Love, Life, & Games of Chelsea & James: March 2012

Birthday for Best Father-in-Law!

Sunday, March 25, 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODD CHAPMAN!!!

Things I know and love about my father-in-law:

*He has a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ

*He is a wonderful father who loves his family

*He has raised an amazing son to be a righteous worthy priesthood holder & I am so thankful to him for my sweet husband James

*His smile makes me smile & his laugh makes me happy

*He loves computers

*He loves his truck

*He loves the outdoors

*He has welcomed me into the Chapman family & makes me feel loved

Happy Birthday Dad! We love you!

Love, Chels & James

Happy 20th Elder Fakkel!

Birthday Boy: Elder Peter Douglas Fakkel

Age: 20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When: Today, Sunday, March 25, 2012

Where: Scotland! Peter is serving a mission for

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Peter is kind-hearted, loving, smart, talented, faithful, handsome, caring, strong, a wonderful missionary, sweet brother, and loving son.

This is my little brother Peter. I love him. I am so proud of him. I hope he has the best Scotland birthday ever as a missionary. I LOVE YOU PETE!!! I made you a simple scrapbook page of your birthday celebration last year with James & me at BYU. Hope you love it! Love, Your Sister, Chels.

A few other pictures of past birthdays:

Joint Birthday Celebration in Kemah, Texas (March 25/May 10)

Peter's 18th Birthday in McKinney, Texas

Hunger & Heart

Kelsey, Chelsea, Kate, Cim, & Jessica
(Please excuse the poor quality photo. Our waiter was not very picture-taking-savvy)

Friday night some of the girls celebrated Kate Wood's birthday! It was so much fun to catch up & talk about girl stuff. We mostly talked about babies because Kate is expecting! Congrats birthday girl!

We went to

Babbo Italian Eatery in Glendale was tasty & sophisticated with fresh pastas, pizzas, & salads. I had the Three Cheese Mac and Cheese: Smokey Chipotle Cream Sauce blended with Cheddar, Mozzarella and Gorgonzola cheeses. Served with Bacon and Sausage on Penne Pasta. I ordered it without the sausage. It was surprisingly spicy but super good. I will definitely take James here because the pricing is between $8-$13 for a nice sized pasta or pizza. Going here Friday night was perfect because it fulfilled my HUNGER and got me ready for...

YES!

THE HUNGER GAMES

James and I went to the 9:40 showing of The Hunger Games with Than & Ixchel. We all loved it! My personal opinion is that if you want to thoroughly enjoy this movie, you must read the book(s) before you watch the movie. The first book is my favorite, and I reread it before seeing the movie. If you have not read The Hunger Games & you are wondering what all the hype is about this movie, then you should definitely a) check out The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins from your local library & b) buy The Hunger Games at your nearest Barnes & Noble, then c) go see The Hunger Games movie!

LOVE THIS!

And now for.heart.

On Saturday night James went with me to see a dance concert performed by the Mesa Community College Dance Company. I needed to see a concert & write a dance critique for my jazz class before the end of the semester. I am so glad I chose to go to this one! The dance concert was a benefit concert titled Heartfelt, dancing through aspects of the heart.

The dance company danced for a fellow dancer who underwent a heart transplant last Sunday. All proceeds went to medical expenses. The performance touched my heart because it reminded me that we are all children of our Heavenly Father who loves us. Watching the dance company dance their hearts out for their friend reminded me of the importance of true service & friendship & how it can strengthen & uplift someone in ways we can't even imagine. I am thankful to Heavenly Father for my sacred body. I am grateful for my heart & for my ability to breathe, feel, love, & dance. This performance has humbled me. I am so blessed to have a healthy family. I am blessed to have a husband with a desire to become a doctor who will one day help others through his knowledge, talents, & abilities. I am glad to be an organ donor. My thoughts & prayers are with this strong dancer & for all those undergoing organ transplants.

Fakkel.Family.Fun.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

This past weekend was one of the best weekends ever because MY FAMILY CAME TO VISIT! I love my family so much and I am so grateful they made the 19 hour drive safely and with no issues! Thank you Mom, Dad, Chan & Pi for the amazing weekend. We loved spending time with yall! Update on our amazing family weekend:

LAST FRIDAY NIGHT

My beautiful mother Shana & beautiful sister Piper

Chandler & Dad enjoying their burgers!

Look at that cute handsome face! I love my sweet James.

Dinner at Red Robin! Yumm! The whole family minus Peter

(in Scotland/Ireland serving a mission-we miss you Pete!)

When we got home we all voted on a movie to watch and chose one of my favorites!

We all had some good laughs. We also ate four flavors of our favorite ice cream. $1.99 at Basha's! It was a miracle!

SATURDAY~ST. PATRICK'S DAY~

Girls Day! Piper and I spent the day just the two of us sisters. This picture was taken in the morning when we made waffles for breakfast!

After breakfast we got ready for the day and went to Petco to pick out our fish that I gave James as a Christmas present! James and Pi chose five neon tetra fish!

The fish are so small and so cute! We randomly named them Neon, Rainbow, Unicorn, Leprechaun, & Pocahontas. Together as a group they are named Swirls.

After buying our awesome fish, Piper and I did some shopping at the Arrowhead Mall! We bought 4 super cute belts at Forever 21 (only 2 shown) & some clothes at DownEast Basics. Pi picked out the belt on the left. Love it!

When we got home we ate all the food we wanted!

Pi had this great idea to make a St. Patty's Day craft! She used pine cones she collected outside & some green & black ribbon I found laying around. She's so creative!

Look at how cute! Love our St. Patty's Day Green outfits!

We also baked some delicious St. Patty's Day cupcakes but forgot to take pictures of them. They sorta looked like this:

Chocolate cupcakes with leprechaun green frosting!

We ate these delicious treats while watching a girly sister movie

This movie was perfect to watch because we were talking girl-talk about makeup techniques earlier in the day!

That was our awesome sister day! We met up with the family afterwards for dinner because we were all starving! We went to this small restaurant Graziano's that James and I just love. We had really yummy Italian style pizza!

SUNDAY!

Time for church! It was super rainy and cold which was weird because Friday my family went to the pool while I was at work! After church we ate yummy Hawaiian haystacks! We relaxed until it was time for the family to pack up and start the drive back to Texas. We had a wonderful weekend together & it was definitely the best St. Patrick's Day weekend I've ever had. I wonder how Peter's St. Patty's Day was in Scotland!?! We miss him and we miss the Fakkel family already! We love yall! XOXO

Pre-Patty's Day

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This morning I surprised James with a little Pre-Patty's Day present!

He woke up to this:

This boy loves his Lucky Charms!

A little riddle to think about as he leaves for school

I wrote the riddle & I think it turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.

Now the first present in the morning was Lucky Charms cereal.

At noon I drove to James' school & dropped off a Subway footlong for lunch

and here was his second present at noon:

Skittles! Taste the rainbow! The tag reads "I'm over the rainbow for you!" Aww cute

Dear James~

I am "Lucky in Love" with my best friend.

Love, Chels

For dinner we went to Sonic! It's pretty fun because in Arizona, Sonic is indoors with a few outdoor tables. To order inside you use cute red phones to call in your order. Fun! I'm not sure if they have this kind of indoor Sonic in other states, I know they don't in Utah or Texas, but it makes sense to have an indoor Sonic in Arizona because it's so hot in the summer!

Here we are with some pics I took really quick on my phone:

James ordering on the nifty red phone!

I squeezed myself into the picture

For dessert I gave James his third present at night:

The tag reads "You're the end of the rainbow, my pot of gold!"

I love you James! Happy Pre-Patty's Day!

Let's "Walk" Thunderbird!

On Sunday afternoon James and I decided to "walk" the Thunderbird Conservation Park near our house. The park is a bunch of hills with trails to climb to the top of them. The reason why I put "walk" in parentheses is because James claims that we "walked" up these "hills." To me we HIKED the mountain, I mean hill. A hike to me includes sweating, which is what we did. A walk seems more leisurely to me. The walk/hike is not too hard at all. If you have ever hiked the Y at BYU before, it is MUCH easier than that. The best part of this adventure was reaching the top because the view was fantastic. James and I are glad we went & could spend time together on a beautiful Sunday afternoon! Enjoy the pics!