The new Mr. & Mrs. Gray!

Aaron's brother Chad got married in SLC, so we all went to Utah to celebrate! It was a very fun time with the whole family and some good friends there with us. We rented a house for the week to all be together, rather than all getting hotel rooms and it worked out so much better and was just about the same price as getting a hotel!

Here are some pictures from the 5 days we were there. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera at the house the day of the wedding so I have no pics of the wedding on my camera! :( Luckily, my sis-in-laws took some good pics that I stole from their facebook and blogs! :)

Brin and Collin playing cups at the restaurant.Aaron required us to go take some pictures outside the football stadium at BYU so here they are!

Us with the Cougar and Lauren and Brinley lurking in the background! :)OK, I put this in here because I make myself laugh. I just was goofing around and didn't know that Erica was taking the picture then! It's hard to tell which one is the real cougar here isn't it!? :)So we were trying to get a picture with all 3 of the kids together while we were there. We had planned on doing this with all of them coordinated in the backyard at the house we were staing at. Well, as always, the children had other ideas! We got a couple OK ones of Brady and Collin together but other than that, it was pretty much a grand failure. But it was also pretty funny to watch the "train wreck" too!

We got out the bubble wand to keep the babies attention. Well, that proved to be a bigger problem than the one we were trying to fix!As you can see below, Brady slung bubbles all over Collin's head and then said the most hilarious thing "I didn't see that one coming!" Where did he get that from???? I don't know but it was so funny!After that, it pretty much all fell apart!! This one says it all!Aaron and his siblings Lauren, Chad and Erica at the rehearsal dinner.And here's the big day! They were both glowing and so happy. The wedding was beautiful and so was the reception. Look how gorgeous Arianne looks!It's so fun to have another Gray sister in the family! The whole day was perfect.....except I didn't bring my camera so I don't have many pictures but still.This one is adorable of Brady with Brinley The whole Gray family and friends that were there with us. And here's us! I am just going to say that I don't like this picture of myself because this angle along with the style of the dress I am wearing makes me look about 3 times wider than I think I am! But don't my boys look adorable?? They're wearing the ties I made for them! So, that's about all the pictures I have but really they could not describe how much fun we had and how nice the wedding was!

Welcome to the family Arianne!! Love you!

Preschool Graduation

I can't believe Brady is done with his first year of preschool already! He will be in the pre-k/5 class next year and he can't wait to get back to school. He was kind of sad when I was telling him this was his last week. He's still at the age when he wants to be in school and doesn't understand why there is no school in the summer!
I was there by myself trying to keep Collin quiet so I only got one dark picture and a little video. I tried loading the video but it's not loading because it is too big I guess. Anyway, they sang a couple songs and they got their little certificates, had some refreshements and that was about it. Cute, fun and nothing too formal. Here's Brady with his teachers Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Bello

The next day they had his class party at Jumpin Jax. I only got a couple pictures because he was literally bouncing all over the place! You can see his sweaty hair here!

I wish he was more in this picture but these big boxing gloves were hard to hold and he was bouncing all over the place!

He will miss preschool this summer, but he'll have plenty of little boys in the neighborhood to keep him company.

Little Sadiebug's birthday

My sweet little niece Sadie turned 2! It's so much more fun to help plan and decorate for a girl's birthday than it is for a boy. And since I'm heavy on the boys department here at Chez Gray, it's fun that I have 3 little nieces that I can have my fill of girls! It's been nice living here in NE so that I can travel back to Il pretty easily for the weekend to be there for birthdays. Too bad TX isn't as close because I didn't get to go for Brin's birthday :(
Anyway, I helped Melissa out with the invitations and decorations and of course got to be there for the partay!! Everything red, black and white polka dots and ladybugs to decorate the basement! We had to move the picnic inside because the weather was not cooperating. 2nd year in a row for Sadie's party that it was supposed to be outside but got moved inside! Melissa friends....er....I mean... she painted these cute little ladybug rocks as take home gifts. :) I have mine in our front flower bed. They are so cute!
My boys posing in the "photo booth"Little Miss sampling the cupcakes!Right in the middle of opening presents, she opened a princess dress-up dress and stripped right down in front of everyone to try it on! Gotta love the little cute cheek hanging out of the diaper! :)So proud of herself!

Even Grandma Gray got to come and enjoy the party and her boys!Pinata!!Phillips fam What a mess!!! Love that girl! Happy birthday Sadiebug!

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day with all my boys! I love these 2 cuties so much and I am so glad that I get to be their Mom!
Here we are after church together.

I got a cute flower, a pretty butterfly he made at school and some candy from Brady. Aaron made me a delicious steak, potato and zucchini dinner on the grill and we enjoyed the beautiful weather we had here on Sunday. I didn't have to cook or clean so to me, that's the perfect dinner! And the dinner itself was good too!

Then we had some red velvet cupcakes for dessert that I had made earlier in the week.

I love being a Mom even though it is the most difficult job in the world! I just hope that I can raise some "good American boys" as Aaron put it!
I also want to say that I love my Mom too. She has always been a great example and the most kind and loving person I know. Love you so much Mom!
And thanks to my mother in law, who I also love (and I'm not just saying that to be nice-I really do mean it!). She has raised a wonderful American boy. I'm a lucky girl!

And since they turned out so cute I had to take a picture and share. I decided that I wanted to make little gifts for my 4 year old's Moms that I teach at church. I've seen these jarred cupcakes all over the internet in various forms. A pint sized jar seemed too big and I didn't have enough of the same size of jars to do. But I did have a ton of baby food jars that I had been saving for "someday". So I cut the cupcake in half and put the bottom half in the bottom of the jar. I layered with frosting, the top half and more frosting. I had to cover the lids so they didn't look like baby food jars so I used some scrap fabric with some ribbon (that I had also save for "something"). I found a free printable online and tied on the spoon and here they are! My cute little red baby cakes!

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!

This picture has been on my phone for a while and I forgot to upload it. We finally took Brady to the dentist for the first time. I was going to take him before we left Tucson but with worrying about being pregnant, Aaron deploying, selling the house and the baby and everything last year, somehow it didn't happen. So we found a nice dentist here and they were so good with him! They give the kids sunglasses and they get to look at the x-rays on the computer screen in front of them as they take them. They are all really nice and Brady was so good the entire time. B-boy is growing up!

And speaking of growing up...Look who learned a new trick!! He's finally starting to crawl full out and getting really good at it in addition to pulling up on everything he sees! One second he was standing at the bottom step holding on and 2 seconds later he was up 3 stairs!

I had to get the gate out for these stairs now, in addition to the one I already had up for the basement stairs.

He's been having fun playing at the gate now too.

It's hard watching these boys grow up at times because they are just changing every day. But it is fun to see all of the things that they are learning and doing.