Bridal Shower

Monica had her Bridal Shower this weekend! I love going to Bridal Showers. It's fun to see new "brides to be". It was a great shower. There was a great turnout and she received some really nice gifts.

Here is the Bride To Be...Miss Monica...or should we say the future Mrs. Shipley?!?!?!

Here are Kristen and I. I love having her in town!

Here is Aunt Susie. We were able to have some of her famous Carmel brownies!!!

Here is my Mom and Aunt...

Here is Monica opening up Kristen's gift...Kristen and I were a little scared because we were the only guests who bought Monica lingerie...lol

Kristen also bought her some Hersheys syrup...no one really got the joke...once again...lol

Here is Kristen laughing hysterically (my little movie star)!!!

Here is a gift bag we liked...

It was a great shower and we are excited to have a new sister in law soon!!!

Bowler Update...

Happy New Years!!!
A New Years goal I have every year is to be better at blogging. It may be the same goal this year. :)
Last year was great year! It had it's ups and downs (mostly ups). I am happy to start a New Year. John and I have set some great goals for the coming year.


Not a whole lot has happened since my last post. I can't believe how fast the holidays flew by.For Christmas this year we were able to spend it with both families in Woodruff and in Tucson It was a lot of fun seeing both families!

John celebrated a Birthday!

For New Years, we went Quading, out to dinner and then to the show (Sherlock Holmes).

Scott gets married in 2 weeks. We are doing their Bridals tomorrow afternoon which should be fun. They are a fun couple and we are excited for them. :)

Alexis moved to Australia a couple of weeks ago. It's weird not having her here. She seems to be having a blast. It's summer over there right now, so she has been hanging at the beach. LUCKY!!!

Kristen is coming out this week with Elle. She just got an IPhone which is exciting (aka we can text now)!

That's about all that's going on right now.
I Promise to be a better blogger.!!!

Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!!! I'm thankful that the holidays are finally here.
This year we were able to host Thanksgiving!
Here are some pics from the fun day...
John and Scott in the kitchen before everything started...

John with the Turkey (our first Turkey making experience...by ours, I mean John...lol).




Here are Scott, Monica, and Grandma Gray...

Here are Darl and Ross...

Here is Alexis and Amelia...

Here are the dogs trapped inside our bedroom...

Here are Amelia, Darl, and Ross...

Here are the Gray Grandparents...

Here are Scott and Monica...they just got engaged! Congrats!!!

Mom and Scott...

Grandma, me, and Alexis...

The rolls...

We had a slight mishap in the kitchen...good thing they were old dish towels...lol

Here we are with the masterpiece...aka Turkey...

Here is John cutting the Turkey...

And here is the after party...Nap time begins!


It was a lot of fun having family come to our house this year. I really enjoy Thanksgiving because it is a good time to reflect on the things that are positive and things that we are thankful for. I've had a lot going on the past couple of months and I haven't taken the time to be as thankful as I should. In fact, I have been quite the opposite. This weekend was good reminder that I have tons to be thankful for and also a good reminder that everyone has trials...and I need to be thankful for those too. :)

Hiking!!!

I've been really into hiking lately so for some reason. I'm SOOOOO happy that the weather is getting nicer outside.
when we were in Tucson, my parents took us on a hike. It was fun (except when my dad realized we were going the wrong way and we had to hike back up a hill)!

We found a rock in the shape of a heart. :)

Here are my parents...

Here are John and I...

Here are John and I hiking at Lost Dutchman's on my Birthday (we always take a hike on my Birthday...it's a fun tradition)!

Birthday in Tucson

This year for my Birthday, we went down to Tucson to celebrate with my Grandma Shipley. My mom made her famous cake that I absolutely love!!!

Cardinals Game

John and I went to a Pre-Season Cards game this month. It was a lot of fun! We even won! I wanted to make sure to get to a game this year because most of the games are on Sunday and this game was on a Thursday.


We had a blast!!!

Steve Chandler

On Friday, I was able to go to a conference with Steve Chandler as the speaker. I had never really heard of him before...but apparently he has written like 30 self help books...ha He gave a great seminar on how to become better motivated though the everyday language we use. One my my take aways is that we need to avoid using the word "should". The word should could come across as indecisive and negative at times. I'm going to give it a try this week avoiding the word "should".

Steve also said that one way that we can help motivate ourselves to to think positive about every situation we are placed in. It was a really good conference, but everything he said were things that we all should know as adults. All of his points seemed very common sense to me. If you have a good attitude, you will be happy. If you have a crappy attitude, you will be miserable. I suppose it was a good reminder of those simple truths. :)

On more exciting news...we got another boat. We got rid of our last boat because John was having surgery and we thought that he wouldn't be able to boat anymore (clearly we were wrong). He is doing great and we thought it would be fun to be boat people again!!! I'll take better pics of the boat when we go out. We went out last night...but it was dark.