A week in Colorado...

Rob and I just got home from a much needed retreat to Colorado with my family. It was great to escape to the cooler weather and just enjoy some down time playing lots of cards, hiking, and watching movies every night. I took a ton of pictures (probably not surprising to anyone) so instead of writing a ton about the trip I thought I would just share some of the pictures. You'll notice that a very important family member is missing...Elizabeth couldn't make the trip for a variety of reasons...the main one being her desire to someday get a job. :) Which I get...but I still missed her.

Since she wasn't there, we took our traditional "missing child" picture. It is weird taking pics without all four of us!

Since I took so many pictures, I decided to collage all of them so I could fit more into the post. Without further ado....

Savannah led a "Bear Safety" course for us the first night. Joe was the bear. :) We actually did see a bear the very next day....luckily for us....it was from the safety of our car. :)

Bets- see the cute puppy in the corner? It reminded us of a much calmer version of Boo! And she liked to sit between the slats of railing like a chair. ADORABLE. Her name was Dina Lou and mom asked her owner if she could buy her. They said no. Obviously.

Our hike the first day.

We spent lots of time lounging around the house playing cards....and Dad got to take some naps. :) 

Our hike the next day...us girls were missing Betsy!

Joe and Savannah are pretty hysterical together.

Garden of the Gods!

We went horse back riding one day. It was beautiful! We crossed multiple creeks and even saw an old rusty abandoned ski lift in the mountains. The funniest part was probably the personalities of everyone's horses. Rob's horse was named Tinker and was like a barrel on tooth picks. Ted's horse kept biting Anna's horse throughout the whole trip. And my horse was really small. Like a lot smaller than the others. I was basically riding a glorified pony. If you look at the group pic below you can really tell when you see how much lower I am then everyone else. Don't let his size fool you...Apache was a sassy son of a gun!

Mom and Dad Dower are pretty photogenic together. :)

Robby purchased a floppy hat to wear to baseball practices because his ears always get so burnt. I think it looks absolutely wonderful on him! Makes me smile everytime I see it! :)

Just some of the planking pictures....apparently planking is all the rage. Just ask my brothers.

Ted and Anna....so glad she was able to join us for a few days!

Cuchara was beautiful and the perfect retreat from the summer heat! 

Last wedding shower of the summer!

This past weekend we went to our final wedding shower of the summer! Which is really exciting, because that means the weddings are going to start happening soon! Between our first wedding (August 13th...in Florida!) and our last wedding (October 1st...outside Chicago!) we have three others to go to....that is five weddings total in a very short time span! However, I love a good wedding, so we are excited about them all! Three of them are for Robby's good friends growing up, and two are for friends of mine. All summer long his parents and their friends have been throwing couples showers....and let me tell you...these people have this down to a science! They know how to throw a fantastic party....and always come up with a theme that you can see all over the house!

One of the neat things they do is "create an entrance." The shower this weekend was held at Robby's parents house and the theme was "tailgating." You walked in and they had a tailgating awning set up with a specially made decal that said "When Kansas meets Oklahoma" since the groom is from Kansas and the bride is from Oklahoma. They are both big sports fans so the tailgating package was perfect for them!

You can't really tell....but there is a little grill back there...right before the party started they filled the grill with dry ice so it looked like it was smoking....see...they think of everything!

When you got inside they had decorations all over, but one of the things I thought was really neat was the centerpiece for the "burger bar" table. They had hamburgers and hotdogs and every possible topping you could want to go on them! It was delicious! For the centerpiece they bought a mini Weber Grill and put a flower arrangement in it! I thought it turned out awesome!

For the group gift they had set up a bit of a "scavenger hunt." They placed a variety of gifts around the house and then put sunflowers next to them. Anywhere you saw sunflowers, it was part of their gift. They got some great things like that little grill with the flower arrangement, the awnings, some martini glasses, a panini maker, a chaise lounge and more. In the picture below Ann is explaining the "scavenger hunt" of gifts and what to look for!

Here are a couple more pics from the evening. It was fun to see some of these guys get together, lots of whom have been in school together since pre-kindergarten! We had a great time playing some backyard golf and jumping on the trampoline. As you can see, Robby and I won the backyard golf game. All that practicing in Ty's backyard in high school really paid off! :)

Baby Olivia....she was the happiest baby ever! But of course the one picture I took of her, she isn't smiling. Still think it's pretty cute though...Robby looks good holding a baby! :)

Earlier this week I was able to go hang out with Robby at the Hesston field while he was hosting some games. I quickly learned how to play the music in between innings (and fade out at JUST the right time...apparently that is crucial to the atmosphere :)) and how to run the score board (with a few errors..but nobody seemed to notice :)). I couldn't help but sit there and not only enjoy that time with my cute husband...but also just soak up the surroundings. The field is right next a big wheat field and later that night with the sun going down and the field lights on....it was just amazing. I just couldn't help but think we are exactly where we are supposed to be...I think we are really going to love it here. :)



Now off to Colorado for a week! Can't wait to get out of this heat and soak up that cooler mountain air!

Catch up....

Long time, no blog. On top of my pictures not wanting to download, I have been thoroughly enjoying my summer by hanging out poolside, going to dinner with our families, getting pedicures (yes, multiple....it has been wonderful!), running bright and early with Rob, and still just settling in.

First up, Fourth of July. We had a wonderful 4th, with my folks and grandparents coming over for appetizers and dinner that night, then Rob and I headed over to our neighbors for their shin-dig. Robby couldn't get over how many fireworks were going off. Having spent a lot of his 4th of July holidays either in Colorado (I guess they don't let you shoot them off there very much...too dry) or traveling for baseball, he has just never seen the way people just shoot them off for hours in the streets. Needless to say, it was fun to watch him just amazed at all of these little kids running around with punks and giggling at the popping sounds made by shooting off lots of bottle rockets. It was also fun to spend some more time with our new neighbors and get to know them a little better. I snapped a few pictures, but was trying to be careful not to take too many. Didn't want to be the creepy new neighbor taking pictures of a bunch of kids she barely knows. :)

This cracked me up. The kiddo had some of those poppers that you can just throw on the ground. Well, the dog must have thought they were treats or something, because he was going crazy over them! He kept trying to snatch them out of the boys hand and then would eat the ones after they popped on the ground. So funny!

The kids spent the day outside making t-shirts and running through the sprinklers (had to make sure the lawns were good and moist before the fireworks extravaganza!). They had a baby pool and one little kid was swimming around in all of his clothes, and when they tried to change him in to dry clothes he was so upset about taking his shirt off they just let him keep it on. He was so cute running around in his sopping wet, way too big, self-decorated 4th of July t-shirt.

 I love the Chinese lanterns...although I quickly realized that instead of admiring the beauty of them as they float off into the sky, the kids simply use them for target practice! They set one free into the sky then instantly start shooting roman candles at it to see if they can hit it. Hey...whatever works!

Some of the little boys in their home made t-shirts.

Now, on to the bathroom update. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the color pink. It has always been one of my favorites....however, I don't like it so much on the walls of my basement bathroom. I have dreams of eventually painting all of the rooms...you know....really putting our own "touch" on things. However, after painting just this one tiny bathroom, I am perfectly ok taking our time doing that. Painting is hard, and exhausting, and this was only one tiny room and my friend Molly did most of the hard stuff! :) I am so so so so blessed to have some awesome friends and Molls is definitely up there at the top. She drove down from Kansas City, on one of her last days off before she started her new job (woo-hoooo!) and just wanted to help me with whatever I needed help with. She is that kind of wonderful. We met in up in Wichita (easier drive for her), I showed her my classroom...then we headed off to grab some lunch, stopped by an estate sale (I'm obsessed with them now), went off to visit my grandma, headed back to Newton, bought some paint, went to McPherson to eat dinner with my momma and her friend Jean (who also happen's to be Molly's boyfriend's mother:)), went to Joe Henry's basketball game, then came home and painted until the wee hours of the night. See what I mean...great friend. :)

Here are the "before" pictures of our very pink bathroom. There is a matching bedroom to this bathroom...but we will tackle that some other day. :)



See...really pink. We ended up painting a light green. We wanted a color that would go well with our brown shower curtain that we already had and something that wouldn't make the room seem to small since it has no windows and is the basement. I think it turned out great! :)

Molls hard at work!



We have some plans for the mirror and the brass fixtures...but for now I'm just happy the pink is gone! :)

Real quick I wanted to share a super easy and quick recipe! Robby and I took dinner over to some friends in Newton who just had a baby and since it has been so hot I wanted a dessert that was cool. I decided to make a fruit pizza but for the life of me couldn't get the cookie dough to spread out easily. I so I decided to borrow from an idea I had seen on pinterest.com. The picture I had seen was chocolate cookie dough used to make "bowls" for ice cream by using cupcake pans. I decided to use a mini cupcake pan because I was worried about the sugar cookie center being too soft to hold the mixture. I ended up coming up with fruit pizza cups! Or Sugar cookie fruit cups...or sugar fruit cups. I don't know what I'm going to call them yet, but they were easy and delicious and pretty! Makes them a winner in my book!

All you need is:

1 (8 oz) brick of cream cheese

Half a regular sized tub of cool whip...I ended up adding a little more later so maybe 5/8 a tub? :)

Sugar Cookie dough

Roll the dough into small 1-2 inch balls then place in the mini cupcake pan. Bake for 12-15 minutes (or whatever the package says).

While they are cooking, whip together the cream cheese and cool whip.

Once you take the cookie cups out of the oven, use your fingers (or I suppose you could use a spoon...I didn't) and indent the cups just a bit to hold the fruit pizza mixture.

Add the mixture, let them cool, then remove them from the tin and garnish with fruits!

See, easy and delicious! Here are some pictures!

That's all the catching up I've got for now! Happy Tuesday, everyone! :)

I love my brothers...

When I was trying to come up with a name for this blog, I originally wanted it to be "I love" with a url of ilove.blogspot.com. Of course, as with a lot of my other blog name ideas, it was already taken. The fact is...I love a lot. If you go back through my posts I'm sure you will see a couple titled I love this or I love that. I love people, I love foods, I love places, I love things....I start out a lot of my statements with 'I love.' The good Lord has surrounded me with a lot of love and in return, I have a lot of love to give back. However, even though I love a lot of things...there are few things I love more than my baby brothers. Actually...nothing I love more...although I don't love them exclusively the most...well, maybe somedays, haha, but most times they are "tied" with the rest of my fam. Of course there are times they drive me crazy, and I gripe at them or yell at them, or sometimes if I'm really angry I give them a little shove to "get away"...which now just causes them to laugh at me considering they are both a foot taller than I am and don't even budge. I like to think I still made my point though. So minus those few times they are living up to their roles as younger brothers and driving me insane...I really love them. :) They are truly some of my best friends and there are few people in this world that make me laugh as much as them (Bets being one of those few others). It is just known in the family that I didn't get as many height genes nor could I be a stand up comedian...but that's ok because I'm content with always having to look up at my siblings and am always so busy laughing at their conversations that I wouldn't have time to crack (intentional) jokes even if I wanted to.

Yesterday I drove over to Hutch to hang out with the boys at the pool...of course as soon as we got there it started raining. My dad had just gotten done golfing so we ended up sitting around with him and his golf group waiting out the rain. In the mean time, everybody else left the pool so we had it all to ourselves once the storm had passed. Per usual the brothers were cracking me up with their funny robot voices and silly contests. In case you didn't know...they talk in robot voices to each other. A lot. I didn't realize this until last year when we were driving to my cousin Emily's graduation from TCU we were all just in the car talking and Ted answered a question from Joe in a robot voice. It threw me off and so I laughed and asked what that was all about. Ted was real quiet for a few seconds then he said, "Sometimes....when Joe and I are driving....and it is just us....we have full conversations in robot voices." long pause....."I wish I was joking." I started cracking up then Ted and Joe just went from there....for an HOUR in the car they had a full conversation in their "brobot" voices, slipping in robotic inuendos and referencing how "Papabot's battery was dead" because my dad was sleeping or how Ted was unplugged for a week  because my parents grounded him. My mom broke into the conversation in her own robot voice and said she wanted a toasted bagel...which was random and hysterical in and of itself, but then Joe took that as an opportunity to tell my Mom he broke the toaster. He said (in robot voice), "I got the toaster out of the cabinet but it turns out robot hands are slippery...I dropped it and it broke....I was so sad....the toaster was one of my best friends." And we were all laughing really hard thinking he is just kidding around...then Joe goes (still in robot voice), "Mom, I'm serious, I broke the toaster....oops." Of course my mom couldn't get mad at him because we were all laughing so hard....well-timed, Joe Henry! Anyways...I could go on and on about that story (and many others) but instead I'm just going to share some of the pictures from yesterday. :)

Tedder showing off his lifesaving skills...

Du-nuh.....du-nuh.....Shark Joe Henry.

The brobots

Brobot malfunction!

Joe's girlfriend, Savannah, was the lifeguard on duty...she just rolled her eyes at Joe Henry's "help me, I'm drowning" cries. I would have, too. :)

What goofballs.

Joe Henry shark attacking Tedder...I love all these pictures of them just goofing around together.

I loved watching them play together when they were younger...and it is just as cute at ages 16 and 19. I love that they want to hang out together!

I think this picture really sums up their individual personalities. :)

In this next little series, Joe Henry got thrown off balance when he jumped...I only wish these pictures had sound!

Their dolphin picture. Joe was all about being a shark, or a water spider, or a dolphin. Here him and Ted decided to be a "herd" of dolphins. They were suprisingly in sync!

And I'll finish it with a pic in perfect form!

Off to prepare for a little 4th of July BBQ! Happy Independence Day everyone! :)