whoa...

so... i got a memory card for my phone years ago and apparently i have never emptied it. as of this exact moment in time i have a whopping 942 pictures on my phone. perhaps i should have waited till i got to an even thousand before i did this, but whatevs. here are my favorite pictures from over the years...

kentucky rain...

our good friend zac got called on a mission to kentucky. mom nominated "kentucky rain" by elvis as his theme song. haha... probably because it was the only song we could remember that had the word "kentucky" in it. hahaha...

anyway. he was set apart on monday night... and we were lucky enough to be invited. he reported to the mtc in provo on wednesday. and now we won't be seeing him for the next couple years. it will be such an amazing experience for him, but i have to admit... i'm already missing him. good luck, elder zac!

dive, dive, dive....

if you recall... last year we redid our pool. 

it went from that....

to this...

we are still ooh-ing & ahh-ing :)

well... the only down side to our redo was that we lost our diving board. it was kinda broken anyway and we had plans on replacing it, but that didn't happen... until this last weekend.

our year without a diving board has finally come to an end. and we couldn't be happier.

austin got the privilege of breaking it in...

zac might have gotten a jump in there too...

yay for summer!

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also... my friend danielle made the martha stewart 1234 cake recently and we decided to give it a go too. we actually made it last weekend. it didn't turn out well at all. so... we did it again this weekend and instead of making a cake from scratch we just used a boxed cake mix... it turned out much better. it was delicious.

artsy shtuff...

alrighty.... so once upon a time i had a birthday. and for said birthday zac gave me a cd of pictures... fantastic pictures of mums.... i had told him about this picture i had seen at kohl's months ago and i guess he remembered... and this is the end result...

fantastic right? right.

thanks, zac! you're the best! :)

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okay. so... kelsey moved back to byu. her giant room was empty. i'm pretty sure my room was shrinking. so i switched. [i did ok it with kels first, just so we're clear. its not like i stole her room or anything. haha...] anyway... i switched out her comforter for mine & this and that, and i decided that a painting was needed above the bed... so a painting is what i did. tada!

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so after i switched, the little room looked so very sad and lonely. i put the old comforter back up and cleaned it all up. and i had taken down a lot of my pictures & paintings and so i had a big empty wall... it needed a painting too... so a painting is what i did. tada!

it's our family tree... haha... get it? lol... i love it :)

my hero...

i have a new hero today. his name is zac baker. 

so let me tell you a quick story about how this hero of mine became heroic.

once upon a time, my dad & little brother went to rincon rendezvous [a week-long scout camp out]. well, my dad, as everyone is well aware, absolutely hates packrats. like... h.a.t.e.s them. hardcore. every now & then he'll even cuss at them... it's pretty funny actually. so my dad left a few rat traps around the house and his shop and stuff [some are live, some are not]... and he left a lot of rat poison out too. my mom came home from a trip to see a good friend of ours in casa grande and walked in with a ten dollar bill in her hand... she asked me & kels if we wanted ten bucks... kelsey said, "i'm not killing any more animals" [click here if you don't know what i'm talking about... hehe...] and mom said, "don't worry... you don't have to kill anything, it's already dead." at that moment we understood what had happened... a packrat had been caught and needed extracting. i wasn't about to "extract" anything... i told her i'd bury it [trap & all]... she didn't think the dad would go for that idea. and then we thought that maybe we could throw it away [trap & all], but our trash doesn't come till fridays now... so that was a definite no-go. instead we brainstormed about who we could call to get this thing out... our only option was zac. and thank goodness he was home... he came right over and disposed of this nasty dead animal.

bless his heart.

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caution: due to the graphic nature of this pictures, viewer discretion is advised [rachel].

birthday cupcakes...

yesterday was our friend zac's birthday. we had fhe to go to last night [we played mud games], so kelsey & i made him [and everybody else] the best & cutest cupcakes in the whole world! we found this idea online and we showed mom and she said "yeah... my mom did that 40 years ago." and we said, "yeah... too bad our mom never did that for us..." haha... anyway. they are cupcakes baked into ice cream cones... we just thought it was the cutest idea ever. so we made them. and we tried a new icing recipe, too. i wanted it to look like whipped cream on top... and i bought a huge new icing tip and i think we accomplished our goal... too cute right?

happy birthday, zac! :)

hodgepodge of happiness...

ive forgotten to blog a few things... so this is a little ketchup blog. 

be prepared. its gonna be awesome.

:)

so... last night we [a group of 40 of us] went to the gaslight theater. grandpa keith leaves on tuesday... so this was our last hoorah. it was a great time! we love the gaslight more and more every time we go... and this most recent trip was no exception! :)  we couldnt have asked for a better night! we sure are going to miss grandpa when he goes back to washington for the summer...

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also... i forgot to blog about the fair. i haven't been able to go to the fair in YEARS! i've always been busy with school... so this year was especially fun! apparently im not a big ride rider... but i still had fun! we even got to see the freak show at the fair... complete with a 6-legged steer, a 2-headed baby named rob & rob, and the bones of a dwarf that terrorized the southwest back in the day [he even looked up ladies' skirts!] hahah.... good times.

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also... here is my one picture of me & nicole from country thunder. ps... for all of you out there who dont know what that is... country thunder is the largest country music festival in the southwest. its four solid days of amazing country artists. we camped out and had a blast! we saw keith urban [nicole's favorite], willie nelson, jason aldean, and my favorite of the weekend... luke bryan. oh freaking baby. it really was a fantastic week! 

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and the most exciting news of all!! okay, maybe its not the most exciting... but i sure love it! i have a few little tiny baby summer squash starting to grow! woot woot!

the end. 

:)

iron man...

last night was the midnight showing of iron man 2... and man oh man was it a fun time. i really liked it... i thought they did a good job. we got there an hour early, but we still had to sit in the very first row. it was an xd movie... so the screen was bigger, and the chairs were farther back. it was kind of a cool perspective... a bit overwhelming at times, but still a super fun night! ooh! and we all got iron man shirts. heck yes! :)

kelsey, me ... mike & nicole zac ... austin, zac

$ a very exciting day!

today was a extraordinarily fun filled day! 

it started rather early with a bobcat in our backyard... no, not the animal... it was the machinery bobcat thingy. and can i just tell you how impressive it was? wow. amazing. anyway. brother weigal came and moved some dirt around so we can put in a retaining wall and start making our backyard look prettier! we've got some good ideas for it, i think! and hopefully we can get the retaining wall done in the next couple of weeks so that i can plant my zucchinis and stuff! yay!! :)

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and i went on a date today... with my good friend zac [and nicole and her date]. we went to the reid park zoo here in town [and it was an absolutely perfect day weather-wise] and then after we went back to zac's house to play games. it was a super fun little date! thanks to zac for a great time! ooh... we also got free taco's from jack in the box because the ua won their basketball game against usc [86-85... 2ot] woot woot! go cats! haha...

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also... its spring time in the good ol arizona [mom brought home daffodils!]  

 

 

:)

more painting fun

i did a painting for kelsey for christmas.... its of elvis. saying "she's quite the fan" is an understatement... she loves him. i did feel kinda bad... she had to take it as a carry-on today [she's back at byu as of this morning... and we miss her], but she says it is worth it. we tried to find a really cool poster for a long time, but to no avail. instead i just did a painting! haha...

wow... he is beautiful....

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a long time ago, zac came to me with a picture that he wanted painted. he bought his canvas [and got me one too! :)] and i painted it for him... i think it turned out pretty fantastic. and he loves it! so life is good!

{my first commissioned painting}

so im not really getting paid in cash for it, but i get a free canvas.... and i get more practice painting.

anyway. i promised my dear friend zac that i would paint something for him... he just had to choose the picture. he is a great photographer and this was one of his pictures. i played around with the contrast and this is what i ended up painting...

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