Edward Cullen is Mormon

I lowered my standards. I know some of you will be very disappointed in me. Mitchell had some negative peer pressure, thanks to me. We watched Twilight. I am 41% embarrassed. I tried reading the books, I reached page 30 and had to quit. I just couldn't handle it. I thought I would give it another try, so we picked up a free redbox rental the other night....let's just say it wasn't thee worst movie we have watched.

We decided to do our own little spoof. Hope you enjoy.

** If you want to see the original clip, click here. **



And for your viewing pleasure.....our playful parody.....

More Chins than a Chinese phonebook

Congrats to my parents who celebrated 28 big ones this past weekend. So to celebrate, what do they do? They invite us to go out to eat. We won't complain.

Obviously still in the honeymoon phase... giddy and infatuated with one another

When we get together ... it can be pretty unpredictable .... let's have a "see who can have the most chins" contest. Chin contest tip: you must contort your mouth in ways you never thought possible in order too achieve maximum chinage.

side chins count as 2

Oh shoot.... my mom is gonna kill me for this one.
I will attest ... my mother doesn't look even remotely close to this in real life.



I think my dad gets tired of our shenanigans.

Fillmore Pow Wow

Free food + the possibility of hanging out with the Church family = us spending part of our Saturday at the Fillmore family picnic down in Orem. I love that I now have a total of 17 nieces and nephews ... 16 on Mitchell's side of the family ... 1 on mine.

The Church children in all their glory


Mitchell and his sister Mirien


Macho macho man (with Jill and Corinne)

Mitchell's cousin, Lincoln, is the announcer for the Orem Owl's baseball team ... so we scored some free tickets for Saturday night's game.

Hey batta' batta' batta'

Your eyes do not deceive you ... big fat zeros all across the board. Snooze-a-thon in terms of baseball. It's a good thing we aren't huge baseball fanatics.

Pirates of Buenaventura

Last weekend Erin an' I be lookin' fer somethin' fun t' do. We heard about Fort Buenaventura, but neither o' us had gone. So we thought we'd commandeer a canoe fer a tide. An' we be always in fer a good adventure.

Fort Buenaventura is a secluded grove of trees just out side of Ogden, about 10 minutes from our house. The plan was to go canoeing on the lake and enjoy the warm sunny day. When we got there we paid the entrance fee at the visitors center and rented a canoe for an hour. They told us everything we needed for canoeing was just behind the visitors center. And when we went behind to get our gear we realized that even the lake (puddle) was hidden behind this building. It wasn't a lot of space for canoeing but it was still a lot of fun. It would be a great place for younger kids to practice canoeing in a completely non threatening environment.

This is why we were extra careful not to tip the canoe, even though it was a hot day. The water was horribly disgusting. Luckily we never got it on us.

We're on the small dock, and you can see the other shore is just a stone's throw away.

You can rent those teepee's for $15 a night. Could be a fun camping adventure, and you wouldn't have to set up your tent.

By the end of the hour we became quite good at our steering together to get where we wanted to go. It really was a fun Saturday afternoon trip, and we were practically the only ones there.

Coffee Cake Blunder

Day Two of Mitchell's Birthday: Mitchell loves coffee cake. I thought I would be a good wife and bake up a pan for breakfast. I made Mitchell promise me that he would stay in bed until I had breakfast all made. I started to bake away ... I began adding the wheat flour (or so I thought) ... thought it looked slightly odd but continued with the process. I took the cake out ... and it sure looked dark, dense and flat. It wasn't until later that day that Mitchell and I put the pieces of the puzzle together ... I had used RYE flour instead of wheat. Rye coffee cake. Nice one Erin.

288 months old

I went over to my parent's house earlier in the week so I could create a wonderful cake surprise. And wonderful it was. I present to you ... rodent cake.

Mitchell's birthday party was action packed... wore my dad right out.

What do Richard Simmons, Bill Cosby, Henry David Thoreau and Mitchell Fillmore all have in common?

They were all born on July 12th

Mitchell's birthday fell on a Sunday this year which means ..... TWO DAYS OF CELEBRATION! Here is day one .....

I failed to mention to Mitchell while we were dating that I had received a rather large inheritance ... and had purchased this lovely home to celebrate his birthday .....

He wishes. Is this house not ridiculous? We would seriously have to take out 125 yr mortgage

We had to celebrate 7-11 free slurpee day .... 7.11 oz to be exact

Did a session in the Draper temple which was awesome

Ate lunch at Daybreak

I would like to promote Flat Earth chips. These chips = one serving of veggies... and they are soo soo good.

Then we headed over to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house



Then we took a quick flight over to England to visit Stonehenge





Dinner time



Mitchell's birthday = July 12 = 7-12 ... and this pizzeria just happened to be called Seven Twelve. Destiny.



Potato pizza ... surprisingly good.



Mitchell then had to show me this cool place called "Sub Zero" ... they make your ice cream right on spot with liquid nitrogen.



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fun fact of the day: corn grows on trees



oh ... and on the way home we spotted SEVEN temples. pretty amazing if you ask me.

It Isn't Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

We have some news .... and you may want to sit down to hear it ... drum roll .......... Mitchell and I attended the OPERA last Thursday night. Let me repeat that again ... THE OPERA, hard to believe I know. I remember being conned into going to my first opera ... this kind of sums up my experience: I paid $20 for a real nice headache. The entire thing was in Italian and every single noise that escaped their lips was a shrilly shriek. Blah. I am happy to say THIS opera experience was a bajillion times better. Mitchell's Uncle Wade offered us some free tickets and we can't say no to anything that is free ... so we jumped on it.

CAMELOT

The show was in Logan .... a short 45 min drive from home

Taking a little breather during the intermission

Here are a few things I learned:
- operas are loooong
- you are guaranteed to be surrounded by a sea of white hair (80% senior citizens)
- make sure to take a purse full of snacks
- opera singers are not always robust women in mu-mu's
- the opera can be quite enjoyable

Lowe Lollapalooza

Can I just begin by saying I have never participated in a family reunion of this magnitude? Past family reunions on my side of the family have consisted of a picnic .. or maybe a two day get together ... but nothing like this. Thumbs up Lowe family. Thumbs up.

The morning began with a hike in Provo

One fatal step = domino effect. I'm sure we ruined many a family's plans for a quiet 4th of July morning hike. We apologize greatly for the massive Lowe stampede on the trail that morning

Highly recommend the Stewart Falls Hike in Provo Canyon ... not too strenuous, gorgeous scenery and the waterfall isn't half bad either.

Following the hike we went tubing down the Provo river ... along with 5 billion other people who were waiting in line for their turn. You wouldn't think just floating down a river would be much fun ... think again. Killer fun.

Burned, wet, bruised and battered

The Lowe family is famous for their yeast root beer. Not my cup of tea

Xander a.k.a. "Ziggy" appointed me as his best friend at the family dinner that night. He pulled me over to a field to "play."

We watched the older boys play a little ball ...

Ziggy and I had all kinds of wonderful conversations that night. Topics of conversation:
Why is Santa so fat?
Who can jump higher, Spiderman or Superman?
Why don't you have any kids?
He even personally invited me to his birthday bash for next year
F.Y.I.: Monette, if you happen to read this ... Xander would like some LONG lincoln logs for Christmas this year, he has plenty of the short ones. (i'm sure that his mind is bound to change before December) He also said Santa actually listened to him last year and did an excellent job.

We then were supposed to head over to watch the Draper fireworks as a family ... Mitchell and I ended up parking in some church parking lot a little distance away due to the insane traffic

Sunday = family bonding and a little program

Monday night: Provo Canyon FHE

All in all, I really enjoyed the Lowe jamboree. I even learned a fun little song that was stuck in my head for days