Pioneer Day & My 28th Birthday

My birthday and the 24th celebration kind of ran together this year so 2 posts in 1! This year was a good one for sure. My mom took the day off of work and spent the 24th with us. She treated us to Olive Garden as an early birthday dinner. These 2 little yahoos are not the easiest to take out to eat, but they did relatively well and I loved hanging out with my mom. They love their Mimi too!

After we got home from dinner we walked down to the parade on Main St. Earlier that morning Lisa and I set up blankets and chairs and we picked a pretty dang good spot all things considered. We met her and Tori down there right as the parade began. It's really the only parade that I'm down with because 1) it's close and 2) it's in the evening. While it was still extremely bright and hot, the kids loved watching the parade and Fitz especially loved all of the cars and trucks. There are fireworks that night, but after getting second dinner (ha!) with Jeremy's family, we all pooped out and just relaxed for the rest of the evening. It was a good day.

 I lucked out this year for my birthday. Jeremy was able to take the day off, along with a few others, and we had the most relaxing time. Obviously, I'm all about that relaxation right now.

We started out the day at Corner Bakery. We ate our weight in pancakes and eggs and the kids mostly behaved. Jeremy took Ellie to get me balloons the night before and she could hardly handle waiting to give them to me. After brunch we just went home and hung out. The house was clean and the kids played while we lounged and watched New Girl. So nice! After we went to Smiths when Ellie decided that she needed to make me a cake. We had lunch in their food court and gathered the necessary supplies. She was so excited and Jeremy was so patient as they made the cake, which was a pink and purple cake, BTW. Her call.

Soon after we popped the cake in the oven my mom showed up with even more treats to babysit so Jeremy and I could go out to eat. She was left with the task of decorating the cake with Ellie and after prepping her for that we were off! I didn't get any pictures of the 2 of us, but we dined at Cheesecake Factory and thoroughly enjoyed having a hot meal that we didn't have to share with anyone but each other. It was so nice.

When we got home the cake was decorated and we celebrated with the pinkest and purplest cake known the man. The kids sang their little hearts out and even though Ellie wasn't the biggest fan of my cake, I sure was!

I'm learning in my old age, that the best times are the simple ones where I'm surrounded by those who love me and I love more than anything. My birthday was completely perfect and I wouldn't have changed a thing. Like I've said before, I've struck gold in the eternal family department.

DID YOU KNOW?!

...that you can now shop online at H&M? Not that it's a totally huge deal because I have 3 within a 30 miles radius. Except that it is huge because who really wants to go and fight the crowds only to find out that your size jeans are STILL sold out?

So, online it is!

Also, Happy August! I've been kind of looking forward to August because come this next Wednesday I'll be exactly 2 months from my due date. When I say 2 months, that kind of sounds like, oh forever, but if I think about the last 2 months, and the 2 before that, they've kind of scarily flown by. Like not messing around at all, those last 4 months. Of course I can't speak too kindly about the months before that because, well, I hated them.

I was whining to myself yesterday because I am boring and have had nothing to write about and then realized that I haven't written about a few good things. So, I'll start with last Sunday. My cute future Mexican missionary brother got his Eagle, and when I say got his Eagle, I actually mean by the skin of his teeth and the tiny hairs on his chinny chin chin. I think he was reviewed and approved a whole 48 hours before his 18th birthday. That's how Micah does it though, when HE wants to not when everyone else in the whole entire world tells him too. I mean, that boy has started more papers than I can count at 11:30 pm. The papers are due the next day. But, he always manages to come through. He's crafty like that. Like one time he called me up at 10 pm and asked me if I had read any good books lately. Of course I didn't think it was weird that my 17 year old brother was calling me up at 10 pm on a Thursday wanting to chat about books, because that's totally in character of him.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I had just finished something like "The Help" and was feeling very enthusiastic about it. I told him basically the whole story and answered his very specific questions, like "what were the social themes and conflicts that came up?" and "How did the author engage the reader...bla bla bla." I was just excited because we were having a very deep and intellectual conversation.

The next weekend he called me up and thanked me for the "A" he received on his book report. Ugh, who even does book reports anymore above the 3rd grade?

So, we love this boy and were so proud to see him accomplish this great thing. And honestly, this is the last straw, I am going to start hauling my camera around again because really, these blurry pictures. So dumb.

And just so we don't drag this into another unnecessary blog post, my birthday week, it was fabulous. I ate oodles and gobs of good food, spent time with my main squeeze, and FINALLY got the couch cover I've been dreaming about for oh, 10 months. Basically, I'm spoiled.

How's that for THE dorkiest picture ever, but what they hey. I was so proud of my bib.

And how was the dirtiest pond in all of SLC? Glorious. We basked in it's stink for a whole 20 minutes sweating our guts out, pedaling at about 0.0000000006 mph, but we did love it.

FUN FACT: I finagled 2 meals at The Cheesecake Factory within 5 days. Talented or...? Chicken Costaletta has my heart.

AAANNNNNDDD...if you can tell me where this fabulous work of art ice cream is from, we'll be eternal friends. But only if you want. And we must go together. I'll buy.

HOW THE RUESCH'S DID THE FOURTH

Our lovely 4th celebrations started nice and early...literally around 2 in the AM. We had some sprinkler, puppy and A/C issues that took a couple hours to sort through. I didn't stress too much because I was utterly positive naps would be had that day, you know, in celebrations. Spoiler alert: they didn't. My family was set to meet us at Kaysville's fine dining establishment, Granny Annies, but much to our chagrin they were closed, so we opted for another breakfast favorite, Moore's in Ogden. As evidenced by the photo, we were all a little pooped, but we all managed to get through our heaping plates of breakfast goodness.

During breakfast I had to document the largest blister brought on by a sunburn, it literally made my insides churn. This blister is owned by the brother in the yellow hat. Life guarding has taken it's toll this summer. The saddest part? He's jetting off to Mexico on Sunday. We basically need to send him wrapped up in millions of aloe leaves.

Kaysville gets pretty exciting on the 4th., so exciting in fact that it took us about 20 minutes to get from the freeway off ramp back to our house, which normally takes maybe 4 minutes? It was fun to drive around and people watch. We got back from breakfast right before the parade began, so we were most definitely in the thick of it. We didn't attend this year, but we're close enough that I felt like we were at the front lines. I'm also happy to say that there were no attempts to park in front of our driveway this year. Always a win. It's a love/hate thing being so close to all of the festivities.

Once we got home and started doing laundry and some tidying up for that evening we noticed that despite our A/C's best efforts it had gotten 2 degrees HOTTER. My stomach dropped, not in the good way. I was about to pop a cake in the oven, use the stove and have a little dinner party. Plus, A/C thing tend to not come cheap and paying for things like that make me strongly dislike owning an old home. We tried all of our tricks, but to no avail. So we gave up for a bit and went to run some errands, a little later than planned, thus no nap. I was hoping by some miracle our A/C would just start running when we got back...but it didn't. Luckily, by another miracle our neighbor was able to come over and take a look for us. Can I just say that we lucked out in the neighbor department. This family is one of our favorites. They're the most friendly and kind people and they're always willing to help, and boy, have we needed and so appreciated their help.

To diagnose our A/C we had to turn the heat up...full blast, 90 degrees. At this point, it was down to crunch time so I was baking and cooking and running around like a mad women. We got our house up to a steamy 85 degrees, but thank the heavens above! our A/C was back in action. I also took a moment to glace at myself in the mirror and found that I had turned a lovely shade of shiny beet red, making me also very thankful for a hard working BB cream.

That evening, in a still sweltering house, we had some family over. They all came in stages, but by the time we were all there together grilling steaks, boiling corn, and frosting cakes it was a little bit of chaos. It was still a little warm but HALLELUJAH that our A/C was all healed up and working hard again to cool things down. I live for the day that I have even just a tiny bit bigger of a house. I love entertaining, I just don't have enough room to put everyone! Regardless, we're so glad that each and every one of them chose to spend their night with us. We're pretty infatuated with our families. I don't know what we'd do without them.

This is one of the worst quality pictures ever, but can we all just take a moment to enjoy Brookie's grin? If that doesn't make your day even slightly better there might be something wrong with you. She was everyone's entertainment for the evening and pulled off a 5-star show. My family is enamored with her and her cute little voice. She's a hoot.

^^ This is kind of what it looked like while everyone was crammed into Ruesch Manor. However, once the dust settled we had a delicious dinner of steak, potatoes, corn, and a plethora of other things. It did not disappoint. My grandma kept us entertained with her trivia questions for most of dinner and it showed me that I know not a lot. It's fine, I'll always have my looks, right?

Here's that bump picture I've been promising for about forever! Yesterday I was 26w5d, so basically 27 weeks. So, we're a little off, but we had to document Ellie's first fireworks She was at the perfect stage to enjoy them because apparently her hearing is to the point that she can hear the goings on outside of the womb. We better start watching what we say. She demonstrated her new ability to hear with a startled jump after each loud firework, like clockwork. I'm thinking she liked them.

Earlier that day j.rue went over to the park to stake out our spots. We have the set-up pretty figured out now and I think it's safe to say we have "a spot". It's definitely become a family tradition over the past 4 years and we'll take anyone and everyone that's willing to come with us. Kaysville fireworks are our favorite!

Just so you know, Brookie's bloomers were to die for. Her mommy does a good job dressing her for the occasion. She was so excited for the fireworks. She kept telling us how big they were going to be and then broke out some of her best dance moves. I hope she can teach some to Ellie.

I'm all for loving my body, I really really am trying hard, but one thing that I'm excited about (of course besides getting Ellie here safe and sound) is to get rid of the pregnancy face. I have my workout regimen scheduled and waiting. But until then, I'll keep to my 30 minutes when I get to it and pay attention to not eat more than...2 pieces of cake. It's the little things, right?

Once the show had ended we headed back to our house, said our goodbyes, and went straight to bed. We knew we would be feelin' it in the morning when our 6 am wake-up calls came. Little did we know that fireworks would be going off until almost 1. Joy to the world. Oh well, it's only once a year, right? We slept like babies.

Even though everything didn't go 100% as I had dreamed (really, does it ever?) it was still a fabulous fourth and we loved spending it with the fam. We really wouldn't have it any other way.

FAMILY WEEKENDS AND THE FOURTH!

This last weekend j.rue and I were finally able to take my family up to Fairview. We've been wanting to do this for the past year, but schedules are hectic and it's difficult to pull off. Luckily everyone had at least one spare day and we were all able to head up. J.rue, Cale, and I headed up Friday afternoon, puppies in tow, and got everything set up. Then everyone else trickled in. It was a nice relaxing weekend. Honestly, just what the doctor had ordered for each of us. 

J.rue had been dying to take my brother out on the 4-wheelers for about forever, so they spent a good chunk of their time riding around and getting filthy dirty. Golf and swimming were attemped, but things didn't totally go our way, and we had to resort to more 4-wheeling and TV watching. 

I made a personal goal to keep my activies confined to reading, sleeping, and watching Veronica Mars. I'm proud to say that I accomplished all goals with flying colors. While the boys were out running a muck my mom, the puppies and I spent a good 3 hours doing this:

She would totally kill me for posting this, but she doesn't read my blog so...

There will be a total of 0 pictures of me in this post because I also made a conscious effort to put 0 make-up on my face. It was glorious. I also let my hair run wild and free, so to say I was lookin rough by the end of the weekend would be an understatement. But, I'm a firm believer that your skin needs a breather every once in a while. The opportunities don't come around too often, but when they do, I take full advantage.

The sad thing about my vacation is that I forgot to charge my phone. So, lots of things were missed like our shakes, family dinners, swimming attempts, and well, that's about all. This weekend was a little bitter sweet as well because the cute boy in the middle of the picture above (who is completely incapable of letting me take a decent picture of him) got his mission papers put in on Tuesday. To celebrate my mom and two youngest brothers are jetting off to Mexico this Sunday. How's that for an unfair grown-up moment? I suppose it would be quite difficult to save for a baby, Hawaii, and Mexico all in one year. So, the next big Kwallek/Lasater/Ruesch family vacay? Oh probably in 2018 when the youngest gets home from his mission.

That's also the sad part about growing up. Everyone has to go their separate ways, at least for a while. I'm just thankful we were able to get away, even just for a few days. But now I'm just making myself sad, and that's ridiculous because all of these hoodlums will be at my house tomorrow evening for a BBQ and some fireworks. We'll be getting plenty of each other over the next few months. I just hope Micah's mission call will hold out past October 7th, but if not, I'll survive. He'll be where he needs to be and I'm so proud of him for that. 

I really do love each and every holiday and can't wait for tomorrow. Usually we would head to the town breakfast (outside) and then sit at the ridiculous parade (that people ALREADY have their spots staked out for - literally 100s of chairs - that parade is NOT good), but this year because I am such a wussy we'll be doing things like going to movies, going to breakfast at an indoor facility, and maybe taking a nap. Of course I will be braving the heat for the fireworks show, but I can't promise much else.

Have a happy and safe one. Oh and don't forget to give our country a kiss tomorrow. Mmmk?