Happy Father's Day

I also want to say thank you. Thank you for being an amazing daddy, for truly loving the girls as your own. Thank you for helping me be a better mom. Thank you for being the father for them that I was praying for.

We Love You Daddy!

We're all NUTS

Amanda came to stay with us for 5 weeks for one of her PA rotations for school. For those of you that do not know, Amanda is my sister-in-law, Taylor's wife. We were all excited to have her come.
But it soon became apparent that Amanda, Kent, and I must all be nuts.

First of all, let me tell you about this exercise program Amanda and I have been doing together. Has anyone heard of crossfit? It is this crazy super high intensity workout program. We would go together at 6:00 am Monday through Thursday.

Amanda with Jeff Bolton, the over the top trainer that is behind this all. He's the one that pushes us, and shows us we are wrong when we say, "there's no way I can do that!"

We got to be good friends with this pull-up bar. When we started, neither of us could do a real pull up alone. Amanda got up to 3 in a row (that I know of, it could have been more).

Amanda was the really crazy one here. She would go to the class in the morning, then go again at 6:00 that night, two classes a day.

All her hard work paid off. She smoked everyone in the class. She is in seriously AMAZING good shape. What an athlete.

Here we both are, after getting out butts whooped at the end of a class. There is no other way to describe it than flat out NUTS!

Then, we all thought it wouldn't be a big deal to have Taylor bring their two dogs up for a visit.

That makes four dogs, inside one house. I think that speaks for itself.

Kent has got to be the one that is nuttiest of all. He went from living alone as a single bachelor up to the age of 29. Then he decides to get married and move in with FOUR women (me, Camryn, Kendra, and Amanda). Poor guy. What a great sport though. I love you, honey.

Our Receptions

We cut the cake together. Look at this picture. Camryn is soaking wet from playing in the water falls. Kendra is crying because she doesn't think it's a good idea to shove cake in each other's face.

But, look again. This is our family. Camryn is having a blast. Kendra is being held (just as she always wants to be). Kent and I are enjoying the unexpected that goes along with it all.

It doesn't get any better than this.

A big thank you to our moms. They did so much and worked so hard. They did so many things for us to show their love and support. We are so blessed and feel so grateful to have absolutely AMAZING moms.

My Grandpa came from Mesa, Arizona, along with my Aunt Marilyn, Uncle Ron, and cousin Brandon. They are so amazing. I love them all so much. We really couldn't have pulled this off with out Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Ron. Thanks guys.

These two little girls played together all night. I love the way Kendra and Kaydence are such good friends.

My family

We have so many people to thank. We had so much help and support through all of this.

THANK YOU!

An extra little tid bit:
Uncle Ron and Taylor

Our Wedding/Honeymoon

So, we have been back from our trip for awhile now. I am just getting to posting about it. Life is just too busy, but newlywed life is GREAT!!!! I love, love, love my new hubby. Our girls are loving all of this too. It is better than I could have imagined.

So, to our trip....

We headed to Costa Rica with my parents. Just the four of us. We flew into San Jose, then drove our rental car to where we were staying. We made a quick stop at the Costa Rica temple. It is beautiful! The temple is our goal, so this was a great way to start our trip.

The temple grounds were amazing. Definitely the most beautiful thing we saw in the city of San Jose.

My parents are so cute. They still do sweet little things.

Both Kent and I loved having them with us. It was wonderful spending time together and getting to experience new things together.

This was our house at Congo-Bongo. It is a small group of jungle houses in between cities on the Caribean side of Costa Rica. Check our their website http://www.congo-bongo.com/ if you want more specific info about that. Our house had 3 bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. It was literally in the middle of the rain forest. We had wildlife all around us. Our house was so open to all of this; it was AMAZING.

The day we arrived, we saw this sloth up in the trees right near our house. We also saw a toucan (but didn't get a picture).






We saw these Howler Monkeys quite a bit, but we heard them even more. The sound they make is something else. They sound huge, but they are just little guys. They were often in the trees right by our house in the morning. That second picture is a mommy and baby.

There was lots, and lots of wildlife and beautiful plants. Here are a bunch of pictures. Some are not for the squeamish. All of these things were right near our house.

It was a short walk through the jungle to the beach. When you got close to the beach, there were crabs EVERYWHERE. I am not kidding, EVERYWHERE! It's a good thing they were shy, or they would have been very intimidating. Kent got a couple on video. Pay attention the the sounds of the jungle too. It was never quiet.

One of the best things down there was the fruit. We ate the best pineapple, mangoes, and coconut I have ever tasted. We ate a whole pineapple everyday. Has anyone ever had a white pineapple? Oh my goodness! Yummy, yummy, yummy. Now everything here is a disappointment.

There is a local place that makes coconut ice cream that was to die for. I wouldn't have even considered trying coconut ice cream, but they were out of the one I wanted. Once we tried it, we had to have it everyday until we left. It was SOOOO GOOD!

The local people ate a lot of rice and beans. We made rice and beans with eggs and local salsa most mornings. It was yummy.

To mix things up a little, we decided to make french toast. No maple syrup, so we made our own pineapple syrup. So, so yummy. We did that after my parents left, and we felt bad they missed out. My parents were there for the first half of our trip.

I loved the beach. We had it mostly to ourselves. We only shared it with the other guests at Congo-Bongo. The water was warm and clear. The sand sloped out gradually, so you could walk way out.

We got married right here. So those wedding pictures were all taken on this beach we got to enjoy through out our trip. The path we were on in the jungle is the one you walk through to get here. You get to see more of how beautiful it all is in those pictures.

We also got some R&R. It was a wonderful trip. This place came highly recommended from a friend. We would highly recommend it as well. It was AMAZING!

What a dream. That about sums it up for me. What a dream I never dared dreaming!

Costa Rica

Okay, this is what we have been up to. We are still in Costa Rica. I will post more when we get back, but for now you can check out this link.

(http://web.mac.com/crwphoto3/Site/kathleen+kent.html)

Baking

I really like to bake. The problem has been my oven. Every time I bake, I end up cursing the darn thing. It cooks so hot from the bottom, and cooks very un-evenly. I adjust my rack to the highest point, rotate pans at least 3 times during baking, and end up with an almost appropriately baked good, sometimes.

Then I go to my mom's house and bake. I LOVE her oven. It has this system called "accubake." I can put a pan anywhere, and leave it alone throughout the entire baking process. I can even bake more than one pan at a time. Everything still comes out baked evenly.

Check this out

This is a new (used) oven in MY KITCHEN!!! Besides the glass top, look at what else it has...I am jumping up and down with joy! Kent found it on Craig's list, and bought it for me.

Of-course, I had to try it out. These are cooling right now. These cookies came from two pans, baked at the same time (only I can really appreciate that fact).

New Pics

Our friend, Tanner Peterson, took our pictures. It was a last minute thing out at his parent's house. My girls were being less than cooperative for our group picture. We have lots of shots with silly faces. Check out the background though, a beautiful winter sunset in Idaho.

Then he took some AMAZING pictures of Camryn and Kendra. He has always taken wonderful pictures for our entire family. Check out his website if you want more info on him tannerpetersonpro.com
Camryn

Kendra