And the CSN Winner is . . .

Please send me your email address, and I will send it on the the rep at CSN Stores so he can send you the gift certificate. Happy shopping!

Eli & Brenna's Reception

Brenna's mom's best friend happens to own this beautiful home where they held the reception. I wish I had a wider angles lens so you could really sense how pretty it was.Brenna's family did an amazing job putting together the reception. No detail was overlooked. And the colors happened to be yellow and gray so Creed pretty much thought it was a big party for him.
I loved these floral initials hanging on one of the trees.
All the men in the bridal party wore gray suits with gray Vans. Doesn't my dad look studly?
And speaking of studly . . .


This in the only picture that I managed to get of all the nephews from our side of the family (we have no nieces).
Doesn't Oliver look dapper?
They served Eli's favorite food, J-Dawgs
And they had a shaved ice booth
And lots of lemonade on hand for the warm weather.

Creed kept begging to have some yellow cake

But luckily, he was happy stuffing his pockets at the yellow candy bar
There were so many fun details, like this tandem bike that Brenna had painted yellow that they rode off on at the end of the night while everyone lined the driveway with sparklers and fireworks
But my favorite detail had to be the photobooth! You can see it in the background here.
They printed two copies for everyone so you had one to glue into the guestbook and one to take home.

And I was glad to see that Eli and Brenna had a chance to slip in.

Eli and Brenna are so cute that I can't wait to see their real pictures!
Our little Eli is all grown up and a good time was had by all!

The Newest Member of the Borup Family!

June 19th, my baby brother got married! I'm having a hard time believing it! I still picture him in his tween years when he wore "husky" jeans and went by the nickname Twinkie (which he told us to call him, "'Cause he had a creamy filling in the middle!" He was way too cool to care about what other people thought of him.)

Does anyone else have a hard time accepting that the baby of the family is all grown up? And what I cool person Eli is, although how he snagged Brenna, I will never know. They are both lucky to have each other.

Since they are both local Provoans, they got married in the Provo temple. I thought it was so cool that parents could just walk to the wedding ceremony. I was not thinking when I packed for the weekend (Ugh, it's so much work traveling with a toddler and a baby and there is so much to remember), so I only had my 50 mm lens so I didn't take a lot of pictures and those that I did take are fairly closeup and often blurry so sorry about that. You'll have to check out Candice and my mom's photos but since you never know when they will post (hint, hint), I will go ahead and post what I have so you can share in our joy.

No pictures are allowed during ceremonies in Mormon temples (which I think is nice) so here is the first picture that I caught of the happy couple. Bliss!

I love attending weddings with Larry and listening to the counsel given to the couple, reliving our own happy day and reflecting on how much more we have grown together since then. I can't think of a happier thing to do.
And it's especially great when you get to watch a member of your family have the happiest day so far of their lives. You just feel privileged to witness it.
It's been a long time since I've been together with all of my siblings. I was so sad Creed was sick much of the week before so I missed out on hanging out with everyone beforehand, but at least we didn't miss out on the wedding.

We are happy to welcome Brenna to our family!

Congratulations to the happy couple!

A Giveaway

I don't usually like to advertise for other companies on my personal blog so when companies contact me, I usually say no, BUT I happened to be browsing a site looking at toys to use $15.00 of credit that I had, when I remembered that exact company had contacted me offering to sponsor a giveaway on my blog or to send me a product to review. Why not sponsor a giveaway for something I would love to have? You've all been so sweet and supportive lately that I thought it would be nice to share something instead of receive. I just wish that you all could win!

I'm sure you've seen a few other blogs doing giveaways for CSN Stores. They have 200+ websites so they sell just about everything that you can think of: lighting, kitchen gadgets,modern nursery furniture (where I bought Creed's toddler bed) . . .

One of my lucky readers will win a $70.00 gift certificate to use at any of CSN's sites, just leave a comment on this post by Friday at 5:00 p.m., and I will pick a winner at random (although you must be from the US or Canada to enter and please only comment once!).

I happened to be looking for toys since I was planning to use my credit so here are a few ideas of things that I would love to own:

This Plan Toys Preschool Balancing Cactus

This Plan Toys Pounding Tower
These Dinosaur Block Mates that you can mix and match (I'm sure Creed would love them)
This Plan Toys Click Clack Track for Balls to run down (I think it would help Creed play with Ollie because it would entertain them both)
This Concertina because we've been collecting instruments so Creed and his friends can form a band whenever they like
You know Creed would love this backpack and he just started preschool this week
And Ollie will be big enough for this Wheelie Bug before we know it
I've also been thinking about investing in one of these PlasmaCars. We'd need yellow of course.
Or maybe I should just be investing in these Dwell Storage bins to store the toys that we already have.
Once in a while, It's fun to dream about all the beautiful things out there that you could own, isn't it? Leave a comment for a chance to win and the gift certificate could be yours!

Happy Yellow Day

For quite some time, Creed has been asking if he can have all yellow clothes for Christmas. Then last week I happened to come across a lot of yellow clothes for little boys on clearance at the Gap, and I figured why not make his dreams come true a little early?

I wanted to come up with a fun way to deliver the clothes, since a delivery from Santa is not due anytime soon so I decided to go with this idea since Creed helped me set up Lisa's surprise so I knew he would know just what to do when he woke up to a yellow piece of yarn. This may have been cuter if I took my time to plan things, but I was so excited about surprising Creed that I just threw it all together the night before with a quick trip to Michael's and the grocery store. I stocked up on yellow treats and food and decided we would make the whole day yellow day.

That night I wound a piece of yellow yarn all over the house leading to hidden yellow surprises like the clothes, yellow sprinkles, yellow sidewalk chalk paint, a yellow chalk pen, yellow rattle eggs, yellow Waffle Crisp cereal that he's been begging me to buy him since he saw Uncle Eli with it, a pineapple, yellow jello, etc.

In the morning, Larry and I both put on yellow shirts and woke up Creed announcing it was Yellow Day! Then we handed him the string.

And he was off!
He squealed when he found the first yellow shirt.
Then he raced around the house collecting everything else, trying to carry it all at the same time because he didn't want to put any of it down.

He took a break to draw on our windows when he found the chalk paint pen.
Then he finished his yellow hunt in the kitchen with this Bee hat he'd begged me to buy at Michael's.
He immediately put it on to help me make yellow breakfast (pancakes with bananas and yellow sprinkles along with orange pineapple banana juice) and he wore that bee hat ALL DAY.

After breakfast he was thrilled to dress in yellow from head to toe!
And Ollie obliged us by wearing yellow too.
Then we headed next door to see if Tyler could play. I mentioned to Tyler's mom, Carlye, the day before that I thought we would be having yellow day and look how they were dressed when the answered the door! Creed and Tyler were both shouting, "It's Yellow Day!" and jumping up and down. I think that surprise really might have been the best part of yellow day.
The boys spent the morning chasing each other and painting the sidewalks yellow (with chalk paint of course)

Then we headed out to buy each of them a yellow balloon (and sucker and noisemaker because who can resist picking up extra goodies at the party store?)

It was so much fun watching these two busy bees play with each other.

And we even had time to play with jello jigglers before Creed had to go. Creed scarfed them down, but I think the idea of eating them grossed Tyler out.
After Creed's nap we had time for some yellow coloring
and yellow Popsicles
and dancing around the Laurie Berkner's "I Know a Chicken" with Creed's new yellow rattle eggs. Then we finished the night off with a yellow dinner.
We were so worn out, we didn't even make it to deliver yellow flowers or dance around with yellow glow sticks as planned. I think we'll save that for another day because wouldn't a family dressed all in yellow delivering yellow flowers make you smile?