Fun times in June!! Parties, Parties, and more Parties!

June was a fabulous month! We had so much fun. We got to spend a lot of time with family and friends. We are really enjoying our backyard and are spending lots of time outside.

I love when I go to people's houses and they have handprints in the concrete. My grandparents had a slab of concrete where my mom's handprint was. I loved seeing how my hand measured up against hers. Well, we are not pouring concrete any time soon, so we painted our hands on the concrete at the corner of our drive way. It was fun, but hard to get Taylor's fingers to spread out just right. I'm so proud of the way it turned out.

May 29th was my dad's 50th birthday. He was in Phoenix so we had his party on the 13th of June. I made all the invitations by hand and then mailed them. He knew we were having a party, but they had no idea who was coming. It was a great party! We are so blessed to have a home where we can have people over to visit. No, the smoke alarms didn't go off. And yes, there were 50 candles on that cake. This cake I made by hand. It was yellow with chocolate frosting, Dad's favorite!

Here's the spread of all the goodies. We bought a bunch of balloons, but the wind got up so most of them popped. I LOVE balloons, they really say party! I was disappointed about the balloons, but the rest of the party went awesome.

This is Stan and Becky Maxwell. My dad and him have been friends a VERY long time. He was even in my parent's wedding. They share the same anniversary and used to celebrate it together every year. I don't have enought space to put pictures of everyone who came on here, so I'll just share a few.

My cousin Matt, his wife Amy and daughter Krissy came to the party! They moved way up north for a few years and are finally home! It was so great to see them. I am almost embarrased to admit, but they have been married around 6 years and I had never met Amy. Ouch, I know crazy!

Kime loves to grill and so does Jackie. Jackie always says he's so happy because his cook drove all the way from Dallas! They did a great job and the burgers, brats, and hot dogs were awesome!

A bunch of Dad's friends from work came to the party, which was so awesome! It was really nice to put some faces to names of people I had heard about over the last 26 years. He's been at Pantex forever. It was kinda hard to know who to invite, because he can't really talk about work, but they were so helpful in helping me add to the list!!

Here's the great cake! I was so proud of it because it was two layers and didn't crack down the middle like the last layered cake I made did!!

Here's the cake we ordered from Ms. Piggy's, a bakery here in town. It turned out awesome!! I didn't want to ruin it with candles so that's why we had two cakes! Plus this one was strawberry and so we had to have his favorite!

I love the billboards that you see that say Congrats, or Will you marry me?, or Happy Birthday. So, we made one since we couldn't rent one! I took sheets and painted them and then my amazing husband mounted them on the side of this truck we borrowed from the church. It turned out great and let everyone be sure of where the party was!

I have more party pics to add, but I can't seem to get them added, so I will move along and try again later!

The next weekend we had a sunday school class social at our friend's Greg and Dawnette's house. They have the most amazing backyard. The grass is awesome, the plants are beautiful, and it doesn't even feel like you are in Amarillo. It's so peaceful and we LOVE going over to visit there! Here are some of the kids playing on the huge swing they have.

Here's Shawn chasing one of the cats. They have these black and white cats that the kids love to chase and catch. They had some tiny baby kitties. Taylor kept calling them Catties. They were so cute and I really don't even like cats.

Since we had leftovers from Dad's party, we loaded up the grill and headed over to their house. Jackie did a great job on the burgers, then Tom took over. It worked out great!!

Here's Wes, Donnie, Greg, and Dakota having a great chat. They have a fire pit which last time we roasted hot dogs on. Dakota started a fire for us and by the end of the night it was so nice!

Here's some more people that were at the party. We are so blessed to have such awesome friends where we go to church! We love spending time having fun with people who love the Lord like we do! The guy in the OU hat is Rod, Taylor LOVES hanging out with Rod. She's always so happy to see him!

Thursday Jackie stayed home with Taylor. They went to the store and he let her pick out a pool. She has went swimming everyday in it. She loves this pool. She keeps saying how she can't wait to go swimming with Emma and Cole when they come this weekend! She likes the slide, but she wants to go down backwards, which is very funny to watch!

My husband is so very talented. He is so gifted with his hands. He can build and fix anything. Friday at work a member told me about Backyard Adventures closing here in Amarillo. They are selling a lot of stuff for extremly cheap. Slides that had minor defects were only $10. We had been shopping around for a slide for Taylor to have. We have been collecting lumber too. I called Jackie as soon as I got off work and told him to turn around and head out there. The man was so nice. We got so much great stuff for her swingset. Jackie stayed up until 1 in the morning building so that Taylor could use the slide first thing Saturday morning. He did an awesome job. It's not quite finished, but it looks so awesome! We got stuff for a rope ladder on one side and a rock wall on the other. We got swings and teeter-totters and steering wheels to add to it too! It's going to be so awesome when it's all done. Here's Taylor taking her first trip down in her jammies. We were so excited we showed it to her as soon as we woke up. She opened the door and said, "WOW, LOOK AT MY SLIDE!" Her eyes were the size of silver dollars. It was better than Christmas!!

Saturday we drove to Guymon, OK for a funeral for one of Jackie's aunt. We spent the afternoon driving around seeing all the sites and where he lived and went to school. We even got to meet a few of his friends. It was so much fun. They have a little lake there, well it's really a pond. They had paddle boats and a little train that went around the water. It was so much fun. I wish I would have taken my camera. It was really neat. They even had fishing in the little lake. Taylor had so much fun and didn't want to leave!