Wedding/Honeymoon

WEDDING:

December 31, 2010 was the best day of my entire life! I got to be sealed to my best friend. It was the most perfect day ever. It was freezing, but it was blue skies. Everything went smoothly and as planned. Stacie came over at 7 to do my hair and makeup. We got sealed at 11am and it was so amazing. We took some pictures outside the temple and then we went to the church for the luncheon. Brad's family made crepes and some other breakfast foods and it was all very delicious. We showed our wedding video that Kylee did an awesome job making. Everyone helped to clean up the luncheon and get ready for the reception. The Bundy's, Hatch's, Sara, Annie and my mom had done all the decorations at the church the day before and it looked amazing! We cut the cake, did the garter and bouquet, and had a dance and then we were off. Sadly, I do not have any pictures from the wedding day yet so I'll have to put some on later.

HONEYMOON:

We drove to Salt Lake to stay at the Anniversary Inn. We stopped by to see the beautiful lights at Temple square. We stayed in the room, the Capitol Retreat and I loved having breakfast served to us.

We drove to Vegas on Saturday and went to the Stratosphere to ride one of the rides. It was so fun, and so scary. We did the 'big shot' one, which is like the rocket, only on top of a building.
On Sunday, we went to sacrament, and then started to drive to California. To make a long story short, we got stuck in over 2 1/2 hours of traffic, which made it so that we were going to miss our cruise. It was supposed to leave at 4:30, so at about 4:15 when we were still about an hour away, we decided to call carnival to see if there was anything that we could do. Brad started talking to a guy and telling him what cruise we were on and our booking number and some other stuff. The guy then asked Brad if he had heard about that cruise that got stuck out in sea for an extra 3 days, and that that was our boat. He said that it is still docked and being fixed for about another 2 months. They said that they had sent Brad a cancelation email and they reimbursed him a few weeks ago. Brad told him that we had just taken 2 days to drive out here for our honeymoon and asked him if there were any leaving that week that we could get on. The guy told him that there was one leaving on Monday, but it was sold out but we could call in the morning to see if anything had changed. It was a bummer, but it was a blessing in disguise because we would have missed it and then we would have just been out that money. We found a hotel close to port to spend the night. We checked Brad's email and he never got a cancelation email. Luckily, he did get reimbursed. We called them back at about 10 in the morning. This time Brad talked to a lady. He told her everything, and she somehow got us the last cabin on a cruise that was leaving that day at 12. So, everything was a little crazy for a little bit, but it all turned out perfectly. Instead of going on a 7 day cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan, we went on a 5 day to Catalina Islands, and Ensenada.

Funny story about the lower right picture in the above collage.. after taking this picture, a seagull came and bit off part of my ice cream cone!

This is in Catalina Island. We were there on Tuesday. We had some fun taking pictures in front of our cruise ship. We went snorkeling as a shore excursion. We took a little boat out to a spot to snorkel. On our way out, we saw seals and dolphins! It was so awesome! The dolphins were swimming right under our boat and the seals were waving at us.



Wednesday: Ensenada. We went to a blow hole. It shoots up this cave thing up to 100 ft about every 30 seconds when it is high tide. There are only 3 of these in the world. It was pretty awesome. We also shopped a little bit.
Mini golfing on the boat. We watched a guy carve an indian ice sculpture in about 20 min. We also ate a lot of ice cream cones! ;)

We met some friends on the cruise that are from Cedar. We had fun playing shuffle board with them on our "day at sea" on Thursday.
Look at that sunset!!! Isn't it just amazing! It was so fun to have Brad see the sunset on the water since he had never even seen the ocean before this.

We had been planning on getting off the cruise on Sunday morning and driving home all that day before school on Monday, but since it was a shorter cruise, we got off the boat on Friday morning and decided to go to Disneyland. Brad had never been so it was a lot of fun. We didn't go to California Adventures because we were only there for a day and we didn't know how much we could do. We rode splash mountain twice in a row since we didn't get wet the first time and the line was short. Second time we didn't get so lucky.. we got soaked. Space mountain was our favorite. I think we went on it 3 times, even though we had to wait in line for an hour each time. We drove home on Saturday, with a stop in Cedar to have dinner with our friends that we met. It was nice to be home a day early and get ready for school to start. It was the best honeymoon! I am the luckiest girl to be married to Brad and I can't wait to see where life takes us! :)

Single digits

HOLY COW!!!! I GET MARRIED IN 8 DAYS!!!! ... just in case you were wondering! ;) I was so excited to check the weather yesterday to see what it will be like on the 31st! I hope it stays how it says now! Snowy on Thursday, sunny on Friday. Perfect! Just what I wanted! And, I just looked again and it is supposed to snow on the 1st as well.. amazing!
We've had a lot going on this past week. We had a Christmas party at work last week and the kids enjoyed seeing santa, drinking hot chocolate, making crafts, frosting sugar cookies and watching christmas movies. The kids were all so cute.
Brad had a Christmas party for his work as well and I got to go. It was an ugly sweater party and you could win cool stuff, like a big screen, Ipad, really nice coats and stuff like that. We played lots of games to win tickets and then we put the tickets in a bag of what item we wanted. We, sadly did not win anything big, but we did get 2 gift cards, and a nice watch. It was a fun night and it was fun to meet some of the guys that he lived with over the summer. We also went skiing one day last week together and that was fun!
Kylee and Brody are home!!! Yipee! They came a day early and surprised us. I have loved having them here! We had a little welcome home/christmas party with them and the Bundy's on sunday. After our delicious thanksgiving meal, we played some fun games and the winner for each game got a prize. We played a clapping game that got pretty intense and funny and also scum and sardines. It was a fun night!

After the shower on Tuesday, we went to Uncle Gary's house for a party because his daughter Haley is home from DC. We went on a sleigh ride, ate dinner and played some fun games. Me and Kylee had fun playing in the kids room and rolling down this slide thing that they have.
We had fun taking some awkward pictures with all 6 of us. These still make me laugh out loud when I look at them. I couldn't stop laughing in the one of me and brad, of which is supposed to be a serious one.
Then, we had to take one good one as well.

All of the sibling went skiing together today. We actually all stayed together all day and I thought it was pretty fun. I hope I didn't slow everyone down since everyone is better than me and I do not love doing as much powder and hard run like they do. After we got back from skiing, Brad left to go to Willard. He is staying there until either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. I already miss him so much and I do not know how I am going to go 5 days without seeing him. I'm sad that we can't spend Christmas together, but we decided to do separate this year since it will be our last. This week is going to be a busy one. My to do list just keeps getting longer, no matter how much I can cross off, it seems like there is always something to add to it. But I am so excited for everything and I do not feel too stressed, hopefully my mom doesn't.. that is the real question!

Shower me with love!

I just had my last shower on Tuesday, so now I can do this post. I'm so sad that I didn't get any pictures from the shower that I had for Brad's family. We tied the quilt, ate yummy food, played games and opened presents at his sister Brooke's house. It was a very fun shower and I was glad I got to meet some more of Brad's family.

The next shower was with my friends. We ate, I had to eat gum for missing questions about Brad (I think I only missed 5 out of about 25), opened presents and had fun talking and hanging out.
Brad's best friend's wife also threw me a small little friend shower. We had some delicious lunch, then played a wedding matching game and opened presents.
The next shower was the ward one. We had it at the Roskelley's and had so many people shower up, it was great! They had yummy cheesecake.
The last shower was the family shower. Lindsey really outdid herself with all of the decorations. It was all very cute though, and Kylee made a cake for us! The theme of this shower was "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue". So that is why everything is blue, including my hair and most everybody's clothes. I also got something old, new, borrowed, and blue from my mom, sister, and 2 grandmas. We also played a game to see who was most like Brad, and it ended up being my Aunt Teresa! Everyone gave us some awesome wedding advice as well. It was a great shower!

This was the result after all of the showers except for the last, since we were able to move everything into our house that night. It is nice to not have it all on the side of my bed now. Oh, and for those of you wondering... We are living in a basement apartment on 7th north and about 2nd east, just down from campus. I am very excited about it, especially since we know the people upstairs and we will be in our friend's ward! I am so grateful to everyone who came to all of the showers but especially for those that threw them and all the hard work they put into making it a fun shower for me! Thanks everyone!

Engagements

I know many of you have been wanting to see some more engagements so here they all are! :) My cousin Sydney did the first 3 and my cousin Lindsey did the last 4. They both did such a great job and I love them all! Enjoy!

As of lately

Ok, so I know, I have been terrible at blogging lately. I have also been TERRIBLE at taking pictures, sadly. But I have been very busy. Here are some things that I've been up to after the engagement in no particular order.
This is a random picture that I found. I cannot figure out where or when it was taken, but I like it!

-I got to babysit some of my favorite kids over the weekend. I brought them to church with me and they were so good to just sit on our laps and be quiet. I was a little worried about it since they are not members and would not be used to sitting quiet for so long, but they did great! We also took them to hillcrest to play at the park. I did not know that they were getting a new playground, so that was fun to play around on.

-This Thanksgiving was a snowy one, and I loved it! There was a blizzard warning on tuesday so campus closed at 2. I thought that would mean I would get out of my test that was at 1:30, but no such luck. On wednesday I had work and then Brad and I went to the USU basketball game. On Thanksgiving day, we went to Grandma's for dinner and boy was it delicious! I had to steal this picture from my mom's blog since I did not take any pictures.. sad! My favorite part of the meal was the sauerkraut. It's always been one of my favorites. Now I just have to get Brad to like it!

After we finished at Grandmas, Brad and I drove to Willard to spend a couple of days with his family. On Thursday night, we went through all of Brad's high school and mission stuff that his mom had been storing for him. We got rid of a ton of stuff but it was fun to see some of the stuff that he had saved. I got my traditional jammies from Grandma on Thanksgiving so I enjoyed wearing those! :) On Friday, we all helped to clean out the shed that they have at their house. Then, that night we had a 'company' party, which turned out to be a surprise mission shower for Brad's brother. It was a fun night. Saturday was a busy day. It started off by going to the Ogden temple. Brad's brother was receiving his endowments, so me and his younger brother did baptisms, since we are the only ones that can't go yet. It was very crowded so it took us a long time, but we didn't care since we had to wait for them anyways. It was a very cool experience to get to do baptisms somewhere else besides Logan. I just can't wait till I can go to the temple for real though! :) Then, we had a bridal shower at his sister's house which was very fun and I got lots of good stuff! We also tied my jean quilt that I made when I was in YW. Again, I'm sad to say I have no pictures. :( Brad went snowmobiling while we had the shower. We drove back to logan that night and went to Harry Potter 7!! I loved it so much! I can't wait for the second part! But, I will be sad it's over.

-We enjoyed going to the temple as a family and doing baptisms. We also enjoyed joining mom and dad for dinner at Aggies and then the Christmas concert at the Ellen Eccles Theatre.

Lets see, some other things that we've been doing is getting ready for our WEDDING (which is in 24 days!!!) We finished taking all of our engagements, put together all of the announcements and sent them off yesterday, took bridals/groomals on Sunday, and much much more! I can't believe it is coming up so quickly, but I am so excited!

Halloween and... ???

We had a very fun, busy Halloween extravaganza this year. Our first little activity was the pumpkin walk. We had to wait in line for about an hour, but it was fun and all of the pumpkins were really cool. Our favorite was the "Up" scene.

Our next activity was a Halloween party for my work. My classroom was the "mad scientist lab" and me and Brad gave out tattoos. My boss was a ruler because she is the ruler of the school. I thought that was cute! We also had to make a pumpkin for a contest. Sadly, we did not win.

Next was a Halloween party that Brad and I had at my house last night. We spent all day getting ready for it. We made dinner in a pumpkin, rolls, salad, spider cookies, eyeball deviled eggs and homemade rootbeer. I had fun seeing baby Mckayla and Hayzl. 14 of our friends came for dinner and then we sent them out on a picture scavenger hunt.





While they were gone, we cleaned up and started getting ready for the rest of the party. I was downstairs setting up some stuff on the ping pong table and talking to my parents and some friends. Brad came down and we had some stuff to take upstairs. When we got to the kitchen, there were a dozen roses, a little box and a piece of paper. He told me that he wanted to get me a little present for our one year anniversary (we met on halloween last year at a party I had at my house). So I opened up the box and pulled out a necklace that had a really big ring on it. He said, "you know, the size of the rock shows how much I love you." And I was like, oh ok, thanks. And then he said that since I wrote a list of reasons why I love him, that he made a list of reasons why he loves me. So I read that and then we were just talking and he pulled out the real ring, without me noticing and got down on his knee and asked me to marry him. I said yes of course! :) I am so happy!!! He did such a good job at surprising me. He told me that the ring I liked had been bought and wouldn't come in till next week probably. When, in reality.. he really had had it for about 2 weeks! I really believed him, even though nobody else did, so it was the best surprise!

My mom had been in on it the whole time so she was downstairs all ready with the camera. I never thought I would be dressed as a mummy the day I got engaged so it made for some good pictures. haha I could not stop smiling, even when he tried to kiss me.

When everyone got back from the scavenger hunt, I tried to hide my ring so that we could tell them all at once. But, I was telling Brad a secret and put my hand up to his ear without thinking and my friend, Mariana saw it and said, OH.. MY... GOSH!!!! Then everyone ran over and started screaming when they realized. It was pretty funny.

After all that, we played a game of musical candy and then voted on the best costume of the night. We all crammed in the family room to watch the movie, "Godsend". (thanks for the recommendation Lins!) It was a good, scary movie and a very fun night!

Here are some pictures of my ring! We get married on December 31, for those of you who don't know! :)