Nat's 19th birthday

Natalie turned 19 this year!!  Inspired by Nat's Nancy Drew obsession, Jessica orchestrated a surprise murder mystery party!  

Jessica created the entire game herself.  She gave everyone a character and a bio and created the story, and she even made food and everything!

Here we are having a tea party soon after the guest of honor arrived....

Then the maid announced someone had been murdered!

We then all contemplated this event while doing very sophisticated things like listening to the piano and reading.

And we had secret discussions about our suspicions.

The maid served us "tea" (Bella helped) and brought us important notes that were sealed with wax and presented on a silver tray. 

They gave us important information about solving the mystery.

Eventually, the murder weapon was discovered!

Bella did a lot of sleuthing...

 And the murderer was revealed that night at dinner! 

 It was me.

Natalie, of course, made her own birthday cake.  She has started collecting Disney Tsum Tsums lately- this is what they look like:

So she thought it would be fun to make a bunch of Tsum Tsum cupcakes!  Melissa and Amanda helped.  

It took about 3 hours!

Rowley Reunion 2017

We had our yearly Rowley Reunion at my parents' house in Flagstaff.  It was AWESOME.  

Kimi and Rob did a "Viking Games" activity.  It.  Was.  EPIC.  There were a bunch of different kinds of competitions, complete with homemade weapons.  We had a ton of fun.

Some of them we kind of made up on the spot, like when the guys all wrestled each other simultaneously.

And here's Annette being carried away by the amazing viking music!

My girls loved tending the babies!

For the grown-ups' "date night" we drove to Mormon Lake Lodge and dressed up in western wear!

Cherise spearheaded a kids' movie night, complete with a movie projected on the wall, and treats they could buy with tickets earned by cleaning up!

The talent show was the best yet!  It's fun when the kids get together and create performances over the week to showcase for us.

Another day we went to Oak Creek Canyon.  Oh man it was SO PRETTY!  We went to the perfect spot- just a quick little hike to the water where there was a cool rock slide and everything!

And Cherise did a bunch of fun water games for the kids!  She and Bryce were in charge this year, they did such a good job!!

And here is a pyramid of kids.

I took the girls out to breakfast at Galaxy Diner!  This one of our favorite places to go in high school.  One of my favorite memories is meeting up for breakfast on summer mornings before we all went off to work or wherever.  Good times!

2017 Birthdays

Amanda turned 10 this year!!  Her bestie came over before school and they had fun cereal together.

And she had lion cupcakes!

She got a new big girl bike for her birthday!

Missy turned 13!  Natalie made this exquisite froggy cake for her.

She had a little movie night party with two of her friends

Natalie also made Josh's "Portal" cake.  He turned 17!

Jess turned 15!  Here she is in the morning, blowing out the candle on her muffin.  Grandma and Grandpa Anderson were here visiting, and we had all the local Andersons over for dinner and cake, but apparently I didn't take any pictures of any of that.

She didn't get to choose the cake she had on her b-day, so a couple months later she thought up her own cake and we made it.  It was a chocolate frosted cake covered in no-bake cookie crumble.  It was pretty intense.

And our last birthday is Natalie!  Her party was pretty epic, so it's getting it's own post.  Stay tuned!

Project of the year!

So we decided to turn our pool room into a workshop for Jason!

We did this for many reasons.  The main ones being that the pool was too expensive to heat, and Jason needed a bigger and more accessible workshop.  Keeping him as active as possible is the most essential part of keeping him healthy, and this was our best idea to do that.  We had decided to go ahead with the project about a year ago, and we saved part of our tax return to do it.  We were waiting for Jason's dad to have time to come help us get it started.  THEN a few months ago we decided to refinance the house, and the bank insisted on us finishing the pool room for that to go through, SO we were further motivated.  Jason's Dad, brother-in-law, and nephews came all the way from California over two different weekends to help us get it done. The Martins also came and helped a ton. It was amazing!!

So here's the "before" picture.  All we'd managed to get done was to empty the pool.

And order a LOT of wood

Project 1: Cover the pool.  

Project 2: Wire a LOT of outlets

Project 3: Put paneling up on the walls

Look at all those helpers!

It was fun to get all the cousins together!

Project 4: Install ceiling fans/lights

At this point we were able to take pictures for the appraiser showing that the room was done enough to make them happy.  Here's Mandie exhausted from all the last-minute moving and painting!

And this is basically what the pictures looked like

Soon after that my parents were here for a weekend and helped us caulk and paint the floor

Then it was ready to start moving stuff in! (.....and replace the window I broke with a nail gun.)

Jason loves his new workshop!  And our refinance has saved us so much money!  And I never want to do a project that big again.