Bir-Cay-Ding, Part 3

Here is the third and final installment of the fabulous Bir-Cay-Ding. YAY!

(I would have gotten to this sooner, but we've continued to be busy.  I really will post about those things, too.  Remember: good things come to those who wait.)

So, the wedding.  First of all, I just want to mention that I'm so glad that Chris and Lexi got married, because Chris is a super awesome guy.  I can tell they fit each other really well.

July 30: pre-wedding
While we were getting ready after our horse ride and ski lift ride, Lex and her cute/awesome/amazing bridesmaids and Chris and his groomsmen were out gallivanting through the woods getting their pictures taken.

Then we got to join in the picture fun.  Lexi's wedding colors were a true orange and royal purple.  I was out with my mom shopping the week before, and we found these awesome orange ties, so we got them for my three boys and Pete to wear.  And Ivy was a flower girl for Lexi's wedding, so she had a way cute orange dress that my mom had made.  I completed the orange ensemble with a sweater and a white flowery skirt.  Which, I just realized, I don't have any pictures of myself.  I really need to hand the camera over to Pete every once in a while.

Here's Brock:

And Troy:

And Jakob:

Here's Ivy, holding Lexi's wedding bouquet.  Ivy was being shy at first about pictures, but then later on warmed up about it.

And here are my handsome boys.  I love how they all match, even Pete.

Here are Lex and Chris, ready to do the Toyota jump.  (Or is it Ford?  I really can't remember.)  Lex looks like she's getting ready to jump into some cold water or something.

The ceremony
I think I already mentioned that Lex and Chris chose Grand Targhee as their wedding site.  Lex really wanted an outdoor wedding.  Even though it was bright and sunny and warm earlier in the day, at about 3-ish it started getting cloudy and started sprinkling.  Then it started raining pretty hard for about 20 minutes or so, right before the ceremony was about to start.  There was a tiny little room just inside, and we asked if she wanted to set up in there, but Lex, being the weather girl she is (or something), said to wait just about 15 minutes.

And about 15 minutes later, it stopped raining.  Perfect!  It was a little cool out, so my kids were cold, but it was the perfect temperature for the adults.  It stayed rain-free the whole ceremony (it started getting windy near the end, but not too bad), and as soon as it was over, it started raining again.

Then the aisle walking began.  My parents led out, because my dad officiated!  Cool, huh?  He had been a bishop a while back at Ricks (which is now BYU-Idaho), and they checked the laws for Wyoming about marrying people, and it was totally okay.  Which, by the way, my dad ROCKED it.  I've always admired his teaching/speaking/officiating skills.

Lexi's friend Mark Doubleday, who is an EXTREMELY talented musician and composer, played his cello for the ceremony.  He's the one that helped Lex help me and Pete when we rapped at our ward talent show.  Let me find the link....okay, it's here.  And that's my cute uncle Kurt holding the umbrella for him.  Kurt also helped wipe down chairs after the rain for people to sit on.  He's such a great guy.

After the bridesmaids and groomsmen walked down the aisle, it was the flower girls' turn.  I really didn't know if Ivy was going to do her part.  In these kind of performance situations, she will either ham it up, or freak out and cry and scream or run away.  I really had no idea.  Chris' cousins, Maria and Julianna, were the other two flower girls.  The older girl, Maria, who is 8-ish, started to explain to Ivy what to do.  And Ivy got all excited about it.  So I sat down, but was at the end, in case I had to jump up and rescue Ivy.

But man.  She started throwing the flower petals on the ground.  And when she decided to do it, she was going to THROW the CRAP out of the FLOWER PETALS, DANGIT!  Maria had to kind of drag her down the aisle (they were both holding one of the baskets), and Ivy threw and threw and threw.  She had a blast.  And they were all just so stinking cute.

(That's a better shot of the dresses my mom made.  Cute, huh?)

And there's the beautiful bride, with Gramps.  My grandpa rocks, end of story.  His jacket was super sweet that day, too.  It was blue, and made of...suede?  It was really soft.  I asked him about it, and he said it was really really old.  But it was beautiful and in great shape for how old it was.  He's such a cute guy.

The flower girls stood there during the ceremony most of the time.  Ivy ran to my mom after a while, and I think Julianna jumped ship, too.  It's hard to see in this picture, but Ivy gets this confused look on her face.  She had it on during the whole ceremony.

There was a part during the ceremony where Lex and Chris read their individual vows to each other.  I got all teary when Chris read his to Lex.  (Um, and I just realized that blogger erased a bunch of what I had written right here.  Stupid blogger.  But let me sum up: Chris talked about how they met and how he knew they would be together.  Lex talked about how excited she is to start their life together.)

(Yeah, I probably just totally botched that up.  Lex, I hope you and Chris have your real vows somewhere.  I KNOW they are more eloquent than the craptastic summary I just wrote above.)

Like I said before, my dad did an amazing job.  Near the end, he read an Apache blessing of sorts.  I really liked it, so I found it on the internet.  For your reading pleasure:

Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there is no more loneliness,
For each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two bodies,
But there is one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place,
To enter into the days of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.

It was just a beautiful ceremony. I cried, and laughed, and got chills...it was just so wonderful.  I'm so glad I got to go and see it.

Oh, and after Chris kissed the bride, he dipped her, and kissed her again.  Lexi's face right before the dip was so funny-her eyes got really big, and had a look of "don't drop me!"  It was funny.

Party time
Like I said, I was warm enough, but it was a bit chilly for my kids.  After the ceremony, everyone headed over to the tent they had set up, where we would eat dinner.  I ran and got jackets for my kids (because even though we were mostly encased, the cold air was still coming in).

Here's Lexi.  Doesn't she just look so beautiful and so happy?  Which, she had her makeup lady come up to the resort, and got her makeup airbrushed on.  Sweat free, smudge free, tear-proof...she's a thinker.

They had toasts, where the Best Man and the Maid of Honor gave little speeches, as did the parents.  Lexi's Maid of Honor was a girl named Kate.  Let me tell you, Kate ROCKS!  She told this awesome story about how Lex would talk about Chris when they first met, but they (Lex and Kate) had a nickname for him of Javier.  It was so funny!  Also, there was dancing later on, and when the DJ was doing a crappy job of picking out songs, Kate kicked him out of his chair and took over to find awesome boogie-down songs for us.

We had this amazingly yummy dinner.  There was a strawberry-spinach salad, and chicken (or fish, but I'm a chicken girl), and...is it called twice baked potatoes where you bake the potato then pull out the insides and mash them up and put them back onto the skins?  Well, if it's not that, then that's what we had but I don't know what it's called.  I'll call them Prettily-Presented Potatoes.

And here's their cake.  Chris designed it.  I know that their colors had something to do with their school colors or something, but I know I'm going to get it all mixed up.  They met at BSU, so that's the Bronco thing on the top tier.  And something about a team that starts with a C, which is also Chris, and something with a team that starts with an A, which is also Alexis.

I'm SOOOO into sports, can you tell?

But what I CAN tell you about the cake is that it was deliciousness wrapped in amazingness.  Each layer was a different kind of chocolate.  One was German chocolate, one was Mexican chocolate, and the other was...I know I'm not remembering right...like a double dark chocolate or something like that.  I had a slice of the Mexican chocolate layer.  It supposedly had cinnamon in it.  But all I tasted was super rich, moist, yummy chocolate.  Oh, mama.  It was so good!

Lex and Chris cutting the cake:

...And then Lex and Chris shoving the cake into each other's faces!  When Pete and I got married, I told him I would kill him if he got cake on my wedding dress, so he placed the cake nicely in my mouth.  Not Lexi and Chris.  Oh, no.  This picture below is Lexi, mid-fall.  Chris totally pushed his bride down!  It was funny.

The aftermath of the cake shove (you can't really see the cake smeared all over his face unless you enlarge the picture).  Chris:

And Lex:

But all was well.  They got cleaned up, and had their first dance together.  (I really don't remember if they danced before or after the cake shove.)

And here's the bride dancing with her dad.  I love this picture-such a sweet moment.  (My dad is so cute.  And Lexi's hair was to die for.)  Say it with me: AAAAAWWWWWWWWW!

At this point, my kids had had it.  They had gone to bed super late the night before, woke up super early that morning, and then had a really busy day.  Troy could barely keep his eyes open during the dinner. The DJ dude started playing music after the dinner, and normally my kids boogie on down, but they were not about to do it in public that night.  Ivy danced with me, but her tights kept falling down and pulling down her undies, so I'd have to keep fixing them.  She tried to get people to dance with us, like Pete or my dad or my mom, but no one was ready to boogie...yet.

Although, I danced with Ivy, and then I kept making faces at my kids.  Jakob was about to die from embarrassment at his dorky mom, but I didn't care.  Yep-I'm one of those parents, that thinks it's really funny to embarrass my kids.

We took the kids back to our room, told them to open the door under ZERO circumstances, and...then went back to boogie.

It was so fun to dance!  And, of course I don't have pictures of it, because I was too busy having a blast!  They played way fun music, some of which was old school (old school meaning when I was in high school, or even junior high).  Like, "Killing Me Softly" by the Fugees, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by the Proclaimers (which I first heard when I attended my first EFY at 14 years old-YIKES!), "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard, and "Cotton-Eyed Joe" by the Rednex. (Yes, quite the variety.)  They also had Beatles songs, and Black Eyed Peas, and Tao Cruz, and Beyonce's "Put a Ring on It".  Which, at that point, I wish I would have known all the dance moves to that song, because that would have been awesome.  I know, like two moves.

So, yeah.  WAY fun.  And Lexi's bridesmaids had some sweet, sweet dance moves!  After a while (a LONG while), we were worn out, so we went back to our room.  (Not to worry-we had checked on the kids periodically during the dancing.)  And, surprisingly, they were still awake for some reason.  I would have thought that they'd be out cold by then.  Oh well.

Well, that wraps up Part 3.  And I really did save the best for last, huh?

Memory Monday: Engaged

This post is a shout-out to my cute sister, Lex, who just got engaged on her birthday two days ago!  YAHOO!!

Lex and Chris

After years of drama, of him liking me, of me not being ready, of us flirting and trying to leave each other alone but not able to, of us being best friends and then even enemies, Pete and I finally got our act together and started dating.  Sure, it was long distance, but dating nonetheless.

We started dating in October of 2001, and really weren't sure where it was going, or how fast.  We would chat online till all hours of the night, every night.  After one trip down to visit Pete in January, I felt all squirmy inside-just... really uneasy.  Until that point, I kept holding Pete at arm's length, not ready for the next step.  I liked where we were at, and I wasn't quite ready to move forward.  But we were at the "fish or cut bait" point-we either needed to commit all the way to our relationship (marriage), or say goodbye and part ways.

I thought, and prayed, and realized, I don't ever want Pete out of my life.  I felt the most like myself when I was around him.  He took care of me, and I took care of him.  I could talk to him for hours.  When I was with him, I felt like I was home.  You know?

So, the next time Pete and I were talking on the phone, I basically told him that I needed to get proposed to.  I think it took him a bit by surprise, especially since a couple of weeks before that I was telling him how I wanted to take a road trip and live back east all summer.  But he had been ready for the marriage step of our relationship for a long time.

Anyway, we started looking at rings.  It took about two seconds to find the one for me, but Pete was a little more picky.  Pete came up one weekend to talk to my dad.  It ended up kind of being a group talk (my dad, my mom, Pete, and me).  Pretty much my dad asked how Pete was going to take care of me (what his major was in school, what the plans are, etc.). 

The next week was Valentine's.  Pete sent me a dozen long-stemmed red roses.  They were SO pretty!  I love getting flowers.  Two days after that I went down to visit Pete.  He was going to school at USU (I had graduated the year before).  On Saturday, February 16, we had plans to go down to his parents' house.  I hadn't had anything to eat that day.  After Pete was done with work, we headed down.  I told him to stop and get something to eat on the way out, and he insisted we stop at a gas station about an hour down the road.  I was so hungry, but all they really had were some nasty hot dogs, with even nastier buns.  Seriously, the bun tasted like sawdust.  Blech.  Pete kept saying, "Oh, we'll eat with my family when we get there."

When we got to his parents' house, they had already eaten and cleaned up.  I was like, "Pete, let's go get something!"  And he's all, "No, no, we'll get something pretty soon."  I was STARVING at this point.  He went upstairs, came back down, and blindfolded me.  He put me in the car, drove around for about 10 minutes (like I knew where he was going in the town that I had been to all of twice before-he could have driven straight to our destination and I wouldn't have known where we were), and then we got out and walked into his brother's house.  He had a candlelight dinner all set up, and his brother Jim was our waiter.  His other brother (Pete has 5 brothers, and 2 sisters) Jeff had made a menu for us.  We ordered the chicken (I think his mom cooked), and the meal was topped with sparkling apple juice.  Jim had also made a romantic songs CD that played while we ate.  It was awesome.

At the end of dinner, Jim brought out two little boxes-one for each of us-that contained an after dinner chocolate.  I suspected the ring was in there.  Sure enough, when I opened my little chocolate box, there was my engagement ring!  I went "Awww, awww," a few times.  Pete and I stood up, and he asked me to marry him.  I said, "Of course!" 

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Lazy/Crazy

Nothing new to report. We've been really lazy. REALLY lazy.

And it has been AWESOME.

Sleeping in. Watching movies. Playing outside. Playing inside when it's too windy or cold outside. Just doing the day to day, but it's filled with a lot of free time.

Jake woke up today, and said, "Mom! Today is the first day of summer!" He ate really fast, got dressed really fast, and then ran outside. After 3 minutes, he came back in and said, "Um, it's cold and windy out there!" I think he thought that, because it's now officially summer, it's automatically nice and warm out. Not so for Idaho.

Today is Pete's and my 8th anniversary. YAY! Pete sent me some crazy beautiful flowers. Getting flowers rocks! And tonight we're going to go to Toy Story 3 with our kids to celebrate.

And wanna see something way crazy? Watch this, from here:



Crazy, huh?

Like I said, nothing to report. Just being crazy and lazy.

Jelly Belly

No, one of my New Year's Resolutions was NOT to blog less. It's just been kind of crazy around here, and I simply haven't had time. (I know, a pretty blasphemous thing to say.)

So my boys all got balloons from their Grandma, and one night while I was making dinner they decided to play "Fat Tummy". That's what they called it, anyway. It pretty much consists of them putting the balloon in their shirts and running into each other. Huh, it's kind of like Sumo Wrestling.


I've actually been working on a project, and I'm thisclose to finishing it, but I wanted to have it actually done before blogging about it.

My boys would yell "FAT TUMMY!!" before running into each other. After impact, they'd explode into a fit of giggles.


Yesterday for Troy's preschool, we took the kids to Craigo's. The pizza guy showed them how they make the dough, and they each got to pick toppings for their own pizza. The guy also made a big pizza for the moms there, and also brought out a dessert pizza and drinks. All for free. It's one of the best field trips I've been on, ever! SO yummy.

Oh, and did I mention...

FAT TUMMY!!!

(I love this action shot-Troy's face running right into Jake's balloon.)

And yesterday, just because Pete loves me, he got me a dozen roses. He asked for a dozen red, but the lady said they didn't have a dozen red ones, so he did half red and half lilac-colored. (I personally think she's lying; I think they're keeping all the red ones for V-day coming up. But I really like the mixture, probably even more so than all red.) How stinking sweet is that? I don't know if I've ever gotten flowers, just because.


FAT TUMMY!!!


I taught a lesson on Sunday in Young Women's. I was so worried about it, but I think it turned out really well. I've also been reading (slowly but surely) Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage. I've been loving it! And-

FAT TUMMY!!!

I just-

FFFFAAAATTTT TUMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!!!

(I promise, I'll blog about my project soon.)

(Fat tummy.)

Seven Years and One Day Ago...

...this was me and Pete:


Wow. We're so...young. And skinny.

And this was us two days ago:


Not as young, or as skinny. But still very happy.

Pete surprised me this year with a quick trip back to Logan, which is where we met and married. It was so fun to get away for 24 hours (thanks for watching the kids, Mom-you rock!), and to get kind of nostalgia-ish, visiting our old haunts, and some new ones. We ate at yummy Bluebird for dinner, ate at Old Grist Mill for lunch the next day (we took our food to 1st Dam), walked around the temple and USU campus, talked about our best and worst semesters, watched "The Proposal" (cute and funny, but you get to see almost all of Sandra Bullock), and stayed at the Anniversary Inn in the Oriental Garden room.

A very fun trip, even though I had totally broken out all over my face with huge nasty pimples. I had a big one right between my eyes, too. Seriously, I looked like a unicorn. Like a unicorn with a bad acne breakout all over the rest of its face. Good times with that.

But anyway, thanks, Pete, for getting all crazy and planning our anniversary trip. If the rest of our marriage is as good as the first seven years, then I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Six!

Once upon a time, there was a young man named Pete. He was a super awesome college student at Utah State University way back in 2000. He met a fabulous woman that year (yep, that would be me), and they hung out with all their roommates and friends. After a long time full of girlfriends, stupid missionaries, and instant messaging, they finally got their act together and got married June 21, 2002. They married in the Logan temple, and continue to live happily ever after!

Yep, it's been 6 years since Pete and I got sealed. We celebrated this fine milestone by doing all these totally romantic things together, like Pete mowing the lawn and me going to the store.

But actually, we got to go to the temple on Friday. Neither of us had been there for a LONG LONG time, sad to say. It was really refreshing, as always, and so wonderful to be there with my awesome hubby.

Then Saturday we went to "Get Smart" (super funny!) and ate an early dinner at Texas Roadhouse (I love their Ranch dressing!). Then that night we watched "Somewhere in Time". Pete said, "That movie SUCKED!" And of course I loved it, because I'm a sappy chick that way.

Pete, you're a wonderful guy, and once again, I'm glad you're mine! Thanks for six wonderful years!

My Wedding Dress

I loved my wedding dress. It was so gorgeous. Wait, that's an understatement. In comparison, it made Cinderella's ball gown look like she was still in rags. When I tried it on I just stared at it and caressed it. I had never felt so beautiful in my life as I did on my wedding day.

BUT...it was time to let it go. It was sitting in my closet, its beauty being wasted. So I decided to sell it on craigslist. I got a call last week, and Kari found it for her sister Jocelyn. They came over on Saturday to see it and try it on. Jocelyn loved it as much as I did. SOLD! I'm utterly giddy. Now I just need to figure out what to spend the money on.