Welcome, Summer! I've missed you...

Happy first day of summer!! Today deserves a post of it's own in my book. I start craving summer usually around the day after Christmas. Call me impatient, but I just love everything about it.

I love the heat. Even being pregnant, it doesn't bother me one bit. I'm a sun-lover.

I love ice cream and snow cones. What's better?

I love family time outside.  

I LOVE warm evenings. Jared and I have been taking advantage of them out on his parent's trampoline cuddled up on a blanket, just like we did in High School. I love it.

I love bike rides...we took one the other day with the Jones' new baby bike seat, Gracie kept saying "weeeee!" and tickling my back. 

Summer is the best! And it's just begun....Hallelujah!

We've been really busy lately with our little house (let's be honest, mostly Jared... I can't do much with my very large belly in the way). Jared is such a superman. He works really hard all day long, gets home, eats dinner, then heads over to our house all evening and works really hard. He comes home, goes to bed, then starts over the next day. What a man....I am so grateful for my hardworking husband! The house is coming along, but I'm not posting pictures until I can post "before & afters"....right now I just have lots of "before" pictures, which might scare you.

This weekend my friends and I threw a bridal "tea party" shower for one of my best friends, Marilyn. She is such a wonderful person, and I am so excited for her upcoming wedding! She deserves every happiness that comes her way.

We had such a fun time together, planning and staying up late chatting. I'll love these girls forever.Some of my very best friends (we missed you girls who couldn't make it...): Hillary, Marilyn, Brittany, Kimmy, Kelly and me. 

Lastly...Father's Day. I was baffled this year. What do you do for a guy who works so hard for your family, but yet still has time to be the best Dad to a daughter who idolizes him, and the greatest husband of all time!? (seriously). He's the best. He's always happy, and never complains. He always thinks the best of people, always giving them the benefit of the doubt. He always wants to do what's right and good. He makes me want to be better, and I don't know what I'd do without this guy...

Happy Father's Day Jared!

Yesterday morning I woke up and made him his favorite pancakes...sour cream & walnut. I burned almost all of them. He ate them anyway. :) 

Then we started on our Dad's cherry pies. I've never made a cherry pie from scratch, but really wanted to give it a shot since both our dad's LOVE them...I made the dough, then Jared and I took turns rolling it out as thin as we could and flipping it onto the pie pan. IMPOSSIBLE! It took so many tries before we finally just decided to flip it and then patch it up once it was in the pan. Not cute, but it worked. Then we got this brilliant idea to do a lattice top. I watched a couple "how-to" videos online and thought I had it down...it was WAY harder than it looked. Finally, after lots of patch jobs of our fragile dough, and after about 3 hours, we successfully made two cherry pies. They ended up looking really nice and tasting delish, despite all of our struggles. Jared told his Dad about all we had gone through, and his Dad said, "making a cherry pie is a labor of love," which it was. If we didn't love our Dad's so much, we would have put the rolling pin down at the very beginning. 

After church we went to my parent's house w/El and Kristin's fam. We sat outside the whole time and just enjoyed each other's company. Then we headed to Grandpa Jones's house (or Santa, as Gracie calls him) with the extended Jones fam for dinner. Gracie loved playing with all the kids there, and we got to spend some good time chatting. I love getting to see our Dad's and Grandpa's on Father's Day, we had such a fun day.