Bunko

It was my turn to host Bunko this month. It was one of those rare months that all of us were able to make it!

We had fun visiting, eating, trying new recipes, lots of catching up, yelling for Morty, and laughing! Love these ladies. They are wonderful, kind, loving, happy, willing to serve and FUN! I am so lucky and thankful to call each one of them a friend of mine!

p.s. I love these photos. John was our photographer. He just kept snapping photos. He didn't give us the "123...smile" or say "cheese" warnings...he just snapped away. I love how they turned out!

Annual Moms Gone Tired Weekend

I really look forward to this weekend each year. My friend, Lisa did the math and figured it was my 6th year attending this Beach Weekend with the group of girlfriends. We rented a new house this year at Dillon Beach. We agreed that we loved the layout of the house but were not fans of the ants that invaded the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning on our first day/night there! As usual, we stayed up way too late. We enjoyed lots of yummy meals. We went for beautiful walks along the beach and up that GIANT hill. Some of us scrapbooked. Some of us made cards. Some of us read. Some us received massages. We laughed. We cried. We took lots of photos. We enjoyed an 80's themed weekend...80's movies and music. We met Baby Andrew for the 1st time. One word, ADORABLE! We enjoyed our yearly girlfriend gift exchange.We made lots of memories and created the silly quotes that will be remembered as the 2013 Moms Gone Tired Weekend!

 "No! Not the tape gun!"

 My dear friend, Michelle!

 Friends! Eve, Lisa B.,Denise, Lisa H., Debby, Izzie, Michelle, Sheri and me!

Baby Andrew

Scrappin' while watching Better Off Dead.

 My sweet friend, Lisa H.

Debby caught napping at 10 pm. She looks so peaceful!

The layouts I completed. My lowest number to date. I figure it is more than I would have completed at home!

 Michelle and Debby...team RED!

Raimi and Sheri...team PURPLE!

One of the gorgeous sunsets!

The trek back up the HUGE hill! It ended up being my daily exercise while we were there!

Izzie and Lisa

 Our ENCOURAGE squares. We each were given a letter and asked to make it look cute. We all used pattern paper from the same line and in a sense, created our own little 3 by 3 scrapbook pages. We swapped letters and now have our own ENCOURAGE art work. FUN!

It was so hard to narrow this post to just a few photos! I am already looking forward to next year!

GNO - Baking

I had a fun evening getting together with these kind, talented, lovely, amazing ladies!

After learning that cute Brittany loves to bake, Heidi convinced her to teach us how to make cake bites. Oh my heavens!!!! These just weren't any cake bites! These were heavenly, melt in your mouth cake bites. We had a blast baking, laughing, taste testing, sharing stories and spending time with each other. A HUGE thank you to Toni for opening up her kitchen and a HUGE thank you to Heidi and Brittnay for the supplies.

Who's Who?

We had our 1st Relief Society Activity of the New Year.  Heidi, Toni and their committee did a fantastic job. Our Presidency wanted to kick the year off with an activity where we could get to know the sisters better. I had  previously served in the YW's program for the last 3.5 years. In that time, our ward has changed so much, lots of wonderful new families have moved in. My two counselors and secretary are fairly new members of our ward. We wanted a chance to get to know the sisters better and that is just what we did. It was our Who's Who activity. Each Sister was asked to bring 1-2 items that they could share that would help us to get to know them better. When we arrived, we got a name tag, with a cute owl on it. On the bottom corner of the name tag was a number. That number told us what order we would be sharing information about our selves.  After we shared our item(s), Heidi pulled a random question out a bowl that we each had to answer.Some wore their items, some literally  boarded right off of the mountain and came to our activity with their snowboards in tow. Others read a book that they created and wrote, another brought a magazine cover that she and her family were the featured cover story. There were running shoes, books, beautiful photos, and scrapbooks. Again, it was so much fun!  I'll I have to say is "WOW!" What an amazing group of talented women we have in our ward. I left that activity feeling like I knew each one of them better. It was such a great evening!

The Polar Express Ward Party

We enjoyed a very fun Polar Express Party with our ward(boundaries within our church, makes up the congregation))family. When we got there, there were train tracks leading from the front  door to the party area. The children were asked to come in the jammies and were to bring their ticket to get in. The train conductor(our Bishop) was at the door, collecting those tickets).The hall looked cute and festive. They served yummy quiche, fruit and muffins for breakfast. The story, The Polar Express was read. Our Bishop shared a message and there were beautiful musical numbers. At the end of the party, there was an appearance by the jolly man, himself :-).

The Color Run 2012

Who new running through town in a white t-shirt could/would be so much fun??? I signed up to run the 5k Color Run downtown Sacramento with my friend Meredith and Nicole, a new friend.We had so much fun! Even the color in our mouth could not keep us from smiling! There were 15,000 (plus) runners at this event. Considering the mass amount of people, it was very well run! We ran through Old Sac and  up and over the freeway and looped back around through the neighborhoods. Every 1/2 mile or so, we would run through a color station...my new white($5.00 t-shirt from Ross)t-shirt was no longer pristine white. Rather, it looked like a tie dyed rainbow shirt. We ran through orange, yellow, green, blue and pink color stations. It was crazy and beautiful. Once we crossed the finish line, we made out way down to the Color Party. There was a big crowd and a DJ. Every so often they would do a countdown and that is when you would release your color packet(you received one in your race packet). It was crazy and a beautiful sea of colors! Seriously, so much fun! If you ever have a chance to run the The Color Run, DO IT!!! You will smile and giggle the entire time. This is a perfect race for newbies too. You can walk or run it, it was not for TIME...it was for FUN! I sure hope they make it back to Sacramento soon. My entire family wants to do it with me next time. Here are some of the highlights from our Color Run, via photos(some are mine and some are from Mer).

Pre-run photos! Me, Mer and Nicole!

The start of our run. They let us go in waves, too many runners to go all go at once!

The 1st signs of color! YAY! People were releasing their color packs at the start of the run instead of the end! It made for a fun, colorful start!

The 1st signs of color! YAY! People were releasing their color packs at the start of the run instead of the end!

Here are a few of the Color Stations!

Here we are after our Color Run...those white t-shirts and tanks are no longer white :-).

Dance Party at the finish line. Good music, fun friends and lots of COLOR!

I wish you all could have witnessed the stares I got as I drove home. F-U-N-N-Y!

MMMMMMMMM, I wonder why????

Moms Gone Tired 2012

Our annual scrapbook weekend was given an official name/title this year by Denise. Moms Gone Tired. If you know Denise, you know that she is all about the nick names/titles :-). We had 8 of us on the trip this year. We missed Michelle. She is expecting Baby #5 and wasn't feeling up to the weekend. Hopefully she will make it next year with that new baby in tow...Michelle :-)???

It was a gorgeous weekend at Dillon Beach! Here are a few of the highlights.

Our beach house. There was a last minute switch of houses. Denise did a great job picking a new house on the fly. This house had a ton of windows which made fro great lighting.



Scrapbooking. The main reason this specific get away was organized. We haul our tables and chairs and move the furniture when we get there. We had lots of space this year and spent hours creating.
































The view. Absolutely amazing! Debby and I had gone out on a walk an hour before sunset. One of the guys working on the house next door told us to make sure we watched for the Green Flash when the sun set that evening. We quickly did a power walk so we could make it back in time for the Green Flash. We grabbed the other girls and headed out the door. Eve was convinced it was a hoax :-). she thought that same guy was the green Flash and was going to drop his drawers and show us his green underwear -ha! We lined up on the curb and watched to sun set. There was not a Green Flash of any type but the view was amazing.





Gift Exchange. One of our yearly traditions is to bring a little gift for each friend. It can be ANYTHING! Your favorite candy. Lotion. Scrapbooking goodies...whatever! I made a CD of every ones favorite songs and Pretzel Hugs. I used my friend Brandi's/Pinterst idea for my wrapping this year :-).

































Movies and Music. The house that we rented had a projection TV. It was awesome! We watched a ton of movies. We scored the jackpot when we realized that someone had left their Adele LIVE DVD. It was amazing. We watched and sang along as we scrapped.


It wouldn't be a complete beach trip with these girlfriends without a little photo shoot before heading home. I am so thankful for a wonderful circle of friends. We talked about how we all come from different walks of life(families, religion, experiences, etc...) and how fun it is to be together. We have some amazing, heart to heart, and hilarious conversations. I am already looking forward to next year.