The Big Five-O Again!!!

Dad turned 50 about a month after mom did and he decided that since it's his birthday he can wear whatever the heck he wants to to his birthday party. So, here are the lovely photos of him in his kilt...and the rest of the party. : )
Enjoy!

GQ Stance...He looks pretty good for an old guy!

Helping to get the food ready (I was actually in this photo for once)

The party has officially started apparently...

A candle per decade!

Happy Birthday DAD!

Jana & Audrey--So Precious!

The Party People

The Super Cool Party People

Obama made an appearance in his kilt : )

We persuaded dad to do a little pipe performance--especially because he needed to practice his solos for the Highlander Games competition the next weekend.

The best part about dad's performance was watching Collette listen to his music--she loved it!!!

Sweet sporin and kilt belt buckle!

Everyone else "enjoying" dad's music : )

A sweet shot of the kilt. The official Hall tartan and all.

And now you know the answer to the age old question of what a man wears under his kilt...
Under Armour Shorts!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY-O!! LOVE YOU FOREVER!

The Big Five-O!!

Yesterday was mom's 50th birthday and I'm pretty sure we made it a good one. My dad was really sweet and tried very hard to surprise her with a nice gift this year. So, since her spare fridge in the garage had broken a few months ago he decided to surprise her with a new one. That's what she really wanted I think but we did a pretty good job of surprising her. I did all the dirty work so mom would have no idea. I made some phone calls, did some research, and went to the store to buy it. Then, I made my mom some sugar cookies and put wrapping paper and a huge bow on the fridge.

Looks like a huge present huh?

This is when she first came home and saw it in the garage.

She's enjoying one of the cookies I put inside the fridge.

Those are the cookies I made her. Clever, eh?

She's happily showing my dad the cookies and the wrapping paper since he was gone when they delivered the fridge and I got it all prepped. She was excited. It was fun!
That night my husband, Anna, my dad, and a bunch of my mom's friends all drove down to Glenns Ferry for a dinner theater show. There was a delicious steak dinner after which we saw a comedic show called "Let Him Sleep Til it's Time for His Funeral." Yeah, sounded weird but it ended up being all about this guy who was turning 50 and felt so old--the irony!! It was hilarious! All of my mom's friends were wondering if my dad had planned that out so well but we had no idea it was about turning 50. The theater is actually a really old opera theater and the actors are all volunteers so it has a really nice small town, down-home feel. They made us get up and sing "I've Been Workin on the Railroad" if ever the train went by because it was a tradition(if you don't know it's a tiny, tiny town and there is one train track in Glenns Ferry that cuts across the main road so if you're out driving when a train comes you're STUCK!!). I'm assuming it became a tradition because the tracks are right there so the train is so noisy the actors can't continue with the scene anyway. Also, during the preshow after dinner, the actors made sure to sing Happy Birthday to the audience members. So, my mom had to go up to the front and it was pretty funny. Karen ended up in the front also cause they asked for random birthdates throughout the year.

Mom & Karen being serenaded by the actors from the show.

The actor singing to her in this shot was making a big deal about mom and kept joking about taking her home with him. He was probably close to my age but his character in the play was in his 60's so he was making a big deal about "this young lady." Funny Stuff!

I love Karen's face when the main actor singled her out to sing just to her! Hilarious!
It was very fun and the show was very entertaining. I think my mom enjoyed it a lot so we were all happy.

Happy Birthday Mom You'll
Always be Young to Me!

Our Third Anniversary!

We celebrated our third anniversary in Boise with a temple trip, lunch, and a movie at the theaters.The temple was really nice and we were able to ask a woman waiting on a bench outside to take a photo of us outside. I thought that would be so nice since that was the temple we were married in exactly 3 years ago.

The pictures are terrible though!!! I wanted to look so nice because it was our anniversary and so I spent extra time worrying about what to wear and getting depressed because I didn't look good in any of my church clothes, you girls all know what I mean--just those days when things could easily spiral out of control...I'm sure you'll all say I look fine but I think I look like a blimp. Alas, it's the sentimentality of the photo that matters I suppose (although I wish you could see more of the temple in the background).

We went to Mongolian BBQ because it's our favorite food and it was extra delicious. John is always jealous of how many noodles I can squish into my bowl--I'm shameless! We visited with my grandparents while we were waiting for the showtime to roll around. Then, we went to Edwards and watched G.I. Joe. I was mad though because we planned our whole day around going to a more affordable matinee showing and the matinees ended at 4pm--our show was at 4:10!! I was peeved and I think I embarrassed John when I complained to the people at the ticket window. : ) We also ended up finding a couple of Geocaches in downtown Boise.

This is my good looking husband walking through capital park as we looked for a cache.

That's me being cute cause I found the cache all by myself (sorry if I ruined it for you).

This is a really cute photo of us on our 3rd anniversary. So nice!
After wandering around capital park and finding those couple of caches we hurried back to the car and decided we didn't need to do anything else fancy so we went home, watched a movie, enjoyed each other's company, and ate ice cream.

(Okay, so if you don't want to be a part of my cheesiness then you really don't have to read the next little paragraph but I had to put it out there and give him a reason to smile)

Happy Anniversary Honey, I love you so much!
Ever since we were twelve years old I've been glad to have you as a part of my life and have been thrilled to watch the depth of my affection for you grow. You are the twinkle in my eye, the depth of my laughter, the reason for my smile, the strength through my trials, and the best thing in my life. I can't wait for more things to add to my list of reasons you
make me who I am, and an eternity of anniversaries to come.
Always and forever!
143!

Fourth of July Fun

We had an adventurous fourth this year with Kristine. We decided that besides our two family BBQ's we would go geocaching up in the mountains. So we woke up at like 6:30am, got all ready for hiking and such, drove up to the lucky peak area, and found a few caches along the way to the Robie Creek area. It was a lot of fun but mostly ended up being an excuse for Kristine to be able to take her nifty new Jeep on an offroading trip! John kept trying come up with ways to trick her into letting him drive but she wouldn't hear of it! Why she even drove around with her top of for half the trip (okay, nobody panic--that's just me trying to be clever & funny because she took the hard top off of the jeep). When we decided we needed to be done caching and head down to the Groat family BBQ we realized that we didn't really know where we were. We had to stop and ask for directions and then had backtrack to find the right road. It was lucky we had GPS systems though because the main street/road wasn't labeled properly at all. The only way we knew it was the right road (aside from John's GPS map) was the Robie Creek fire station we were told to look for that actually only looked like a little shack and wasn't very clearly labeled. But we eventually found our way down into Boise and drove to Caldwell where we ate and played Rockband with the Groats & the Greens (my sister-in-law's family). That evening we went over to my family house and hung out with friends at the Hall family BBQ. We ate some more, played water balloon volleyball, and then went to my dad's office to watch the fireworks. We also played with a couple fireworks of our own after the parties were over. It was a nice day.

John & Kristine found a few caches on the side of the road on our way up there.

Yay for Geocaching!

It was really pretty outside as you can see.

I rode in the backseat of the GeoCache Mobile! Sweet!

Baby's first caching trip!

John is about to go find another cache...

We never found this one but we sure looked!

We even forged a small creek to see if it was hiding under a bridge.

Sweet waterproof shoes!

I actually look pretty good in this photo...probably cause it's from the shoulders up.

Kristine taking her top off...geocachers gone wild!

Keep on a rockin' me baby!

Waterballoon volleyball craziness... (team one)

John and Eric teamin' up.

(Team two)

John in full storytelling mode.

Judging by Karen's face it looks like I just said something embarrassing (not a first...although my mom is still smiling in the photo so it couldn't have been too bad)

My lovely mother and my lovely Karen!! La la la!

The gang at my dad's office watching the big Mtn. Home fireworks show (and for once that's not sarcasm cause they actually went all out this year!)

A sweet photo I took...ahhh, sweet shutter speed control!

Julie and my mom.

Another sweet photo of the fireworks.

An oh, so lovely photo of me lookin like a fatty...but I am holding a sparkler so I'm happy!

John & Jake lighting fireworks--John decided it was too windy so he was going to light them in the mailbox to avoid the wind
(don't worry I put an end to that thought before it got outta hand)

John lighting the little racecar firecrackers we bought...I love fireworks!

The End!!