"A real friend tells you, 'Go ahead and eat all of the cookies before they cool down.'"

Once again I seem to have slacked off in my blogging….so here’s what we’ve been up to since the beginning of the month! First off the excessive heat toned down a bit and it’s been pretty stormy and rainy lately…like CRAZY stormy, only at night, but vicious winds (there are SO many trees that have been ripped apart and some corn fields are flat in spots and it’s just crazy) and the lightning is ridiculous! I love me a good lightning storm but this stuff is kinda scary!!! So the slight cool down in temp has been nice.

A couple days after Mark left I went over to St. Louis with my Dad and some other people from our ward for a little temple trip while Evelyn stayed with Grammy so it was a nice peaceful getaway. The St. Louis temple is gorgeous, which they all are of course, but this one is pretty cool. I didn’t get any pics cuz it was raining :(

The next week was slow but fun. I got to go to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City with Sarah, Robin, and Robin’s husband/Sarah’s brother Aaron. :) He was home for his leave (he’s deployed to Afghanistan and was back for two weeks). It was SUPER fun and slightly overtiring! We decided we are getting a bit old for back to back roller coasters. We rode a lot though and I loved it! It was also a bonus to spend a whole day with my bestie. We go through such LONG dry spells of seeing each other…like MONTHS and MONTHS…I think the longest was 18-24 months long but I can’t remember now. So now that we are in the same place at the same time we are spending as much time as we can!

We didn’t want to buy pics from the rides but we snatched a few from our phones. :)

Another big outing we did last week was go to the state fair! Woo-hoo! :) It was the first day so it was $2 day so we walked around, went to the petting zoo, ate corn dogs, funnel cakes and kettle korn and enjoyed some nice weather! The kids had fun and Evelyn downed a corn dog all by herself. I was pretty proud of my lil’ girl. :) She didn’t quite like the petting zoo though, wouldn’t touch the animals at all, even though she loves them from a far. :)

I thought this was SO funny!

Let’s see…I haven’t been up to too many sewing projects lately, I’ve gotten a few orders for shoes on etsy, which is nice. I’ve been filling most of my creative time with my photography. I took pictures for Sarah’s brother Asa and his family and then a few days ago I did her brother Aaron and his family (I’ve actually known his wife, Robin, since second grade). They were both really fun shoots and I’ve been learning a lot about my camera and settings and such so this is really good experience. Asa and his wife, Aubree, did their pics at a campus nearby on the lawn of the president’s house, which was really pretty, and they turned out really great! Their pics are here on my blog. Robin and Aaron’s pics were pretty awesome. We did it at their family farm and it was just amazing! I put their pics up here on my blog. It was pretty cool doing it there too cuz I’ve been there SO many times in my life, some great memories. :)

I spent quite a bit of time with the McMains this weekend. Since Aaron was here they celebrated his and his son’s birthday (it’s at the end of the month) so I went over for that. It was pretty awesome/fun. They had water balloons and totally bombarded Sarah cuz she kept getting everybody’s kids. It was pretty great. I love her but it was still pretty funny seeing her get tackled to the ground and tortured with water balloons by everyone. This first pic is sarah's favorite pic in the world right now :)

Evelyn had never done a pinata before so she watched all the other kids rush up to get the candy and she was like...hmmm. so she slowly walked over and got a piece of candy and brought it back to me and I was like, go get some more! And she was like, ok! Now I know what to do! So she came back with this handful and was so happy with herself :) So cute!

The McMains grandkids, plus one! Evelyn plopped down in the pic too :)

The next day we all went to the lake and spent the day there. Evelyn loved playing in the water and I could barely keep her out of the water. She had this life jacket on and when she would fall over it would roll her on her back and she’d be floating there trying to get up…so funny! :) I got her upright real quick, don’t worry. Sarah’s bro-in-law had a boat and then Aaron’s friend had a jet ski so I went out for a bit which was so fun! Sarah and I rode the tube together which was crazy and fun! She totally landed on me the second run when we fell off so I called it quits then. :) Then we watched the guys make total fools of themselves as they tried to stay on. It was great. So it was a pretty fun filled weekend with the McMains!

And that’s the major stuff that’s happened! In between all that I’ve done some antiquing with Momma, shopping with Carmen, hanging out with Emily, and trying to keep Evelyn busy! This next week is semi-calm and then next week Annie comes to visit and then we are all going to Arkansas for my grandpa’s wedding! So that will be exciting! Then after that Evelyn and I are off on a little road trip to Alabama and Mississippi! I’m pretty excited for that! It’ll be nice to get away and help pass by time a bit quicker.

So yeah! That’s pretty much all for now. I’ll have more exciting things in the next few weeks but it might be awhile ‘til I get them up. ‘Til then!

Evelyn had been SO funny lately in the car! she keeps falling asleep while she's eating food...like mid bite sometimes. Silly girl....