a summer wedding.

a week ago my uncle got married to this beauty.

...in these beautiful botanical gardens...

 ...and even more exciting is that i now have an adorable little cousin...

 as always ash and i pose for a few pictures when together

ashlee is my aunt. but she is only twelve years older than me so her and i are very close

 this picture debuts my "darn now i am not the only niece anymore"face

 i love this little sweetie already.

she is a sassafras in every sense of the word.

my mom says i am too and that is why we get along.

i would beg to differ but i am no longer in denial and openly accept that i was born with my sassy pants on. 

 karston wasn't so sure how to handle that the new cousin is a girl.

she has lots of energy and always wants to fight him.

they are a hoot to watch become friends.

**sidenote: the waitress brought karston a glass of champagne on accident. it was supposed to be sparkling cider. the kid took a huge chug of it and about spit it out on the table. i don't think we will have to worry about him being tempted to have a glass ever again**

every time we turn around she is doing things to make us laugh.

at the wedding she sang me the farting song her friend made up. 

we heard the farting song more than once that night because it "got stuck in her head."

her momma was probably not too pleased but i couldn't help but laugh.

 the day after the wedding we went and saw brave. it was adorable.

i was a little tuckered out because sweet little ry talked and talked when we were having our slumber party the night before.

don't worry though she made sure to hit me when i nodded off.

we are so glad to welcome christina and little ry into the family.

if we are lucky we won't scare them off too quickly.

watch this now.

seriously though this will make today and all days better. 

boy do i wish i had this talent.

and this gotye cover with five to one instrument is splendid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M

i dare you to try and not bob your head or foot while you listen. double dog dare you.

wonderfully wet.

courtney's aunt sent her a "summer fun" package. this package contained squirt guns. said squirt guns then inspired a water fight. however, there was no way we were going to have a small dinky water fight.

we filled around two hundred water balloons.

two large buckets of water for dumping.

loaded the squirt guns.

told the boys we had a surprise for them. they had no clue what was coming.

 we decided it would be the most fun if we were already hiding when they showed up to the apartment. so...we chalked the way to the courtyard. we will refer to it as "the battle grounds"

a note was left on the door inviting them to walk in.

upon walking in there was another note on the coffee table telling them we were now at war.

because we are such nice girls we only left them with four of the two hundred balloons.

oops? nah.

the best/worst/funniest part of it all was this..

they told us they would be to the apartment by nine o'clock. 

we were ready and in position by eight fifty.

three of us on the second floor to ambush from above and the rest of us hidden along with the balloons throughout the battle grounds. 

well.......the boys took a little longer than anticipated. more like an hour longer. 

so there we all sat. hidden from sight of the parking lot. for an entire hour. 

the neighbors thought we were crazy.

laura, courtney and i were on the second level sitting underneath a window and then realized there was a romantic dinner going on inside the apartment to which the window was. crap. we felt like creepers.

another neighbor came home and saw us sitting there with our guns and buckets of water and said "is something bad about to happen?"

our two hispanic neighbors straight from spain came home and we could hear them down on the ground level trying to make sense of our chalk arrows and oh so threatening words of war. we laughed.

the roomie of the hispanic neighbors is our dear sweet mary. she came outside after brenda and neesa went inside. immediately suspecting us she went to the door of the apartment. well on the door was the note for the boys that invited them to walk in. just as we remembered about the note we heard mary open the door and holler "umm guys? what is happening? where are you? are you hiding in the dark?" when we didn't reply she shut the door and took a seat on the curbing right outside.

right about this same time we heard the boys walk up. it took all we had not to burst out laughing when mary said to them, "something fishy is going on boys. there is a note on the door that says come in but no one is there." rats. they went inside and shut the door. now we were all psyched again (after waiting for an hour we had gotten a little solemn) just as we got excited the door opened and one of the boys came out on the phone. we caught that him and only one other boy were there. he was telling whoever was on the other end that we had proclaimed war and that they needed to get there quick. 

so again, we waited.

when the others finally showed up we were more than ready. 

they all went inside for what seemed like and eternity.

they finally emerged.

we waited for them to step out far enough so we could get them.

michael pulse stepped out first. he got an entire bucket of water on his head.

quicker than we had time to think laura and i were cornered, screaming for help.

the rest is a blur. it happened so fast and was so much fun.

needless to say..it was a very successful war. now we are slightly concerned of the retaliation we might receive. we told them to bring it on. probably not the best choice of words huh.

friday the 13th. Moooo.

alicia came home from work on the 12th and was so stoked to tell us about her latest find.

the twelfth of july is cow appreciation day!!!

 it isn't every day that your friend comes home so excited to tell you that the next day is cow appreciation day. if you know my friends and i you know that we are always looking for something that will provide laughs and entertainment for the night. with a little more research we found out that chick-fil-a gives free meals to customers dressed head to toe like a cow. 

done done and done. 

we immediately looked up cow print offs and planned our outfits.

we dressed. we went. we ate free food. 

i know you are all looking forward to dressing up next year! thanks for reading! mooooo.

up on the rooftops.

where: center street provo. right next to sammy's shake shop.

when: the first friday of every month

who: err body

what: a fantastic concert in a wonderful atmosphere

 just a little photo bombin' in this here pic. well done michael, well done.

i am in love with center street in provo. maybe it is because it reminds me a lot of main street at home? yeah that is definitely it. we had a grand time in the beautiful outdoor air listening to some talented humans play renditions of tom petty. it was a gorgeous night.

messages for all

last night the usual group of pals were all at the apartment....just a disclaimer, when i speak of the apartment i mean court, britt, laura and alicia's apartment. i spend more time there than i do my own apartment. anyways, we were all there indulging in delicious desserts while enjoying each others company. i had my computer out for homework, upon finishing my math i got on the blog to upload my new favorite quote (found in the right sidebar >>>.) before closing the computer i quickly hopped onto nie nie's site because i haven't in quite a while. i could tell one of our friends sitting behind me was now paying attention to the screen as i scrolled through the latest posts. after a minute or so he asked about her story so i pulled up her mormon message. we watched it and then got chatting about how extremely powerful the messages are. during the chatting it was suggested by another one of the guys that we watch the message on forgiveness. so there we were, just hanging out on a regular night in the living room  all squished together on one side of the room to watch these videos on my little 13" screen. 

after the last message ended we all just sat there in silence. the spirit in the room was so strong. court was the first to speak up, her first word was wow and then she expressed how cool it was that we were all just there as friends to have fun and we ended up watching these amazing messages. i couldn't agree with her more. having friends with whom it is completely normal to pull up something spiritual is a ginormous blessing for which i am extremely grateful.

take a few minutes to watch these videos. you won't regret it.

click here for nie nie's mormon message!

click here for many other uplifting messages.

want to learn more about these messages or us mormons? shoot me an email alyssa.bauman@gmail.com!

happy birthday america.

our 4th celebration carried on after our naps with a walk through town. we enjoyed taking pictures more than the actual walk because it was muy caliente!

 after our walk we hit up jamba juice and then went back to the apartment where i immediately passed out on the couch again. following nap number two for the day we headed up the canyon with the wonderful wilcox family who so graciously offered to host us for dinner. the house and the scenery were absolutely gorgeous! 

 this big guy is named independence. we truly have no idea if he has a name and what it really is but in the spirit of the day, we named him independence. alicia would have no part in making friends with him but the little cowgirl deep in my heart creeps up so easily and i spent a while at the fence with him.

 leesh and i wandered the house finding all the cool things about it while the boys were in heaven on the indoor sport court. then we all headed outside and joined together to sing god bless america and indulge in momma wilcox's famous 4th trifle. 

we all met up at the temple to watch the stadium of fire fireworks. we were all so beat that us girls left even before the show was over so we could beat the traffic and get home to bed. instead we got stuck right in the thick of it all and it took us an entire hour to go six blocks over and three streets down back to our apartments. yuck.

this 4th of july is definitely one to be beat. from absolute sleep deprivation to getting hit by some crazy on the street, i think we covered it all! i missed being with my family but am so very grateful to have amazing friends that i can easily consider family. 

cheers to america!