Memorial Day

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I know we had a good time with Nate off work and spending time with family. We spent Sunday afternoon at my mom's house having lunch and watching a movie. Monday we had a picnic with Nate's family and played in the park. I made baked beans for the first time for the picnic. Nate loves baked beans so it was high time I learned to make them! He was really pleased with the result, so that was good. I think the little kids had the most fun with the playground and Grandma Smith's parachute. It was a good kick off to summer. I can't believe summer is here!

Little Lacey with cute Aunt Amelia.

Steph and Jake.

The older boys playing frisbee.

I wish Nate wasn't cut off in this picture, I'm so bummed it doesn't show him catching the frisbee.

Grandma Smith helping to teach Keith how to bat.

Parachute time!

Mother's Day and Snow Cones

We were able to go and visit both our moms for Mother's Day. We have early church and so does my mom so we went up right after our block and made lunch for my mom. Don't worry, we totally forgot her present at the house, I felt so dumb. Of course she didn't mind and was just happy to have us there. After being at my mom's for a few hours we headed back to Utah county and went to Nate's parents' house. We remembered our gift this time! Since it was Mother's Day, Nate's brother Aaron got to call from his mission. We all got to skype and see Aaron and he is doing really well. I had intentions of taking more pictures. I made Nate take a pic of me and my mom and I wanted to get one of him and his mom too, but I totally failed.

For FHE last night we got our first snow cones of the year. Yum! It's our favorite summertime treat. Speaking of summer, it's just over a month 'til our first camping trip. Nate is getting so excited. We buy one new accessory for camping each year. This year we bought a camp chef portable stove. Costco had a deal on one with three burners and that came with an additional dutch oven. We could definitely use another dutch oven since some of Nate's family is coming with us this first trip. We've got the menu all planned for our trip and we can't wait to use our camp chef!

Nate's snow cone, sour blue raspberry, our favorite.

Here's a picture we found online of our new camp chef.

Grandpa Olson

My sweet grandpa passed away Monday afternoon. He had been sick for a while and we knew he didn't have much longer here on earth. My grandma and all three of their kids were by his side when he passed. I have so many fond memories of my grandpa. He was such a nice man. I know he will be greatly missed. Love you Grandpa!

Senior Pictures

I can't believe we are halfway through April already! Are you taxes done? Our refund is disappointing this year, but at least we're getting some money back. We've just been busy with day to day life. Nothing too exciting going on with us. We're still working on our adoption paperwork and classes. That is going well. We're just waiting for a duplicate birth certificate to come in for me from California. Hopefully it comes quickly. Last weekend I took some senior pictures for Nate's cute cousin Becca. I was so nervous! I always get anxiety taking pictures for people, I just want them to turn out well! Here are some of my favorites.

Date Night

We usually have date night on Saturdays but since General Conference is this weekend we bumped it up a day. We had Mexican food for dinner and on our way in to the restaurant we ran into Nate's cute Aunt Lori and Uncle John. So fun! We took some iPhone pics during dinner and discussed some serious life topics. There is a lot on our minds right now. So if you're the praying type, pray that we make good and right decisions during the next little bit. I love going on date night with Nate, we always have a good time. It's probably the good company. :) After dinner we hit up Walmart and that was a disaster and a half. Talk about lines! They seriously only had four check stands open and of course it was packed on the night before General Conference. We were there forever and we weren't even able to get everything on our list. Next we hit up Macey's for the last few items on our list and talk about a night and day difference. We walked right up to an open check stand and we were on our way in no time. I thought they would be swamped with people too, but it wasn't bad at all. Crazy. Anyway, that was our date night, pretty uneventful, but we still had a good time.

Moving and Meetings

Oh goodness, Nate should have been a mover! He's helped four people in the past two months move. Everyone is moving! We moved my brother Josh on Saturday and it wasn't too bad, he doesn't have too much stuff. We were able to take it all in just one trip between two trucks and a car. The four of us (Nate, me, my mom and Josh) were able to load up all his stuff in just over an hour. Did I mention he hadn't packed a thing? That's right, nothing! Oh well, we made it work. After moving and unloading Josh was nice and bought us all lunch. He was very appreciative for our help.

Later Saturday evening I went to the General Women's Meeting. I was invited to go with Katie, Steph, and Amelia, but I wasn't sure what time we'd be done with moving and they were going to dinner early before the meeting. It was a good meeting, the common theme seemed to be about covenants. Making and keeping covenants. I went early to get a soft seat and my cute visiting teacher ended up sitting next to me so I was happy to sit with someone I knew. All in all a really good meeting. We're looking forward to General Conference this coming weekend.

While I was at the women's meeting, Nate played racquetball with his dad. We ended up getting home at the exact same time and then since it was still light we went over to the in-laws' so Nate could shoot his bow. After that we went to the store and finally, after all was said and done we had dinner about 10 pm. A busy day, but a really good day.

My cute mom. Notice her truck twin in the background.

Even the cab of our truck was filled to the brim!

Our Weekend

We had a good weekend. Friday night was date night. We had date night in this week. We got some pizza and watched tv. It felt nice to just relax and not have to go anywhere. We had intentions to watch Frozen finally, but didn't get around to it. Everyone says it's such a great movie, but we still have yet to see it. Saturday morning Nate went hiking with his friend in the morning and that evening we had dinner and game night with the Robbins. Since both Nate and Mike love General Tao's chicken we made that for dinner and then of course we played hand and foot for game night. Sunday after church we headed up to my mom's house. It's nice that we both have the 9-12 noon block for days like this when we surprise my mom and come over. We had a late lunch and talked and Nate had a little nap on the couch. All in all a typical weekend for us, a good weekend though.

Blogging How-To

So today I had a realization. People could be pinning things from my personal blog onto Pinterest. Scary! So I'm normal, I use Pinterest and think it's pretty great. However I don't see any reason that people would need to pin things from my personal blog. So I did a little research on how to block my photos from being pinned and thought I'd share it with you. I had previously blocked the ability for people to click and save photos from my blog but I needed to block the ability to pin. I just don't want my personal images shared. I found a great tutorial that is so simple too. It teaches you how to block individual photos and how to do a blanket blockage where no images can be pinned. I chose the second option. Here is the link: http://practicallyfunctional.com/how-to-prevent-your-photos-from-being-pinned-on-pinterest/ Hope this helps!

Catch Up

So we've been busy lately! This week for example we've had at least one thing every single night! Tonight we babysat Jack and Henry and had a blast like usual. I can't believe how active Henry is getting, he'll be crawling in no time. Nate built Jack a fort and Jack thought it was pretty darn cool. His favorite part was jumping from the ottoman onto the tent into Nate's waiting arms and then asking Nate to rebuild the fort. Silly kid. I hope he always thinks we're as cool as he does now.


Earlier in the week we met with our adoption case worker and got a big ol' stack of paperwork to work on. We've made a big dent in it since Wednesday and on our online portion too. We're so happy to be moving forward and to be making actual progress one sheet of paper at a time. Thursday night we had another adoption class and this class was titled "What to Expect When You're Adopting." Another class we're happy we attended. It was a basic question and answer forum with two couples who had adopted before with LDS Family Services. I always get a lot out of our classes.

Nate's been busy with his scouts calling. Though they didn't have any boys show up to scouts this week. He's also been busy with target practice (shooting his bow). He practices almost every day after work. Nate's going to the sportsman's expo tomorrow to attend an elk hunting class. He's really looking forward to it.

I'm going to Idaho tomorrow with my mom and aunt to visit my grandparents. They go every weekend and I try to go with them once a month. It's always good to see my grandparents and we get a lot of work done for them while we're there.

Nate and I are planning on Mexican food for date night tomorrow. It's Nate's turn to choose and I can count on him almost always choosing Mexican food. It'll be a good date no matter what we do.

I think that catches us up for the last week or so. We've got another busy week ahead of us and it'll be summer before we know it!

Cooking Class

Last night Nate and I went to an Asian cooking class at Thanksgiving Point. Our class was on wonton soup, lettuce wraps, chow mein, and General Tao's chicken. Neither Nate nor I had ever had wonton soup before and we both really liked it. General Tao's chicken is the Chinese dish Nate likes most, but last night's version was not his favorite. That's okay, we still had an enjoyable time and we learned a lot. I definitely recommend the classes. They are offered at Thanksgiving Point and the teacher is Jennifer Mangleson, she is so smart when it comes to Asian food, you will definitely learn tons and the best part is the tasting.

We had good intentions of taking pictures but only got a shot of the chicken.