Spring Review in Pictures

Whew! What a crazy season! I am just so amazed that I made it through in one piece. Here are some random look-backs to what we have all been up to :D

Beware: This is a marathon post!! It will not hurt my feelings if you just look at the pictures! If you read this whole thing, you are my hero! :D

EASTER:
I am super sad that I didnt take pictures of Easter. Bummer. I was just too busy having easter to document any of it. It was so stressfull getting all ready, because I worked too so it was tough to do it all. I couldn't even begin preparing until after 3 on Saturday! Yikes! And yes, the kids had enormous chore lists too! Sunday everything came together though. We had lots of family over, and we started off the morning with deeeeeelicious crepeswith allllll the fixings! I love making crepes! I have to say, we made some with nutella, sliced bananas and whipped cream........GETOUT they were heavenly! Ahh! So yummy. Then we started on a traditional Easter feast of spiral glazed ham, yummy potatoes (my personal fave-esp. with sharp cheddar in them!) and salad and rolls. sooooo I kinda forgot the salt in the rolls (the sugar too for that matter, but I kneaded it in :) but I salvaged them. Between sessions everyone played Settlers while I made this:




for my SIL sister Deb's rehab grad that was taking place later that night. I feel bad because I completely threw it together in less than 2 hours but at least it tasted really good :D The butterflies were a significant theme, so that was fun, and it was really cheerful and girly, just like Deb. It was great to have it done and ready to go so I could chill and finish conference, and watch the Blind Side with the fam before we left to the graduation.

We went to the Grad meeting, and then to dinner at Debs rs presidents cute home for dinner on the patio. It was a gorgeous evening, and the orange blossoms and petunias were SO fragrant, I loved it so much. Boy did I come home and crash!!

DAYTONS BIRTHDAY:

My baby is 7!! I never never thought I'd have my youngest be this old! He is just my little sweetheart! He is so huggy and sweet, he loves to talk to me, he tells me such funny things all the time. I'm so glad we have this amazing, super smart sweetie pie to love every day! I feel bad his cake was so messed up, I had a 2 hour window for his party and was late getting the cake done so it was warm and not really frostable, and he really wanted the lego like Wyatts. Since Wyatts was such a pain I thought I could do better just with buttercream.......not so much. Whoops, well now I know, right?? Sorry, Deets. Better cake next year :D It was yum though. After his little family party Grandma Lamb took him and Wyatt for thier birthdays to Build a Bear, where they picked up some new BFFs. They had so much fun and were totally into it. I love Daytons, its perfect for his Shamrock birthday.

COOPERS BIRTHDAY:

Of course, as every year, Cooper gets the most rushed birthday. I feel terrible. Don't tell him though, as far as he says (and from what I can tell, anyway) he had a great birthday. I was working so Mark went and picked out just what he had wanted, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and a UFC game for the Xbox. Plus 2 grandmas gave him 20 bucks and a new outfit AND a bionicle. Not shabby, but considering nothing but my moms gift was wrapped and we sang happy birthday with a store bought cake and sang to him at a wedding reception for Marks cousin in Casa Granda, in a moms eyes it was pretty pathetic. I really think he could have cared less about the cake and singing, he just wanted to be home playing his new game, not at a wedding reception. He's 10, I can't blame him! He was trying SO hard to be patient! Sweet Cooper! I hope someday he will overcome all of this! LOL

He's getting so grown up! His face is getting that Lamb shape......and the retainer makes him look like such a pre teen!

OK he was a little embarrassed when 50 people started singing to him......

TRIP TO UTAH:

I got to go to UT with my mom and sis Katie to visit Em! She was super homesick and needed some fun family time, so we drove to the rescue! I have like no pictures of that either, I was so tired the whole time! But it was great staying at Christines (Watching bride Wars in the home theater eating Olive Garden dessert, pretty hard to beat it!) and I think we pretty much talked our faces off. We found shopping paradise, it is known to those on earth as Taipan Trading! We also found shopping heaven, it is known as Cherry Lane in Provo. Love Love Love!! We finally just started laughing, because halfway through the day we realized that every 10 to 30 seconds we were all sucking in our breath at everything! I have no clue how many times I heard or said "OH! LOOK at this!!" but it had to be in the hundreds! I have so many fun ideas of things I MUST make! Plus I bought the purse of my dreams! It was fun getting to see Em at beauty school, she is doing great! Poor Katie is newly preggo and not feeling good at all but she was a trooper. We looked at houses, visited Temple square with Raquel, slept, talked, laughed, and shopped. Pretty much perfect! Hopefully next time Bri will be with us!!

FINALLY:

I got the "real" wedding pictures back, the ones of our family, and the cake I did and the cupcakes look so much better in these so I thought I'd post them.

I have been going nonstop, I did hair all day yesterday again (which was fun, really, but tiring) and I am so excited to be taking today OFF! Woo hoo! Mark got the kids off to school so I could sleep in and veg, then I went and got a really great mani pedi with a hot rock massage. I'm hoping that I can schedule my hair trade massage for this week, too. Woo HOO! Believe it or not, there is more I could update, like Homeschool, summer plans, new crafts in the works, etc but for now........Janel.......OUT

My Sweet Little Wyatt Baby's Baptism

I know it is hard to imagine, but Wyatt turned 8 this month and was baptized on Saturday, March 20th. It was such a special day for our family. Wyatt is just growing up so fast and he was really being serious and appreciating his important event. He is such a good obedient boy!! He gets a little crazy every now and then like any typical boy but he really tries to be a good example to his friends and choose the right. He is our Jolly Fellow, always happy and cheerful! I just love him to death! Tonight I was trying to give him a kiss goodnight tonight and he didn't want to! He said kisses were disgusting, even from his mom and he is way too old for that. Well, as you can imagine I had to wrestle him down and kiss him anyway!

We had a really nice program. Cade gave the Baptism talk, he did a good job and was pretty funny up there. It is good practice for him to speak any time he can. Sadie and I sang Beautiful Savior, and Grandma Dianne gave the Confirmation talk. She did SUCH a good job that now Dayton already has her pegged to do his confirmation talk next year. Everything went off without a hitch, so I'd say it was a smashing success!

The baptism was at 9:30 so afterward we had a little family brunch here afterward. We felt SO BAD because there were several people we should have invited and we just were so busy and wrapped up we just didn't even think of it. Dumb. We are SO sorry if you would have liked to come and we didn't call you, we are just retardos sometimes!

We had a yummy brunch for the family, we had 2 egg casseroles, blueberry muffins, a TO DIE FOR blueberry sour cream coffee cake,(Amy Scotts recipe, highly recommended and will be repeated!) fresh fruit, and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar on top. Of course OJ and chocolate milk. It was such a reverent day, gorgeous weather, really perfect. I love my family and loved spending the day with them!

Wedding Shower Post

SO its been a couple weeks but I finally got pictures of Dianne (my MIL) from my moms camera! I wish I had more, and closer up of the dessert table, but these will have to do :D

Dianne told all about how she and CT started dating and got engaged, it was really fun!



Here is the island with all of the fruit and veggies.....with my favorite dips! Spinach dip and bread with the veggies and Cories cream cheese caramel layered dip with the fruit. Heavenly!!

Here is the dessert table that I made.

I am SO bummed this is the only pic I have of it! ARGH!

I did a lavender and white color scheme. All the desserts were purple or white. I made WASC cupcakes (heavenly!!) which stands for white almond sour cream cake (wait, shouldn't that be wascc?? oh well ;) with cream cheese frosting that I piped on with little fondant medallions and silver sugar beads, and some had coconut tops. I even tackled the infamous MACARONS (no, not macarOOns-totally different!) and managed to eeek out enough decent looking ones to serve up. I will be working on these tricky little buggers in the future, they are so challenging! I had my SIL make ghiradelli brownies and I frosted them with mint cream cheese frosting -they were super gooey so they were pretty messy but tasted amazing. Of COURSE I had to do cake balls, white coating with purple sugar sprinkles. How are those little nuggets of yumminess so amazing?? MM! So yes, it was a lot of work but SO worth it! I loved how it turned out! I can't wait to do another tablescape.

SO MANY people helped with this shower! I can't even fathom trying to pull something off like this all alone! Amy's house was amazing for this event, I mean, AH-mazing and she was so great with little last minutes saves, plus all the gorgeous fruit and dip, Trudy and her beautiful veggies and bread and dip, Jeanne for the punch and water, my mom for coming over for 2 days and helping me pull it all together, and Norma for doing such a good job on the group gifts and paper goods. AND Natalie for entrusting me with her gorgeous serving pieces, which made the whole look even possible.

And now they are married and living happily ever after :D

Wedding whirlwind!!

Wowzers, what a crazy couple weeks! Last week was all about my MIL Dianne's wedding shower. It was so fun to do, but SO much work! We had about 70 fun ladies show up! Luckily I had amazing ladies to delegate big jobs to so I could focus on making the desserts. I am so sad I don't have any pictures right now of it, because our photographer got tricked by mapquest and was way late, but I took some with my moms camera, which she took home with her so I'll have to wait until this weekend to get them off of her card. I'll be sure to do a shower post :D

This past week was So fun! We had John and Jenn and their 6 kids here all week and we played and worked our bootys off! And we ate ourselves into oblivion with all of the favorite restaurant requests. You know if John is here the trip will revolve around the meals, mainly Aloha Kitchen. They put up a pool table in our loft, got pedicures, Made multiple trips to DI to pick up Jenns sister from work, we made lots of fabric flowers, we shopped for dresses at the mall with all the girls, we did a Tillys and Target trip, and helped with the wedding. It was all fun. The kids played and played until they dropped every night. Later in the week we had Jenns mom Linda and Raquel here from Utah. It was a houseful, but luckily we had room and it all worked out great.

Friday and Saturday were our busiest days, Friday was helping decorate the church for the Wedding, then Wyatts 8th birthday party at a nearby park, then shopping at the mall, then a family party with the "new" side of the family. We were gone alllll day! And when I got home, I had a wedding cake to frost and construct!

Some of Wyatts birthday photos-the lego cake was actually harder to make than the wedding cake!!

Eight really IS great!!

Then Saturday was the big wedding day, but in the morning we had a bridal shower in Chandler for Marks cousin Brads fiancee, and then home to get all 17 of us ready to look cute for pictures!We had the clothes iron and the flat irons going full speed for a couple hours straight! Those pictures will have to wait until I get those professional ones back too, I was busy setting up the cake during a lot of the picture taking

Due to the crappy lighting along with my point and shoot camera, this looked much better in person, so hopefully pro pics will do it some favors :D

The wedding was really nice, but the best part was catching up with so many fun people that I havent seen in ages, extended family, and old ward members. I was so thrilled at how many people came to support Dianne and CT. It was wonderful and I know they appreciated it. Once I get good pictures back I will do a fun wedding post.

I wish I could say that now I can crash and recover a little, but I got a popcorn order today, Daytons birthday is wednsday and Wyatts baptism is Saturday (9:30 a.m. at the Bella Vista bldg in case you want to come!) So things are just back to busy as usual.