It's Been One Month So...

Here's the lowdown on my 21st! Get ready for the wildest party! 

I'll be doing this post in pictures.

Me and My Neighbor to the South Sarah enjoying hot Kool-Aid a couple of days before the party.
Sarah happens to be in my Uncle Max's Ward and my Aunt Kary was her seminary teacher or something like that....
Small World!

The Package! Somehow it got damaged
but those curly ribbons came out so it was just fine that that happened!

I LOVED MY PACKAGE!

My mom got me a cute outfit!

And a party in a box, complete with decorations!

My sweet sister sent me a book (thank you) and a picture from Aubrey.

Balloons for Decor!

Yoga Pants!

Mini Hammer with screw drivers! So fun!

A Spatula!

MY NEW LICENSE! 21 baby!

Stacey's Artsy Photo!
The decor plus the party favors my mom made!
What a sweetie!

As a tradition I always try on my new clothes right away.
My mom did another great job picking out my clothes!

 As a side note my sister is always concerned that she takes too many pictures of her daughter in her p.j.'s. I myself see no problem with people being in their p.j.'s which is why every night when I get home I hop right back into mine! 

The next day it was party time! Here's our party ready house!

Unicorn Chain to add to the wildness! Courtesy of Stacey!

Artsy Photo!

The food. (we're poor.)

The drink: Hot Kool-Aid.

The High Society Photo

The Vampire for Wildness.

Stacey with the Vampire!

Some kissing for our wildness.

The best game! Pin the Heart on the Unicorn.

Amanda and Tess playing the best game!

Sweet Cake Made and Decorated by Tess.

Me -- The Birthday Girl!

Getting Ready to BLOW!

The Winner of The Best Game with her Prize!

The end of the night!  -- A success!

My awesome family, sweet roommates and many friends made this night a wild success! 

Thank you so much friends and family for celebrating my 21 years! :)

All photos -- artsy or not are Stacey's isn't she a great photographer!

I got my new camera and..

I couldn't wait to take pictures of this sweet girl. 

I think she was distressed at being left with me!

Some of my friends needed a ride to Sandy so I decided it would be the ideal weekend to babysit for Dawn and Bryan.  Camilla is such a cute baby, and she gets cuter the older she gets -- she also gets a lot more mobile each time I watch her, so it's quite an adventure.

This go around we played until she go bored with me, which was fine because it was bed time anyway.

So after feeding her a bottle, I went in to change her diaper and get her ready for bed.

I've found that if there is one thing Camilla hates, it's being on her back.  So you can imagine my distress when I tried to get through the layers to her diaper -- then take of her diaper and put a new one on.  It was rather traumatic for me, not her.  I would have her on her back, then go to find unfold the new diaper, and she be flipped over and ready to crawl right off the table. Then I'd flip her back over and have the diaper unfolded and start pulling one of tabs up to lock it in place.  I finally decided to one hand the diaper while I held her head in the crook of my elbow while I jabbered at her.  This seemed to work well and I finally got her diapered and pajamaed! 

Then came the bed time struggle. She's so mobile and talkative that whenever I'd put her down Ty and I could hear her talking and talking - sometime whimpering.  I was determined to be the tough-love aunt and not go in and check on her unless she was crying (although I'll admit, I caved a number of times -- it's so nerve-wracking watching someone's child! )  But surprisingly, it was Uncle Ty who caved more often -- I walked in a couple of times to see Ty and Camilla having so much fun! One time he had her hysterical just by zipping up his jacket -- it was so sweet! 

Ty spending time with Camilla. 

She finally drifted off to sleep with her feet out of the crib.

Eventually Camilla went down to sleep, and Ty and I got down to business of watching Chopped. Which I must say makes me wish I had a television -- the Food Network would definitely be one of my number one channels! Get excited for more fun pictures cause they'll be coming!!! 

21 and Partying Hard!

Current Party:

Birthday Princess!!! (and todd.)

My wonderful, crafty, intelligent sister turns one year older today! She has always been such a wonderful older sister: so sweet and kind and a wonderful example in all things that matter! She is such a dear, and I'm glad that she gets a whole day of celebrating her increasingly LONG life! :) Happy Birthday sweet Toni!  

Recent Party:

Last week I got to plan and run a party for a group of students in a special education class in an elementary school! It was a Valentine's Day party so we tried to do a bunch of Valetine's-y Day things.   It went super well I believe, so I'll fill you in with pictures!

This is my group! So much fun!

Kelsea and I making the goodies!

Of course we played pin the heart on Cupid!

Sweet Caitlin!

The Cupid!

We then played a bunch of games with feathers...
not my favorite.

Then we learned ASL for the song 'The More We Get Together'

I learned so much! 

My favorite game -- the cake-walk!
We tried to liven it up with our dancing!

The dancing was such a hit that we played "Freeze Dance,"
which was a blast!

The kids were so energetic!

And so affectionate!

And so cute!

 The last part of the party was my baby -- the pizza!  I had to find the best price, pay for it with BYU's credit card, and accept the delivery at the school. The pizza guy got lost so we had a minor pizza crisis, which would have been disastrous since the whole morning the kids were asking for the pizza! After I explained where we were, and finally gave it to the kids -- they loved it! The camera's battery died by that time, but when we got our thank you notes from the kids that's what they mentioned, so I believe my part of the party was a success!

Other recent parties in my life:

Not exactly current, but still relevant. 

This sweet girl came up for President's Day weekend, and although I'm not the most exciting person in the world she put up with my boring Provo life-style and I super enjoyed her coming up!

Other future parties in my life:

Steve Young with Todd

My awesome little brother got into BYU and will be joining Steve and I down here at the 'Y!'

Dawn, Ty, and I are beyond excited to have another sibling in Happy Valley. My apologies to the Kelley's and my parents for stealing this stud! 

And just for kicks:

I've never seen her happier. 

Steve Young and his favorite Cannon Center Hostess.

Valentine's Day

My Valentine's Day was complete! I may be single, but I still received a love poem!

Or rather, a poem written by a man!

A little background before you read the masterpiece. My roommate almost burned our house down when she fell asleep cooking potatoes. Our house now smells like a casino and it's been two days. So now I eat, sleep, study, and relax in my bedroom, which is a little less smelly.  But when we leave the house, we smell terribly. The day after the fire we all received many looks/comments on the stench.  So I was still a little self-concious yesterday morning and was whining a bit. Here's what my sweet coworker wrote me:

Rose are red,

Violets are blue,

I wrote this poem,

Just for you.

It seems tragic,

The room all smokey,

The potatoes burned,

Now you smell so very hokey.

But it's ok,

I have smelled much worse,

Although it's close,

To other scents with which I've been immersed. 

It doesn't matter though,

You are kind, cute and polite,

A wonderful woman,

You make work an absolute delight!

So don't worry,

When life isn't how you intend,

Even when you stink,

I'll still be your friend.

Isn't that so funny? I loved it!

Well 'Jell-O' There!

So this year my calling has been FHE-female-group-leader-extrodinaire. 

IT'S BEEN AWESOME!

I get to know my family and delegate like CRAZY! 

So the first activity of the new year, we got new families so we did a 

'get to know you' FHE! The little flyer I made went something like this:

Come to FHE

to say 'Jell-O' and to have a good time

with your brand new family!

We played get-to-know games and everyone enjoyed my Jell-o parfaits. 

I thought it was pretty clever, and I told about a million people of my food pun activity!

But now I'm addicated to Jell-o!
The stuff is awesome. I bought way too many boxes of Jell-o for the activity because I thought that:

a. I would have enough pans to make it all, and

b. more people would be coming to the food-pun event of the semester.

Turns out we don't have very many pans (remember the college budget, college kitchen supplies thing?)

and that not as many people in my new group like FHE.

So I've got boxes left over and they are SO good. I've just polished off a box of lemon Jell-o, which I was planning on eating over pears, but I just could stop eating long enough to get the pears out. :)

So my favorite things for the month of February so far are:

1. Jell-o!

2. Picasa -- such a fun program!

Little explaination:

This is picture to my birthday party! Stacey and I came up with the tag-line: 

Unicorns, Harry Potter, and Edward Cullen. Combine all those and it still won't equal all of the magic packed into this magical birthday party! 

So helped out by using my Picasa skills to make the event photo! (The credit of the big picture of me goes to Stacey McKnight and her fancy camera!) 

Now before you all think I'm a little obnoxious for facilitating my own party, let me explain: my sweet roommates were going to do something anyway, but I know how stressful college roommate birthdays can be so I'm proactively deciding to help them out to avoid them stressing. (although Kelli's Day might be a tinsy bit obnoxious.)

3. HAIRCUTS

And the roommates who cut my hair. 

Thanks for another hair adventure Stace!

4. NAIL PAINTING PARTIES!

Thanks sweet, sweet, sweet roommates for the good times!

5. GETTING A BRAND NEW CAMERA.

Hopefully by the end of February we'll all be enjoying the crisp clean photos 

of some Canon Powershot that will be mine-all-mine shortly, 

instead of these tacky Photo Booth things!