What We've Been Up To While Carrie's Been Gone

Carrie tried to "help" me pack by filling an entire suitcase with her dolls, stuffed animals and play food....

On Carrie's last morning here, I made some delicious dark chocolate raspberry cupcakes for a friend's baby shower

Complete with tangy raspberry curd filling, raspberry vanilla frosting, and raspberry glaze drizzle. Yum!

Carrie sure enjoyed hers!

And Saturday morning, we passed her off to Justin's parents for the week! On our way home from dropping her off we stopped at Kohl's to spend the rest of a forgotten gift card from Christmas. Justin got a nice new button up shirt (no picture, sorry) and I got this cute maxi-dress on clearance!

Then the real work began. All week instead of relaxing while Carrie was gone, we tried to cram in as much work as possible! During the daytime, I mostly painted. I finally finished the kids bathroom which has been almost done since before Christmas. Then I started on downstairs. In particular, the garage door entryway and half stair wall.

Finished! This is the same color that's in the hallway upstairs and on a couple walls in our bedroom and bathroom. It's become my go-to neutral.

Next came the front door entryway. Which has very high ceilings.... Even standing as high as I dared on our 6 foot ladder, I still couldn't reach the top couple of feet. It's on my to-do list to borrow a taller ladder from a friend to finish it soon.

Then Tuesday afternoon, with help from several friends, we started the crazy work of installing a sprinkler system in our backyard....

Justin and Trent with the trencher

Burrowing under the curbing so sprinkler pvc pipe could be run through underneath.

An example of the huge slab-like mounds of concrete we kept finding a few inches under the surface of the dirt.

The trenching machine was a huge help, but still annoying hard work in and of itself. (And I wouldn't even really know, the boys did that part)

Justin and Eli and some ditch-digging, pick-swinging fun.... At 5:00 pm.... In the record breaking 116 degree heat....

Carrie's wagon worked great as a form of transportation and storage for the little supplies.

We had hoped to get it all done (or at least mostly done) in that first day. Not even close.... We worked every day this week and it's still not done. One thing we made sure we finished though was Carrie's new swingset!


By last night we were exhausted and ready for a break. Lucky for us, we had a ward luau to go to! We got to wear our new matching Hawaiian wardrobe. Justin's grandma recently visited Hawaii and sent us Justin's shirt and my dress (Carrie has a matching dress too).

We had delicious pork, pineapple, and rice burritos, fruit, and sweet coconut milk filled rolls for dessert.

We also had some dancing entertainment. A family from the Stake performed and then we took turns going on stage to learn some of it. The men went first doing one of the yelling, chanting, stomping, slapping dances. It was very entertaining :) (Justin's on the far right)


Then the women learned the Hukilau. (I'm in the middle in the red-flowered dress) They gave out prizes for the best dancer in each, and I won for the women! Woohoo! Hula is fun!
The point of it all.... Family

Now that our fun and work-filled childless week is over, this morning we drove to meet Justin's parents to bring Carrie back home. Since we'd been working so hard all week and then stayed up late last night, we thought it would be a good idea to bring something to keep us awake on the drive...

She had quite a fun-filled week too... And a very long day of driving. Six hours in the car makes me want to take a nap too...

Once we got home, she was very excited to try on all our lei's from the luau!

And celebrate our family being back together again with pizza night!