Sam's Birthday!

We celebrated Sam's 24Th birthday in Portland with all the office. I made him a great dinner Lasagna, fruit salad, and green salad. We were stuffed.



I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said ice cream cake. So i got online and found this fun recipe for ice cream sandwich cake. All you do is a layer of ice cream sandwiches then some whipped topping with smashed oreos. another layer of sandwiches and then the whipped topping again. then we sprinkled broken up snickers cuz they are Sam's favorite. It turned out really good though.



You might be wondering why we have 2 cakes? Well this is what happened. Since i had never made this cake before i didn't know how big it was going to be and how good. So Jordan called to ask if we were going to have cake and ice cream. and we told him for sure the ice cream but probably not the cake. So the nice guy he is, he made Sam an awesome cake with 24 candles on it:) and we had to use lids to food containers for plates but they worked surprisingly well..


It was a really fun day Sam got new clothes, a tennis racket, a amazon gift card.... It was great thanks everyone for making his day!

Our trip home to Utah

So we looked and looked for deals on flights and someone told us about the southwest "Ding". Which is really useful. You sign up for it and every time you get on the computer and there is a deal out for southwest it gives you a little ding, and up pops the list of deals. So we found a deal for right after the 4Th of July which we thought would be prefect since everyone would be done traveling from the holiday and it wouldn't be packed. Our flight to leave Portland was at 6:45 am on a wed morning. So we figured we would be fine leaving our house at 5:45 getting there a little before 6. Well we were wrong! The line to check luggage was huge only for southwest of course since they have stellar deals out. But we finally got threw it with 20 min to spare so we hurry to find our terminal but forgot about security... I don't know if Portland's airport is always slow or what but that took forever too. so we are going threw security and of course Sam forgot to lay the laptop down so they had to run it again, then we check where we are supposed to be and start speed walking. We are about halfway there and this lady yells at us are you going to salt lake? if you are you better run cuz we are shutting the gates. So we take off running and get there at 6:44 just in time for take off... I am never going to get to the airport with less then an hour before the flight again!


So we get off the plane and we get to see cute Elli and Lichelle waiting for us waving the welcome home sign for us! So fun. We got to do so many fun things. Play with Brad and Sean.. Brendans birthday party. A party for Sam with all our friends. Lagoon twice, once with Andersons and once with Thackers. Girls day where we gave each other pedicures and face masks. We got to go boating on Papas boat, then break Papas boat(not so fun, and hopefully we can fix it or get a new one!). Play fun games and go on hikes. Go swimming in the Murdocks pool. And we also got to sleep over at everybodys house's. I didn't get to many pictures but here are a few. It really was a sweet trip! Thanks to all of our wonderful families:)



And just so you all know this is how the flight home went. We got there with just over an hour to spare and of course it was completely dead. Got threw checking in about 2 min and then security maybe 5 so we had a long nap before the flight. It always goes like that! I for sure take being early and have to wait over running and stressing and almost missing our flight!

4th of July and fireworks in Portland

The 4th was so fun we went to a park and played volleyball and ate subway all day long. Then we headed down to the waterfront to see the fireworks. We sat and played games while we waited for it to get dark.

I could not believe how many people were there they lined the bridges and all the waterfront.They shoot the fireworks off this huge boat in the river. We had to stand just to be able to see over all the people. Its crazy all the different people who live here. Even though we were away from our family it still turned out to be a pretty good day!

Our Oregon Coast Trip

So we decided to take a trip out to the beach to escape the heat the day before the 4th of July. It was the best day to go but everyone else had the same idea. The drive usually takes about an hour and a half but with everyone trying to get there or go camping it took us about two and a half hours. It was a fun ride with Sam, Blake, and I jam'n out to U2 :) We finally got there and it was beautiful.

This is a a rock pool that everyone can go look in for little creatures that might be swimming around in there. Then the huge rock has been known to have The Puffin bird. I can't remember the technical name for them.

We went on the perfect day, everyone had told us to make sure we brought a jacket and long pants because it is always colder at the coast. We wore our swimsuits and were just fine, no wind and sunlight made it a great day.

Sam and Jeff played baseball while Brenda and I went sightseeing on the beach.

We played a good three or four hours of sand volleyball! It was really fun but we were all feeling it the next day.

So there are 8 of us up here in Portland selling food storage, and we have nights off so what do we do with all that time? We play games!!! This isn't the whole group. We play all different games from "The Great Dalmooty" (I have no idea how to spell that. It is also known as scum) to "Cranium". It is really allot of fun. We always end up staying way to late so we can play just one more round!

This is Jeff and Brenda. They are from LA and Washington. But will be going to BYU next semester. We have quickly become friends. They have the same couch's as we do if you didn't notice and basically everything else. Just allot nicer TV :) They were out one day and drove by a huge garage sell. So they stopped to check it out and hit the jack pot! They got this game of "Life" really cheap, also some movies. The best part is what they got us though.

They got us this wonderful microwave! For only 5 dollars!!!! Thank you so much you guys its so great not to wait for 20 min to warm up leftovers! We only brought up one car so we didn't have much room for big things. We also didn't really even have a microwave we just used the Stokers. Now we have one! YAY!!!

Portland Japanese Garden

This is the view from up on the hill where the Japanese Garden is located!

The Flat Garden.
We were taking cool pics like this, then we looked up and saw all these people looking at us and decided it probably was not such a good idea. People might have gotten the wrong idea maybe thinking we were making fun of it or something!

Heavenly Falls.
We got some good ideas about what we are going to put in our yard eventually when we get one! its going to be sweet and very calming and tranquil.

We thought this was going to be a way good pic but my eyes are closed:)

Natural Garden.
We started with the tour but that lasted about 3 min due to Sams LARGE attention span.. We then ventured off on our own.

Portland Temple!

We got the great opportunity to go to the Portland Temple.









It is such a gorgeous temple and in such a perfect place. We got to walk around the grounds for awhile and it was so relaxing and calm.












Sam is so handsome I love to take
pictures of him and he makes fun
of me for it!