academy awards 2011

last nite, my fam-damily had our annual oscars party. and since it was ALSO my mom's birthday... we went all out.

sully, as mark whalberg from The Figher. tucker, as james franco from 127 Hours. grace, as jesse from Toy Story 3.

craig and me from TRUE GRIT. craig always takes the staging a little too seriously. he looks like he really wants to shoot me. hmm.

and yup, my mom and megan as the two girls from Black Swan. dont hate me because of all the nightmares you will now have after looking at this picture.

the delicious spread.

megan's famous sugar cookies. the oscar statue is copyrighted so there inst a cookie cutter available in its shape, so megan hand cut all them herself!

the ballot winner and my prize. (ok, to be honest my mom won the ballot contest but since she was the one that purchased the prize, she graciously deferred it to me!)

the group shot. (my dad is the king from King's Speech and tagg is Buzz from Toy Story 3) what a fun party. i hope this year's movies are just as entertaining.

yup. we took our three year old and six month old to disneyland.

it seemed harmless enough. but actually traveling with two little kiddies definitely has its ups and downs......

tagg was very excited when we arrived at sea-tac to discover that we were going to ride on the disneyland plane!

the first morning there, i met up with nicole. we were best friends in middle school but havent seen each other in about 13 years. it was very fun catching up.

tagg decided to have his first official stomach flu. it lasted the first two days of our trip but wiped us all out for the rest of our stay. poor taggy. also, poor craigy: tagg let it out all over craig on the escalator of the nordstroms in fashion valley. not cute.

sully, however, kept it real cute the entire vacation. he was such a good nugget and LOVED disneyland.

by the time our day trip to disneyland rolled around, tagg was feeling a wee bit better and was excited to finally be on the BUZZ LIGHTYEAR RIDE!

wow. jasmine and aladdin must really do it for him. i have never seen him smile so big.

i had not been on a roller coaster since before tagg was born. it was so much fun! that guy in the front annoys me.

it was very special that we were able to share our experience with my parents. my boys were in heaven.

right before the park closed, we raced in to see CAPTAIN E.O.! i grew up watching it so i was tickled in my pants to see it after all these years. seriously. my mom told me to stop screaming because it was embarrassing her.

when disneyland was done, the boys headed back down to san diego while the girls (brooke, my mom, me+sully) went north to hollywood! we stopped by an amazing burger joint that the millward girls used to go to before sessions at the LA temple. it was yummy and they had banana pudding that tasted JUST like magnolia's.

after the apple pan, we got lost trying to find out hotel. as we were aimlessly driving the streets of hollywood i randomly spotted lisa vanderpump's VILLA BLANCA! now, keep in mind, we had been walking around disneyland aaalllllll day long and looked like crap. but we still wanted a peek inside. so we creeped in for a second to have the hostess take our picture..... thats when my mom noticed LISA! (she is behind me and to the left)

as we waited to see if we had the guts to go and talk to her.... her husband came up to us and insisted that i take a picture with giggy!

finally, i swallowed all of my pride and asked lisa if i could take a picture with her. she was soooooo nice (and gorgeous. please ignore the fat, ugly cow next to her) and gracious. the only bad part? she asked us if we had enjoyed our dinner, and instead of just telling the truth (that we had just popped in for a second) i said "oh yes. it was delicious!" so then she asked, "oh, yes? well, what did you have?" ummmmm.... lets just say, my mom and i ran out of there prit.eee quick!

for some reason, i didnt get any pictures of our girl day in LA. we shopped and ate. pretty standard. then we fought friday afternoon LA traffic to meet up with everyone in la jolla. the san diego temple never ceases to amaze.

tagg loved the ocean.

but then it started to drizzle (yup. it rained on our trip to "sunny" san diego) so we ran back inside.

as always, brooke was the hostess with mostess and put us all up in her fancy home.

liz came over to brooke's for a quick visit. we have been best friends since we were little girls. i love her face and wish i was able to see it more often.

talk about faces.... i am SO sick of tagg making this weird smile for pictures. :) but he sure did love playing with his cousins.

auntie brookie and buzz.

"vacationing" with two small children is kind of an intense situation. but it was worth it to see family and friends and tagg's face light up at the magic kingdom.
whew. even posting about the trip made me tired all over again. :)

happy valentines day

double chocolate cupcakes i made for the ward party.

craig and me at our dinner at ruth's chris. nothing says romance more than a relaxing, yummy dinner without our two little monsters. xoxo!

it never gets old

staring at this little nugget and his bright blue eyes. ps: if you squint, you can see his new tooth.

he's pretty proud of it and takes every opportunity to feel his new, sharp (i can testify of that!) toof.

turning 27

i decided to try a tiered cake. lets not talk about how crappy it looks. i blame most of that on tagg. he took a HUGE chunk out of the top tier while it was cooling....

at least the cupcakes dont look like louis (my cat) did them.

the day before my birthday, my friends and i met up at nordstrom cafe for a relaxing lunch with five kiddies. ha! actually, everyone was very well behaved (except for maybe me... i was kinda on one. anything for a laugh).

on february 8th, my mom and megan treated me to a very fancy lunch at john howie. it was sooooo much fun. made even more fun because kaitlin offered to watch tagg while we lunched! the food was good but the people watching was GREAT.

i finished my day off with an evening out with craig. i got to shop to my little heart's content and then indulge in my favorite dessert.

birthdays are so special. they remind me about all of the amazing people i have in my life.

the celebrations

we kept things pretty low key for tagg's third birthday (i figured it was probably the last year i could get away with that!) but for the family celebration, tagg decided on a buzz lightyear theme.

the little tablescape with tagg's ice cream cake!

more of the same. cupcakes with matching toy story fruit chews as toppers.

me and my favorite three year old.

present time. momo, ga and the gee's gave tagg a pair of UGG boots and a new button-up shirt. just what every three year old boy wants to open! :)

but he DID love opening up his toy story snuggie they gave him. then taylor wanted a turn...

cake time. sam is always there to help!

on tagg's actual birthday nite, we all headed to the bus stop to participate in tagg's favorite activity: RIDING THE CITY BUS.

i am not sure that the regulars on the bus (it was rush hour) appreciated our party whistles...

sully and momo on the way to bellesquare.

why the mall? to get tagg's favorite treat: a salt pretzel! what can i say? he is easy to please.

happy birthday to taggy!