Recipe for the best weekend ever

Step one- Jessie becomes a mommy.
Dear Jessie,
You had a baby yesterday. Wow. A real baby. I am so happy for you and can't wait to meet little Max. I love the pictures of him on your blog. You and your husband made a beautiful baby. Congratulations!

Step two- temple with eternal roommate
We went to the temple with Hailey for her upcoming wedding and don't worry, I cried. Leave it to me to be the ONLY person (out of dozens of family members) to cry. A little ridiculous and very embarrassing. I love it though and cannot wait for Friday. The following are pictures of the post-temple celebration.

I think picture capture the two of us quite nicely.

This one was my response to my sweet husband for taking about 5 pictures of us in a row super fast, and unprepared. I love him, obviously.

Finally, a decent picture of the trio.

The happy, beautiful, almost married couple

This picture shows that the 3 girls have definitely had more ridiculous group picture practice. Marti Gras, anyone? :)
This picture also makes me look 5 feet tall. No offense, Hailey, but I'm not that short.

Step three- Demo Derby
Josh and I went to the Malad Demolition Derby Saturday night and had a roaring time. Yes, we skipped out on the broadcast, but don't worry. We've got it DVR'ed and now can watch it multiple times at our demand. It was awesome and I've fallen more in love with that little slice of heaven. {feel free to click on these next few pics to enlarge them. They are quite humorous.}

Yes, there had a "redneck olyimpics". hahaNotice the flagLuckily John Deere showed up to pull away the dead carsJelly Belly scarecrow. Josh was in heaven because he got free jelly beansHailey and Challis with bride and groom scarecrows. Presh. That Malad sun is a killer. My eyes were basically closed in both version of this picture. Notice the Strawberry slush (slushy? I'm not sure what they call it in malad) form the famous drive-inn.

The plummerThey had a mud hole jumping contest. Sadly my camera died after this picture and this was the only shot we got of it.

We then went to Challis' house and had s'mores. Sadly I had no camera, but it was pitch black in the country so I'm not sure it would have made a difference. Ahh...such a good weekend. This is what I did instead of studying for the two test I have next week or writing the 5 page paper I haven't started. I've still got to watch the broadcast before those things too. I'm really, really good at prioritizing. haha...not.

A letter to Jessie

Dear Jessica Lynn,
In case you didn't know or possibly forgot, you are probably having a baby next week. Wow.
I remember when you looked like this (and even when you looked 5 years younger than this). You were the cool new girl from Arizona in second grade. You moved into the second ward and couldn't see the scratches on your flag pole. You loved to read and seemed like you had life figured out by age 9.

(For those of you who don't know, Jessie is the one in the yellow shirt and green pants. Not the insane one jumping (who's showing far too much thigh), or Liz who is in blue)

And now you're going to be a mom. I'm blown away with happiness, excitement, and overall blown away-ness. Congrats Jess, I can't wait to meet your son.
So, just in case you forgot...you're baby is due NEXT WEEK!!!
Love you.

Concerts and babies

Backstreet Boys
Kalai (3 times...)
Ryan Shupe
Regina Spektor (as of November twice)
Celine Dion
Rogue Wave
Jack Johnson
Jenny Lewis
Bon Iver
Joshua James
Dierks Bentley
Brad Paisley

These are the live concerts I've seen. There may be more, but this is the list I can come up with on the top of my head. Super eclectic and I added my first country singers on Saturday. After spending the night with Amy Jane (Josh was at the Sand Dunes) I headed for Provo for little Max's baby shower. It was fun to catch up with old friends and I was surprisingly underwhelmed at the amount of pregnant women there. :) Jessie looked wonderful and I can't wait for her little boy to join their awesome family.

The girls from THS

After the shower, I went home and took a hefty nap. With only getting a few hours of sleep (literally, 3 at most) I was pretty sleepy. I woke up just in time to head to West Valley for the Brad Paisley concert. Kelsey scored free tickets and we took advantage of it. Hailey, Challis and her parents happened to be attending the same concert, so we saved them spots and had a yee-hawing time.

Me and Hailey. Apparently I thought Kelsey was going to blow up the camera.

Their wedding is NEXT week!

Sisters, awww.
Squirt
I may or may not have spent 5 bucks on this stuff. Heaven.

So all in all, my weekend without Josh was good. I was sad that he left, but luckily I have great friends and family that kept me busy. :)

9

Nine months ago (as of yesterday) I married this guy and I'm still rather fond of him.

Tomorrow is also the one year anniversary of our engagement. :)


and coming up is our two year kissaversary.
Life if wonderful.

p.s. sorry for the mushy posts lately. I just really like this guy.

Kelsey

Kelsey is 15 today. I remember the day she was born very vividly. It was a Sunday morning and the 4 Herdman kids woke up to no parents. The phone was off the hook, there were sewing patterns and papers thrown everywhere (I still don't really know how that happened...), the milk was getting warm on the kitchen table and there were no adults. Craig, assumed that Mom was having the baby, so we all got dressed and walked to church. Me, being a grumpy little 6 year old, already hated this child because they had made mom and dad miss the primary program. I had practiced and practiced my part and they were giving birth to some kid who was going to take my place. After church, we went to the hospital to see little Kelsey and...I hated her. It stayed that way for several years. I mean, I liked her when she was cute, but when she wasn't I was quick to remember that she had replaced me. Fro and I used to throw stuffed animals at her when she slept over with us, I'd make her do millions of favors for me, and I've always kind of poked fun at her smarts. Well Kelsey, now that we're older, I can honestly say that I...like you. :) I like you a lot. Actually, I love you. I love coming home and you bombarding me with millions of stories. I love how tenderhearted you are and how easily it is for you to feel emotion. I love how much you love our family and how you are always concerned for them. I love your hilarious laugh and how almost every night at dinner you have to leave because milk is coming out of your nose or because you can't breathe. I love all of your adventurous plans for the future. I love our inside jokes (bubbles in milk?). I love how honesty and dependable you are. I love how much you trust and confide in me. And I love that you're my little sister one one of my very best friends.

That's all. Happy Birthday, Kels.

HAW(S)

The title of this post probably doesn't make sense to very many people at all, but it's the initials of one of my bestest friends ever. Hailey. She's getting married in 17 days and I'm thrilled. We had a little get together for this lovely girl and it was so awesome to be reunited with old roommates. Hailey is wonderful and I'm so excited to go through the temple with her and see her get sealed to her best friend. I've waited a long time for this day to come (not quite as long as her though...haha) and I think it's safe to say that the count down is on!

I love, love, love these girls and this picture that has so awkwardly evolved over the years.

P-View 34. Good times.

If you don't know Hailey and Lacy, you're missing out. They taught me how to be cool

The group

Firehouse. Yum. Sadly, no F'zookies were eaten tonight.

And, just because I want to, here's a trip down memory lane with L-Schniz, Willie, and B.Herd...


Ok, that satisfied my need to laugh for the night.

Love

I love Josh because when I wake up in tears at 3 am because I had a nightmare about the Halloween 2 trailer (and no I will NOT hyper link that one) I can wake him up and have him hold (and laugh at) me.

He's wonderful.

p.s. Cruise pictures are below. Don't let this shout out to Josh confuse you. :)

The sun's so hot, I forgot to go home

Mr. Taylor couldn't have said it better. I wish we would have forgotten to go home, but sadly we couldn't. I took over 400 pictures that week and so this is just a sample. I included most of the ones of us in just in case you aren't all interested in my lame-o fake photography (sorry Fro...) So here you are. Prepare yourself, this is long.

If you don't know David Bond (or even if you do), don't ask him about this picture. You wont be able to get away. :)

I know he's tall, but our room was tiny.

The married portion of our group

The magic show...

This was hanging on three doors down from us. I guess they felt the need to advertise it.

Puerto Vallarta...

I thought this random polaroid of a baby was hilarious.

Mazatlan...

YMCA moment. We heard that and La Bamba probably 10 times each that week.

My reaction...


Enlarge this one and look at my face. You'll laugh for an hour. I did.

Cabo...

Yum. Sweat already.

My shady spot was slowly disappearing.

Josh is cute

Seriously the most beautiful beach on earth. I probably took 150 pictures at lover's beach. Gorgeous.

Nice photo op.

This made me laugh pretty hard.

This got this song stuck in my head

Formal night #2. I look so awkward in this picture. haha!

International plate of cheese.

Pepsi Natural. Nowhere in America, but everywhere in Mexico.

Illegal pictures of our pictures taken by the cruise.

We saved our animals because we don't use 8 towels a day.

I had to take Josh to the super awesome park behind the Olson's in Irivne.

This one's for my sisters. Remind you of driving home from Fillmore? I finally got a picture!

And there you have it. That's what Josh and I were doing while we should have been in class for the second week. :)