zac and mckayla: the bridal shower

kelli and i threw mckayla a bridal shower over the weekend! it was fantastic! the guest list was mainly family. aunts, a few cousins and mckayla's bosses came. it went exactly how i had planned, and i am so glad its over, haha. we had a tea party brunch and it was so much fun. i had all kinds of surprises for mckayla and we really enjoyed the afternoon! i had created place cards for all of the guests, which was a little bit of a hassle to get RSVP's and last minute additions and cancellations, but about 10 minutes into the shower, i looked around and every seat was filled and i was so happy. the food was all amazing, the decorations came out just as i had planned, and i think everyone really enjoyed themselves! i surprised kayla by editing some video footage i had taken while devin took their engagement photos, and the video turned out really sweet. i'm so glad she liked it! devin and i had also secretly interviewed zac a few weeks ago. we asked him a lot of questions about himself, mckayla, their relationship and the wedding. mckayla was so surprised and she got almost all of the answers right! i think it also helped everyone get to know zac better. i am so glad it went well! my friends did the same thing for me, and i was so surprised that they had interviewed devin, and i cherish that video, and i know kayla will, too. i'm so sad i didn't get any pictures of my sisters and i, or even just kayla! she wore the prettiest lace dress to the shower, she was absolutely gorgeous. it was a great afternoon!

< i'm usually not a fan of daisies, but these peachy pink ones were too cute to pass up
> place settings for all the guests. turned out so cute!


i absolutely loved assembling all these vases with fresh flowers. i think i'll be a florist some day.


all the decorations i made hung above the table and looked great!


< more of the table. my aunt kristin was so nice to let us take over her house for the shower!
> part of the food table - so many delicious things to eat!


< macarons and muffins - they turned out so, so great!
> i did a few repeat foods from devin's birthday party, including these bacon-wrapped lil' smokies. such a hit, but the whole house smelled like bacon and maple syrup.


the food table. i loved being able to incorporate the crates devin has been building lately, and kelli hung the backdrop which turned out just perfect!

i just about cried tears of joy when all four batches of macarons came out this perfectly. i squealed for a few minutes and kept making devin look at them.

a sad story from the weekend: on friday, my poor sweet mom shattered her elbow! she is getting surgery on wednesday (they have to replace the bone that shattered), but it happened the day before the shower, so she was unable to help, and was in too much pain to come :( i spent friday night at my parent's, and my older sister came down and spent the night, too, and we took care of her and got everything done for the shower, and still managed to get in a lot of cheech time (i love spending time with my sisters). her surgery is a same day surgery and the doctor is confident she will be out of a cast in time for the wedding, but dang it! it was a pretty long weekend to say the least! i'm just praying she can make it to wednesday, when the surgery is, without too much pain and discomfort. she is just in a splint with a few painkillers until then! is there anything worse than seeing someone you love in so much pain, and feeling so helpless? it is truly the worst feeling ever. i was glad to be able to spend the weekend at home with my family and do what i could to help out!

the weekend

*first of all, i'm sorry my photos aren't showing up right now. at first, i ran out of space to upload directly from this here "write post" draft spot, and then i started using photobucket and just copying and pasting the HTML code over, and now it's telling me i have a limited amount of bandwidth per month? this doesn't even make sense to me. hopefully within the next couple of days i will have it figured out though! how do you share photos on your blog? do you do something different/easier? i would love to know! i got a flickr account, so maybe that's the way i need to go? we'll see... this is also why there aren't any photos in this post because i'm just not even gonna try.

>> we went to the wedding reception for danica and ryan's little sister, haley, who i love so dearly! she made the cutest bride and the smiles on her and chris' faces were huge! they are so happy together. loved it. the governor was there! they are sort of a big deal. plus, it was really nice to see danica and ryan, because it's been ages seeing as how i've been a horrible friend lately (see this post here.) but we've already made plans to change that, so i'm on the mend.

>> it was after that reception that we picked the babies up for a sleepover (already posted about that here.)

>> after we took them home on saturday morning, we cleaned the house and i got to work on some decorations for kayla's bridal shower

>> on sunday, we were asked to sub in a primary class. i spent most of saturday night preparing the lesson, thinking it was the same group of kids we had subbed for a few months ago (they were about 10-11 years old). the lesson was super awkward because these kids were a lot older, and my lesson was stupid to them, and we accidentally tried to make them go to primary, thinking they were still that young, when they were actually all older than 12. oops! oh well. you win some, you lose some. i just want to be called to young women already!! (bishop reddish, do you read my blog?!)

>> sunday afternoon was spent at the park, relaxing to several episodes of how i met your mother, and eventually driving back down to orem (we get so sick of that drive sometimes!) for dinner with devin's family. we've been having such a fun summer with impromptu barbecues and family outings. i love that family. i married into a crazy one, but i love it the same ;) haha

we're more than half way through 2013 and time seems like it's starting to speed up. kayla's wedding is only a month away, her shower is next weekend, and i've still got so much i want to do before the weather cools down! ah! at least we're having a good time.

september fourteenth

my baby sister is getting married! they set their wedding date for just two short months away, so even though it's only been a little over a week, we've been planning like crazy and the amount of ideas and brainstorming going on could make a person dizzy! it has been quite the whirlwind, but i am excited! i am thrilled to have zac as a brother in law and he has become a great friend over the past several months. they are so great together, and i wish for the best and can't wait to celebrate their marriage come september! 

the second year

may 26, 2011

serendipity: the phenomenon of finding valuable things not sought for.

Meeting Devin was pure serendipity. For us both. Neither of us were looking for anything, especially not our future spouse, but I am grateful every day that I found this man on accident. That I walked into that wedding, and that he cared to notice, and that he had the nerve to contact me. And that he couldn't deny wanting to get to know me. I'm so glad I took a chance on him, even though it felt like a risk sometimes.

Devin, I am proud of you. I am proud to be your wife. I'm proud of our marriage and I'm proud of the life we have built together. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love that I get to keep all these adventures and trials and milestones with you forever. I love not having to share those with anyone else. We've come pretty far since our wedding day, and it's so crazy to look back and see all we've been through and all the places we've been in these last 2 years. It makes me excited to see where the next two years take us, and all the years after that.

I love you so much more than I ever thought I could. So much more than I ever thought was possible. I feel so privileged to have married my very best friend. Happy anniversary, love.

Two years!?

reminiscing

without going into much detail, it's been a pretty stressful few weeks. to say the least! there are so many big changes in the future - most of which could happen any second. i've been pretty high strung, and i've let the stress get the best of me most of the time. devin has been sick for almost a full week now, and we're both recuperating from our backpacking trip with lots of sore muscles, countless bug bites, lack of sleep and itchy sunburns. but my husband - regardless of all of this, hasn't failed once to make sure i'm happy. he has truly been a lifesaver lately. he is easily the only person who can calm me down so fast, and help me refocus on the things that matter most. i lose sight of the big picture a lot of the time, and tend to focus on small problems, and he's always fixing everything. fixing me, fixing the small problems... it's incredible to watch him work so tirelessly in every area of his life. he is so successful. he is getting a lot of responsibility and opportunity at work, and it has been amazing to see how quickly he has gained the respect of his coworkers. he is always improving. he is always working harder to be better, and he is always helping others do the same for themselves. he never hesitates to do something for someone else, and it is so humbling for me. i often find myself wondering why i was the girl that deserves to be his wife. it is such a privilege. and let me tell you, a huge self esteem boost to realize that that handsome man picked me. i can hardly believe it! i found myself today looking through our wedding photos. it's been awhile. i love those photos. jared is such an incredible photographer, and an amazing friend to have done all that work for us. what a lot of people don't know is that because jared photographed our wedding and bridals mostly as a favor, he didn't edit the pictures, or even sort through them. he gave us every last one. we picked our favorites to provide a "wedding album" but there are several that nobody has ever seen - most of them only slightly different from ones we have already shown, but different enough matter to me. devin has edited some of the photos as we've made prints to hang in the house, but i love that our wedding photos are unedited. part of me was a little jealous that i didn't have the wedding photos with the cool effects, and professional editing... but how many brides have over 2,000 photos of their wedding day and bridal session? and devin can edit any of them whenever i ask nicely :) haha

those 2,000 photos are in a home on our external hard drive, where they rarely get looked at. i'm pretty sure the last time i looked at all of these was shortly after we got them, so it's like getting your wedding photos all over again! here are a few of those photos that i especially love. but first - a huge thank you to my amazing husband who has literally kept me sane this past month or two. sometimes he seems too good to be true! i love you, devin!

this man has my whole heart.

the one where we went to 2 sealings in one day.

Happy 4th of July! Devin is working this morning, and our only other plans are a small BBQ with his family, and then hopefully a hike up rock canyon to our favorite secret spot in time to catch the fireworks -- we're not big on parades, or waking up at horrendous hours to look at giant balloons. we'd rather keep a low profile and enjoy the time off together! anyway... here's what we've been up to this past weekend:

life has continued to stay busy. we've been cooking for friends, and rearranging our apartment and working hard.

this last weekend was especially busy! Friday, after work, we drove to Logan with my family. We took Kayla and Kyle with us, and my parents spent the evening in Ogden at a concert, while we headed to Rock Haus, the climbing gym in Logan, to climb with my younger siblings. 

Devin helped open he gym before his mission, and knows the owner, Trevor, well. We had a good time! Kayla and Kyle are both awesome climbers - I was so impressed with them! It was a cool little gym - but it made my thankful for Momentum! 

after a few hours of climbing, we headed to the hotel to check in. it was really late, and my parents had booked a double queen room at a super classy Super 8, and devin and I planned on sleeping on the floor on an air mattress. we got checked in just as my parents were leaving Ogden, about 45 minutes away with all the concert trafic - and we got to the room to discover it was definitely not going to fit a queen sized mattress on the floor. anywhere.

these are kayla's shoes. she had planned on wearing them the next morning to the temple, but my dad and brother told her she couldn't, because they make her taller than both of them. i tried walking around the hotel room in them, and i'm surprised i didn't roll my ankle... they are a good 6 inches tall!

this didn't upset me, because it only meant devin and i would have to go get our own room. we left kayla and kyle there and headed down the road. we ended up at a nice Best Western (you can never go wrong with them!) - our favorite, plus it gave us an excuse to rack up some more rewards points - and slept really well. i'm so glad it worked out this way - i couldn't have imagined all 6 of us trying to get ready in that small hotel room the next morning!

we had a disappointing continental breakfast and headed straight to the Logan temple the next morning where Kelli and Sean were about to be sealed!

Uncle Todd (Elder Christofferson) performed the sealing it was absolutely beautiful. i only lost it for a few minutes when I hugged my sister after. devin and i agreed that the sealing was very powerful, and so quickly and clearly made kelli and sean undeniably happy. we greeted them outside the temple with more hugs and cheering and headed off to breakfast with the group.

devin and i couldn't stay to eat, because we had to be at the Timpanogos temple for yet another sealing in just a few hours. we stopped for lunch and made it to the temple just in time to see my cousin mckenzie get sealed to max! Uncle Todd performed this sealing, too! it was great to see him and Aunt Kathy twice in one day - and be in the temple with them, no less!

more greetings with hugs outside, but this time, we were on the job! kenzie had asked us to photograph the wedding day, and the photos at the temple went quickly and smoothly, but it was at least 90 degrees and we were exhausted and hot! we grabbed some snow cones and went home to rest and unpack in our freezing apartment (which we were thankful for for once!) when we were done, before we had to head out to the reception. 

then we were off to provo, to a beautiful house where the backyard reception was being held. the same backyard, in fact, as in the movie "Forever Strong"! It was huge and absolutely gorgeous.

the reception was short (which we love!) and everything went according to plan. we went straight to the grocery store to restock our cupboards and fridge and made it home just before I was sure my feet would fall off (the joys of high heels, right?) long, exhausting, but beautiful weekend!

we slept through church on sunday (oops!) but took advantage of a free afternoon and went to Cascade Springs, wishing we had a puppy to tag along! we ran into a mini cooper parade and watched as at least 20 of them zoomed up the alpine loop.

After, we headed to Josh and Amy's for dinner, and then to Devin's parents' to catch up with the family for a few minutes!

Monday came too soon!