order for the baby and that includes some new furniture...which means boxes...which means...cardboard decorations.

Luckily we have some boys who we can get to work on the manual labor part.  We bought some paint and set the boys to work on painting cacti to decorated the gym with in a few weeks.

I was actually surprised with how much fun the boys were having with it.  They really got into creating their own shapes of cactus and painting them.  We even had an old scout come over from the gym to join in the fun.

I found some great invitations to print out while searching online.  There is some GREAT stuff online to help with everything you could ever want to do.  Thank goodness for the information super highway.

I'm pretty excited for the Blue and Gold this year.  It should be a ton of fun...even though I will need to get a big list of arts and crafts accomplished.  But it should be something to pass the time.

Baby's First *FacePalm*

Almost 24 weeks, time for our Targeted Ultrasound! 

I was so excited on Monday to get to see our little baby boy again.  I was also excited because it was going to be a LONG appointment with tons of time to look at our man cub while they measured everything.

The appointment was at 4:20.  It takes 15 minutes to get to the clinic from our house so I called Aaron at work that morning to remind him that he needed to be home at 4:00pm to make sure we got there on time.  It normally takes Aaron anywhere from 20-30 minutes to get home from work on base so he needed to leave at 3:30 at the latest to ensure he got home in time.

At 4:10pm...I was sitting at home alone...so I called his work number.  He picked up the phone.

Long story short.  I got to the hospital at 4:27 without Aaron but still on time enough that our appointment didn't get cancelled.

Baby's first *facepalm*.

Our little man was pretty active through the whole thing.  It was pretty funny because he was just chilling out at the bottom of my uterus (head down) and the technician put the wand on his head...and apparently, he didn't like it or he thought it was a game.  He headed butted the wand off of his head.  She put it back on...he headed butted it off...she put it back on...and then he started going all over my uterus trying to avoid the wand.

It made it really hard to get a good picture of his face.

But we proved that he is a boy again.  There doesn't seem to be any doubt about that.  I'm not going to post a picture online of the "proof" since...it isn't rated PG.

Aaron felt pretty bad about forget our appointment so he took me out to eat.  I picked the Kobe Grill because it had been awhile since I had some good Asian food and I love dinner and a show.

The food was pretty good...so I guess I'll let Aaron off the hook.  I'm so happy that we got a DVD of the ultrasound so Aaron doesn't have to miss out on anything.

Andy's Phantom of the Opera

Ever since I meet Andy 5 years ago, I've been going to see him perform. He was in BYU's Phantom of the Opera this year and he was amazing! He played the original opera house owner and he did an amazing job.

After the show was over, we FINALLY got to meet some of Andy's family.  His was the only family that we had never met as a group.

Then we took a picture of our little "urban family".  I can't believe that Geoff, Andy and I all met 5 years ago and we are still friends. It has been awesome having them as my family while I've lived in Utah.

It is going to be really sad in a couple of months when we all start to go our separate ways.  Well, Clarise, Geoff, and Andy will be going their separate ways.  Aaron and I will be staying in the same place but starting a new chapter of our lives.  So it was good to kind of send that off with a bang by watching Andy all together one last time.