am i really 25?

first of all, thank you for the birthday wishes! i don't know how i got so lucky with sean. but i sure do thank my lucky stars everyday for him. he is definitely a keeper. he is my best friend. and makes me laugh every single day. he loves his family so much, and would drop anything to help them out. he is a great man. i sure do love him. his post was really sweet. it made my day. man, i had a great birthday. i know that 25 is not old. but i still can't help but feel a little old. 25 just sounds so much older than 24 for some reason. i have never been one of those people that wished they were older. i have always hated growing up. i always wanted to live in neverland like on peter pan when i was little. haha, oh well. it was a great birthday and i loved every bit of it. 

my birthday wasn't a huge big event. there wasn't a big party or anything. but it just seemed like every little thing that happened made me happy. and usually i hate mondays. but it was a pretty good monday. the day before on fathers day we celebrated that and my birthday with sean's family by having an awesome dinner made by sean's mom. i love her. it was so sweet of her to do that. she made some delicious scotcheroos for dessert because she knows how much i love those. she makes the best scotcheroos. it was a great day. then i woke up on my birthday morning to moses snuggling up to me.  then i didn't think that i would have enough conditioner left to condition my hair. but magically i did. then? i had a rice krispy treat for breakfast. awesome. then when we went outside to get in the car to leave for work? one of our yellow flowers had finally bloomed. i heard my favorite song on the way to work. then when i got there my wonderful friend lee brought me a HUGE diet dr. pepper. and she brought my twin sis maddie a latte. it was awesome. then my mom treated us to lunch at the slab. our favorite pizza place in the world. you need to go get the buffalo wing pizza. NOW. trust me. go do it. it will change your life. we try (and are not always successful at it) to only eat out once a week and when we do? we go to the slab on fridays. 

then my friend sara got me a gift card and some white spray paint! because you can never have too much white spray paint :) lee brought us some beautiful flowers, treats, gift cards, and a coupon for a free massage from her. she is the best massage therapist around. we got lots of birthday wishes on facebook and it was just all around a really great day. i felt so happy. after work sean and i decided to celebrate by going golfing. i knew he wanted to go so bad. we have been before together, but not in a while. it was a lot of fun. even though i lost a lot of balls. meh.. oh well! after that we went and grabbed some cafe rio and took it home to watch the bachelorette. it was such a great birthday. i feel truly blessed and lucky. 

this month has been so busy. sean and i planned to go up to salt lake for my birthday and possibly spend the night at the anniversary inn because we have a gift card there. but there just doesn't seem to be anytime this month to go. we have had weddings galore this summer. i have 3 cousins getting married within a few weeks of each other. 2 on the same day! we have lots of family stuff going on and things are just crazy. next week sean is going to pebble beach, california with my family. haha. i know. without me. he is not a horrible husband though. trust me. i am making him go. (not like that is hard though.. i mean it's a vacation.. in pebble beach. a golfing mans dream!) i have been there several times with my family. we go pretty much every summer. the first year we were married, sean, lee, maddie and i headed up there a few days afer my family left. sean got really sick on the way there and what should have been a 14 hour drive took about 20 hours. poor sean. it was not a good experience. and we only got to be there for like 3 days. i wanted him to go again and make up for the last trip. also? he works so hard. it was a rough year school wise. and he needs the break before he jumps back into 2 more hard semesters. plus he pretty much will be golfing the entire time while he is there since there are like 20 golf courses in the area. like i said, a golfing mans dream. not that i don't enjoy going though. but i plan to spend at least one entire full day here in bed. hahaha. no sean to wake me up by vacuuming. and i won't even feel guilty at all. but i will sure miss him. 

so why am i not going? well to be honest? i don't want to leave moses again. i know that is silly of me. but it's just too hard. i know i could find people willing to do it but it's still hard. i just feel guilty for leaving him and for making people take care of him. and also? lee and maddie and i work together and we can't all be gone at the same time. plus i don't have as much vacation time left as sean does. i feel good about staying but i will miss sean and my family a ton! sean and i haven't been apart for more than 3 days since we have been dating. it will be so fun for him though and i'm excited to bond with moses. plus we are going to see his brother in colorado a few weeks after so we have that to look forward to. and we get to take moses! 

anyway, i didn't mean to go off on that tangent. i mostly just meant to say that when he gets back we will try and go up to salt lake. for now sean got me this thing called lightscoop. let me preface this by saying that i love the camera that my sister gave me a few months ago. i have realized though how awesome natural light is and i hate having to use the flash. i don't think that the flash light is very flattering. it blows out a lot of things and can just be too harsh sometimes. it creates red eyes and blown out backgrounds. but sometimes when you are inside and it is late at night? you have no choice. well i heard about this thing called lightscoop that you slip on to the top of your camera and a mirror on it redirects the flash off the wall to display a more flattering light on the subject. i got it in the mail yesterday and with the help of my sister maddie we tried it out today. i usually shoot on auto on this camera. but when you use the lightscoop they recommend using it on manual and adjusting the settings so that you get the most amount of flash. it works better with the lightscoop. here are some of the pictures that i took with it today.

keep in mind that i took these on manual and didn't adjust the settings more than once. so the pictures don't necessarily look as good as they could have on auto. but since you need to set them on manual to use the lightscoop, this is how they turned out.

my wonderful model maddie.. don't kill me for posting these maddie!

the beautiful flowers that lee gave me on my birthday! the flash doesn't look too bad on this but notice how it kinda blows out the background? the light is much calmer with the lightscoop.

my computer. see how the glare is gone with the lightscoop?

sean doing what he loves to do..

our laundry closet. yes. it's in a closet. and we love it that way.
but i guess anything is better than having it in the kitchen like it was in our old apartment.
but hey? it was extra counterspace actually and we really enjoyed that! no joke.

much more natural calm light. the flash one still looks okay,
 but i like it with the lightscoop better. the paint color is much more accurate.

oh and in case you were wondering? that basket full of laundry may or may not have

been sitting in that exact spot for more than 10 days. and it's possible that dryer door has been

open for just as long. i know.. i'm the worlds best housewife :) but who cares? certainly not me.

and i married mr. housewife.. so it works out k? ;)

anyway.. i love it! i am really excited about it.  i like how it creates more natural light and less harshness on the subject. here are some pictures i took with them later. it was a good night. sean was playing the guitar and moses was listening, watching, and sometimes singing along with him. gosh i sure do love my boys.

anyway, i am no pro and don't intend to be, but it sure is nice having another option for 

taking pictures inside! thanks sean! i sure do love you and hope you never forget that. 

thank you for a wonderful birthday.