SURPRISE!!!!!!

There are very few people in this world that I would load up my kids for a 7 hour drive to surprise on their birthday and then load them all back up the very next day to drive 7 hours back home... and this girl is one of them!
 

Ok, so technically her birthday is on Thursday, but her awesome husband had been planning this surprise party for her for about a month and asked us to come up to surprise her for her 30th birthday bash! How can we pass up such a fun opportunity to hang out with some of our favorite people... The Griggs?!?!

It was a fun Hawaiian Luau! So the birthday girl was dressed appropriately for the occasion.

Why... yes... I AM knockin on her coconuts! We're tight like that!

 Ok, this is what we ate for dinner! Good ol' Mr. Griggs actually went to a pig farm and picked out the pig that we would all eat for dinner and had a friend of theirs roast it! This is how it came to the party! Looked pretty gross, but it was actually good. Conner was a little freaked out by it and came up to Patrick and I after he saw it with quite the concerned look on his face and said he didn't wanna eat any pig for dinner. we told him he didn't have to that he could have a hot dog, and apparently that was much better.... go figure!!

 Such a fun birthday cake!! A friend of hers made it for her. It looked amazing and tasted SO good too!

Here is the birthday girl blowing out her candles. That is her hubby behind her who did such a great job planning the whole thing. It turned out awesome!! Big points to him!

(As you can see, they are DIE HARD Ute fans... for this we forgive them ONLY because they are such wonderful people and that is what Y fans do!!!)  haha!!!

Melissa and I (yes her name is Melissa too, that is just one of the many reasons she rocks!) met about 5 years ago when we were neighbors in Taylorsville. We were both called to the Young Women's in our ward and given the assignment to put girls camp together.... in just 3 weeks time and a budget of only $200! Impossible you say?!?! We somehow pulled it off. Ok we did go over budget a bit, but our Bishop approved it. And ever since then we were bestest buds! We spent those 3 weeks together constantly coming up with ideas for shirts, camp cheers, camp banners, games to play, spiritual messages for the girls, skits, menus, and all the little details that go into girls camp. I don't think there was a single day in those 3 weeks that we didn't spend together. Our husbands were starting to wonder if they would ever see us again. I'm sure we were quite the sight to see with us both having 2 kids and going shopping for supplies and food. There was once in the Army Surplus store that was particularly disastrous and I never stepped foot in that store again! :) We ventured off to camp together and endured the horribly timed rain storms, slept together on my air mattress that had a small leak somewhere and every morning we woke up with our bums on the ground,  together we learned how to cook food outdoors, and she was my shoulder to cry on when I learned that while I was at camp that Conner had taken his first steps and I had missed it! She is amazing! Melis is one of my favorite people in the world! She is such a strong and positive person. Through all the trials and tough times I've seen her go through I'm always amazed at how positive she is and the amount of faith that she has. She is a great example! She is such a fun and funny person to be around... I never laugh as hard as I do when we are with the Griggs... like literally can't breath -sides hurt -tears running down your face kind of laughing. We always have fun crafting together and shopping together. I am so lucky to be able to call her my friend!!

It was so much fun to go up and surprise her! I just love a good surprise!