Where have we been?

Well it's official, we have been married for a whole month and we haven't killed each other yet. Just kidding, we love married life but we have definitely been keeping busy. The last few weeks have mostly been spent moving Nate's stuff into the house, combining my stuff and his stuff, buying new stuff to replace worn out old stuff that we might not have gotten from the wedding, and finding places for this new stuff which has resulted in reorganizing every room in the house. I love my house and I feel very blessed that I bought it when I did so that we could have somewhere nice to live but I think it almost would have been easier if we were starting fresh in a new house. For the last few months my (now our) house has been in a cylcical wave of clutter/boxes and disorganization. From wedding stuff, to my roommate moving out, to new stuff and my hubby moving in. There have definitely been days where the mess felt overwhelming and I didn't think it would ever get put back together again. Luckily it appears there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We're nearly there and then our house will be better (and more organized) than it's ever been. We can rest assured we've done our part to try to help the economy or at the very least we've kept trashmen employed.

Sadly this is not the only stack of boxes, we made at least 3 or 4 trips like this. On the plus side I do have a nice pile of stuff to take to DI.

In other news, Nate turned 28 on January 21st! So HAPPY BIRTHDAY STUD! Hope the next 27 are even better than the last.

P.S. If you or someone you know gave us an Oneida pizza stone please step forward. :) There was no card, or it may have fallen off, and I want to make sure we get everyone thanked.

Honeymoonin

For our honeymoon Nate and I went to San Diego. We only had a short amount of time before Nate had to be back for his rotations so we wanted to go somewhere where traveling wouldn't take up a ton of time, plus it is December/January and anywhere with no snow is a plus for me. So we rented a cute little 2 room beach cottage in Mission Bay and drove over the day after our wedding, aka New Years Eve.

After dinner we took a walk around the bay to take in the views and maybe see some NYE fireworks, but alas there were none. So we went home and curled up in front of the fireplace to watch a movie.

And that's when we got a very unwelcome and mean spirited visitor...The Stomach Flu!! It hit me first and got Nate a day later. My sweet husband braved the drunken streets of New Year's Eve somewhere between 1:30-3am (I'm a little fuzzy on when that happened) to get me some pepto bismol in an effort to give me some relief. Needless to say a mean case of the stomach flu was never part of our dream honeymoon but we were still able to do a few fun things.

We went whale watching, and it was really cold. We have a tendancy to underestimate the weather a bit. We were dressed in jeans and sweaters/sweatshirts while the rest of the people had heavy jackets, mittens and hats. We did manage to see one whale, and we followed him for quite a while.


We also took a trip to see the San Diego temple, since I had never seen it before.

Our other splurge was to take a dinner cruise on our final night in San Diego. Considering the angry state of our digestive system, we'd thought about canceling but could not get a clear answer from anyone as to if we'd be able to get a refund since the manager was out until Monday. So rather than lose the money we got dressed up and went. It was still cold but we were a little more prepared. The cruise was fun and the skyline was beautiful all lit up. The food was really good and I think had we been feeling better we would have enjoyed it a lot more. Regardless it was better than the steady diet of pepto, saltine crackers, and gatorade that we'd been surviving on for a few days.

Before heading for home on Sunday we stopped at Old Towne to walk around for a bit. This has always been a family tradition of mine on trips to San Diego. Normally we get breakfast of chorizo and eggs at Cafe Coyote and then get a batch of fresh handmade tortillas to nosh on during the drive home. Sadly neither of these looked, sounded, or smelled appetizing in our current state, though Nate did give San Diego 2 thumbs up!

I think we'll wait and try a second honeymoon later this year or when Nate finishes school.

To Eternity And Beyond

WE DID IT!! On Tuesday, December 30th, 2008, Nate and I were sealed together for time and all eternity as husband and wife. What a blessing it is to know that we have the opportunity to be together forever.

Looking back at the pictures, the day really did go beautifully but it wasn't with out a few stressful points. When we told people we were getting married on a Tuesday we got a lot of crazy looks. No one gets married on a Tuesday. Even when we scheduled our sealing with the temple we were the only one's scheduled, so we expected everything to go easy breezy as we drove over to the temple Tuesday morning. Much to our surprise, as we pulled up the place was a beehive of activity. The parking lots were completely full and there were a number of other cars circling for a spot. We gave up hunting for a spot and ended up parking in the dirt lot Northwest of the temple. We scurried over with all our bags in tow since we were now 5 minutes late and arrived huffing and puffing as we tried to catch our breath. Not exactly how I pictured the start of my wedding day. When we got settled we found out that they had 80 missionaries there that morning for some sort of zone conference and 10...16...18 (the number kept growing with each person we talked to) weddings scheduled. Guess we weren't so crazy after all, we were trendsetters.

Dressed, ready, and miraculously back on schedule we waited for our ceremony to start. We waited, and waited. The other couples around us were all taken in and we continued to wait, when we overheard that the couple before us was scheduled to start over a half hour before, they barely got into the room about 5 minutes before we were scheduled to go. Our ceremony was short but beautiful and sweet. It was such a blessing to be surrounded by so many of our loved ones.

A few other hiccups happened that put our morning events further behind and as Nate and I reflected on the morning we realized that everything that had happened was stuff that was out of our hands. We had planned everything to the "t" and almost every step of the way that morning we hit a bump. My dad in all his fatherly wisdom suggested that maybe we were being taught a lesson that you can plan everything perfectly but life still happens. I think we're still learning this lesson to this day.
In the end the wedding and the reception were beautiful. It might not have happened exactly how I pictured but it was still wonderful. Our friends and family were great in the amazing love and support they gave us in pulling the whole thing off. We were surrounded by loved ones young and old, reunited with people we haven't seen for far too long, and everyone had a good time (at least that's what it looks like in pictures). In the end we're now husband and wife together forever.

P.S. Check back "soon" for a slideshow of more wedding pictures. Our photographer Bob Kaufman took so many beautiful pictures it's taking me a while to put them all together.