DIY Christmas Decorations

It's the most wonderful time of the year and I am celebrating it in every possible way. I had a bunch of extra wood lying around the house so I decided to paint them to decorate for the holidays. I can't wait to find more wood and do some more projects.

DIY Office Desk

First, let me start off by saying that I have the worlds BEST dad. Last weekend my sister, Shauni, and I decided that we wanted to build office desks. We have been searching for the perfect desk, and then I finally found free plans for the most adorable DIY desk from a Shanty2Chic pin on Pinterest. 

Without even having to beg or bribe him, my dad jump on board to help build our desks. And when I say he help, I really mean he did all of the building while we "supervised". 

The first desk took about 3-4 hours to build. Although, once he had the hang of it, the second desk popped up in about 45 minutes. My dad always amazes me with his talent and knowledge when it comes to building all our many projects we throw his way. 

After he built our desks, we just had to sand and paint them and they were done!

I absolutely love how the desks turned out. The hardest part for me has been deciding on how to decorate mine. 

I have settled with this for now, but if you know me at all, you won't be surprised when I change my decorations in a week or two. Until then, I am in LOVE. 

Yellowstone National Park

This past weekend Tyson, Logan, and I drove up to Rexburg, Idaho to visit Logan's girlfriend Christine and one of Tyson's old mission buddies, Kyle. While visiting them we decided to go visit Yellowstone National Park since we were already so close and none of us had ever been. 

Wow, was I glad we decided to go. Yellowstone is amazing! 

First we went and watched Old Faithful explode. Boy, is she faithful!

It was so fun to have Kyle and Christine there with us. Kyle was a wonderful tour guide....

"You can tell that it's an aspen tree, because the way it is"

 "Nature is neat" 

"Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3JodBR-vs

Then we walked along the pathways to find some smaller geysers. 

I was so tempted to just throw my suit on and hop in the "natural hot tubs", which I am sure I would regret immediately after. Not to mention the trouble I would be in for disturbing a  "FRAGILE THERMAL AREA". Still, I was very tempted.

After exploring some more we went and watched the Grand Geyser. It was probably my favorite geyser, even over Old Faithful. It was so fun to sit up closer and feel the heat from the water.

After watching the Grand Geyser we headed back to the car and saw some more beautiful views.

On our way out of the park we noticed TONS of people had pulled their cars over on the sides of the road and were gathered out in a huge field. Naturally, we were curious to see what was going on, so we stopped and joined them.

As we made our way over to the crowd of people, we noticed about 100 yards away up on the hillside was a HUGE bear! I was so excited because "seeing a bear" was definitely on my Yellowstone checklist. I was even just complaining in the car that we were leaving before I got to see one. So I was thrilled. Later down the road we got stuck for 45 minutes in stand-still traffic, only find out later that we were stopped because of a herd of buffalo that decided to take over the road for their evening stroll. It was pretty amazing to be that close and see how huge these animals really were.  

I can't wait to go back one day and do some more exploring of this beautiful park! 

Blessed with the BEST

I truly have been blessed with the BEST, and when I say best, I am talking about my sister, and sister-in-law's. They are the best for making me an aunt again for the 5th and 6th time with the 7th coming in January!

July 18th, Sadie Amelia Winder made her way into the world and I immediately fell in love. She was born with the most kissable, chubby cheeks and her luscious lips were to die for!

Now, a few months later she still has those adorable checks and lips, which I hope she has forever! It has been so fun seeing Colton and Tami learning the ropes of being first time parents. I am constantly in awe at how they make parenting look so easy.

Then on September 17th, (Kyson's birthday), Little Ryker joined the family looking just like his daddy with his strong Stephan genes. I still can't believe how small he is.

Now he is only about 2 weeks old, and I just can't get enough of him! I hope my kids are at least half as cute as he is. 

I have some pretty great role models to look up to when I have kids. They are all such great examples and I can't wait to see if anything they have taught me about raising children has rubbed off. Fingers crossed! 

Logan Adventure

I absolutely LOVE weddings, so any chance we get to go to one I am thrilled. What's even better is getting to go into temples I haven't been in before.

 

 

This past weekend, one of Tyson's old mission companions, TJ,  got married up in the Logan Temple. It was such a perfect day for a wedding. Now lets just take a minute at look at those flowers! One of my favorite parts of going to any temple, is how gorgeous and well taken care of the grounds are. We even noticed a bride and groom, who you could tell were not married. Tyson was pretty excited not only to see TJ, but to see Lanny Owens. Lanny and his wife served as the mission couple in part of his mission, so we had fun catching up with him. He has always taken such good care of us and we love any chance we get to see him.

 

       

     

We are so excited for TJ and his new beautiful bride, Erika. They are so perfect for each other and we can't wait to have some fun adventures with them. I love getting new married friends to hang out with.

 

We may or may not have gone all out and ate way too much food while we were up north, like we always do on road trips....oops. :)

 

 

Well another summer weekend road trip is in the books and I am already looking forward to the next one. This kid makes our adventures so much fun. I even stayed awake for the whole drive up and back this time, which is very weird for me. Although, It's kind of hard to sleep though while your hubby keeps making farm animal sounds as loud as he can. And on that note, I will leave this lovely video....enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Spend❤ family Adventures

Saturday morning, bright and early, my family all met at my parents house, then loaded up and headed north to Kayak down the Sevier River. Whit and Adam couldn't make it because of her pregnancy making her so sick lately. So we really missed them, but hopefully we will go again when they can come. 

The kids were a little skeptical at first, but slowly, one by one, they started to really enjoy it. 

My dad was a whole other story. He acted like a 16 year old boy paddling around in circles and going super fast, "showing us how it's done". 

I love having a twin who is married to a great guy. It's so fun having such good friends with us whenever we go on family trips. We can always count on a good time with these two.

The best part of the trip for me was seeing Tyson enjoying himself and not being stuck in a wheelchair watching us have all the fun. I am so grateful that he has made such a big recovery from his surgery so he is able to join in on the actives with us again. 

The part we stopped at was right next to the BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN! I have been there once as a child, but it was fun to go back and see it. Plus to make things even better there were a few old train cars that had been remolded into little hotels you could rent out and stay in. I told Tyson that we are for sure coming back to stay in the cute yellow one some day. It is a dream of mine to ride on a legit train.

Overall it was a wonderful and much needed family trip. I can't wait until our next one and hopefully Whit and Adam can make it also. If you haven't Kayaked down a river, I HIGHLY recommend it. It's now one of my new favorite hobbies :)

July 24th on Panguitch

Tyson, his dad, and I headed up to Grandma Winder's cabin to celebrate the 24th of July. After spending the weekend up there I decided that I am in love with Panquitch mountain. It is so beautiful up there and the weather feels amazing at all hours of the day.  

One of Tyson's really good mission companions joined us for the day on Friday and we are so glad he did. It was great to have some extra company out on the lake. 

We had a blast fishing together and I had fun showing the boys how it was done ;)

             

It was a fun weekend and I can't wait for our annual trip back there next year, or hopefully sooner!  

4th of July in Idaho

A few weeks ago we got invited to one of Tyson's mission buddy, kyle's, birthday party/4th of July party. It was up in Shelley, Idaho so we decided it would be fun to head up for the weekend and just get away. On the way up we got stuck in traffic twice due to two different accidents. We really lucked out though because the longest traffic stop (of the two accidents) was in Payson. After a few minutes of complaining about our predicament I looked out my window and saw the Payson Temple, which made me really think how pathetic it was that I was complaining about being stuck in traffic. It could have been a lot worse and we could have been in the actual accident, but instead we got stopped at the perfect place to see the temple and enjoy the view. I am so grateful for how blessed we were as we drove up and back on such a busy weekend. 

The weekend kept us pretty busy. First off we stopped in Brigham City at our all time favorite steakhouse, Maddox. We make a habit of it to stop there EVERYTIME we are at in the area. Then that night once we got to Kyle's, we had fun playing games, watching fireworks, followed by a movie projected onto a tramp leaning up against the tree. It was fun to meet so many new people and make new friends. I immediately fell in love with Kyle's parents. They were so sweet to give us a place to stay, not to mention all of the yummy food. 

Saturday we went to a fun placed in Idaho called Monkey Rock. It was so beautiful there! I just loved how green everything was. Plus the water was nice and refreshing. 

Then we walked a little ways down the road and watched people jump off a bridge into the water below. It was much too high for our liking so we just watched.

  

          Tyson has been so lucky to have meet Kyle. He has always been such a good friend to us and we were so glad we got to visit him. 

 

Saturday night we camped out behind a store to get the perfect view of the Idaho Falls firework display. It was so fun to watch a new firework show, since I've only seen Hurricane's for the past 22 years. 

It was so nice to spend time with Tyson and get away for a little while. I hope I never take our time together for granted.