Fun stuff!

My good friend Emily Vandyke is super talented. She designs fabulous jewelry (a good friend for me to have, since I'm a jewelry lover!). Emily came to our Relief Society retreat in Heber this past weekend and helped us/taught us how to make jewelry. I wish I had some pictures from the weekend, but I forgot my camera. Right now Emily is doing a really fun interchangeable earring set that is very simple, inexpensive and super cute! (Essentially 3 pairs of earrings in one, for the price of one!). This is just a sample, there are actually a bunch of different beads to choose from.

This is one of my favorites pairs (I love turquoise!)

So, if you're wanting a fun idea for an enrichment group, for a girl's night or if you're looking for a great Christmas or Birthday gift (or stocking stuffer's) just contact Emily and set something up. For all you young women leader's or mom's who have teenage daughter, she also is doing a really cute set of interchangeable earrings which are the young women values colors. You can also set up a time to go to her house (in American Fork) and pick out your own custom-made creation. Her blog is http://www.sassandsavvyjewelry.blogspot.com/. On her blog she also has a link to her etsy site, which has tons of cute stuff.

Also check out her photography blog at evandykephotography.blogspot.com. She did my bridal pictures, our engagements pictures, Sienna's newborn and a bunch of others. Here are some of my favorites...


Here's a couple more of my cute niece Ella.

Emily does an amazing job and her prices are really reasonable. Right now she is giving a free 8X10 with every photo shoot. Now is the perfect time to get those family pictures done in time for Christmas cards (I can't believe it that's time again!). I love that Emily gives printed proofs from the session and includes the cd of your edited images/negatives so you can print them whenever you want. I think it's rare to find photographers who do that.

Opa!!!

We went to the Greek Festival downtown with some friends. It was crazy! I had no idea that it would be that huge. We had a great time. We ate the most incredible food. I mean, I like Greek food, but this food was really amazing--well worth the wait. I wanted to go back the next day, just for the food. I had a I swear my mouth watered just thinking about it. Sienna was lovin' the music & dancing and was rockin' out (which tuckered her right out, as you can see below) Thanks, Bagozzi's, for a fun night!

Dessert was delicious! I wish I would've written down what these babies were called, but I'll do my best to describe it. It was some sort of a donutty, glaze-covered, cinnamin & sugar-coated dumpling. Um, and I'll be honest with you, I couldn't stop eating them.

It was kind of ridiculous.

I'm married to an old man!

Happy late birthday to you, Mr. Dixon! (Daniel Vilas Dixon, that is!) Dan's (34th!) birthday was on September 14th. We had a few days of celebrating--a dinner party with my family, picnic/dutch-oven cobbler American Fork canyon night with his fam, and then a low-key date night with just the two of us. We went to PF Chang's, had an amazing dinner, then had an even-more-amazing dessert, the great wall of chocolate. Seriously, the thing is ginormous. We felt like we were eating forever, and hardly made a dent in it. We also saw 500 Days of Summer. Good flick. Happy birthday to the best husband, father and friend! Love your guts, Dan! I have a few more pics I need to steal from Dan's mom's camera, so I'll post those later.

For the Hanson family birthday dinner, we had one of my favorite meals--a pasta bar. I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, so I'll just recap. You take your favorite cooked pasta and add all of your favorite pasta toppings. Toss it in a pan with a little olive oil and garlic and heat through, then top with your favorite sauce. It's fun because everyone can make it just how they like it. Then we had pizookie's for dessert. Dan got his own little one, then we made a giant one for everyone else to share. There's nothing better than a ginormous warm chocolately, gooey chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla bean icecream. Yummmmmm!

I made Dan pose for this one. :)

Labor Day weekend with San Clemente friends

Our good friend's Tracie & Sal Syed (from San Clemente) came with their two little rugrats to visit over Labor Day weekend. We loved getting to meet their newest addition--Serianna (who, by the way, has the most amazing head of hair--unlike anything I've seen before!). Our friends Sara & James Mortensen also live in the area, so it was fun to get together with the old gang. Tracie wasn't feeling too great, so unfortunately they weren't able to do everything they hoped, but we still managed to pack in some fun.

WE...

...rocked it out with Guitar Hero...

BTW, Tracie looks awesome in this picture--awesome like a butt-rocker! Luke & Samson rockin' out. They were in Heaven!!!...went to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point (just in case you were wondering what Sara and Tracie are doing, they are imitating dinosaurs, of course!) I love this picture of Bella screaming (for joy!) Dan & Sienna watching the fish...The most adorable pink camo squeeky shoes that I bought for Sienna (Sara sells them and gave them to me for cost, so I stocked up! Sooooo nice!)

...ate good food...(Cafe Rio, JCW's, pizza, homemade peach cobbler...)

...went to the Street Fair/Farmer's Market in Park City...I love this pic of Sal & Suri. This guy is in so much trouble--this baby girl is BEAUTIFUL!!!Dan's training Sienna young!

Summer fun!

Dan occasionally takes the camera into his office, downloads (or is it uploads? What's the difference!?) all the pics onto the harddrive at work, and formats the memory card. Then every so often I'll look at all the pictures on the hard drive and discover a bunch of photo's that I haven't even looked at since I took them. So, here's a bunch from this summer.

We drove up to Montpelier, Idaho for Dan's family reunion. We got to take his niece's Taylor and Claire with us, which was a lot of fun. Sienna just adores her cousins Claire & Taylor and had such a fun time being able to hang out with them on the drive. These are the "world famous" raspberry shakes from Bear Lake. Yum....

One thing we have really loved about living in Utah is being able to go hiking. We love the mountains here. Sienna just loves her backpack hiker! (Thanks, Jen!)

These pictures are from a place called Battlecreek Falls, which is just 10-15 minutes from our house. I'd never been here before, but it was such a fun hike. It was an easy hike, perfect for a little Monday night family home evening.

(And, no, I did not buy that binky for Sienna...but it's true!) Love that face!!!

Happy fourth of July! If only I could remember what we did! :) We ended the night getting Cafe Rio and heading over to Liz & Eric's (Dan's brother) for fireworks. Sienna was totally fascinated by the fireworks--especially the sparklers and the glowsticks!

This is our adorable niece Taylor. What a cutie!

We really miss our good friends from Huntington Beach Matt & Amber Sim (& their boys Jake & Caden), so it was really fun to be able to have them stay with us this summer when they were in town for a wedding. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures that weekend, so this is all you get. :) We had a little date night and went to the downtown concert at the Gallivan Center and watched the Bon Iver concert and then hit Five Guys for some grub. The concert was fun, but super crazy. It didn't even feel like we were in Utah. Great music, though...and the company wasn't too bad either. ;)