Update #1

We're married!

We were married at the Jordan River temple on 20 March!

This is the only picture I have so far from our wedding.* It is a picture of us arriving at the temple, taken on my phone, by someone we don't know, as we were trying not to be late.


Our reception was at J's parents' house, and it went well.

We spent Saturday and Sunday nights at The Kimball, in downtown Salt Lake, and then on Monday we flew down to southern California for the rest of our honeymoon. We stayed at a resort on the beach, in Oceanside.

This is a picture from our visit to the San Diego Zoo:
We had a second reception in Walnut (CA) on the following Saturday afternoon.

We flew back that Sunday, and since then we have had many, many fun projects. Some of our recent activities have been:
- me moving in.
- finishing taxes.
- a LOT of cleaning and organizing. (But lots more to go...)
- flooding our house, and trying to fix the roof.
- meeting with roofers, and replacing a portion of our roof.
- building a new area for the chickens.**
- pruning trees.
- tiling linoleum under the kitchen counters (to cover the concrete and reclaim some kitchen space).
- school projects.
- more school projects.
- weaning the calves.***

Those are the things that come to mind. Hopefully sometime soon I can begin to blog about recent things in greater detail.

Some upcoming projects include:
- writing furiously for the next day or two and then,
- hopefully, hopefully, most-likely graduating this Friday.
- Mom visiting for my graduation.
- participating in South Jordan's green waste collection day thing by hauling branches we pruned.
- actually (finally!) cleaning and organizing our house.
- getting started with ag water.
- implementing more of the Nourishing Traditions ideas into our diet. (To try next: sprouting our grains and using fresh flour for recipes.)
- learning to use Quicken better.
- finding a job.
- building raised garden beds? (maybe?)
- building some furniture.
- getting a puppy!****
- starting a compost pile.
- getting a goat? (may be delayed until next year)
- cleaning/painting the barns?
- fencing off the larger pasture area. (For calves as they get larger, and/or if we get a goat.)
- mayyybe getting more hens, since this is the right time of year. We're also considering a couple turkeys, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We have a lot going on. For now, I've got to get back to schoolwork. I'm still finishing a big paper.



* Jess and Mitch kindly shared some of the pictures they took, but we promptly laundered the SD card. So we haven't actually seen them yet.
** Since the calves were eating the chicken coop.
*** While we were on our honeymoon, the people that we paid to feed them felt like they were skinny, so they fed them twice as much milk as we told them to (and as the package said to.) So we had to like, double-wean them, because first we had to wean them down to the recommended amount, and then we had to really wean them. Not their favorite, but they like grass now. We also dehorned them, and castrated them. Worst day of their lives!
**** NOT allowed until the house is completely clean and organized. It will probably be a small dog (since J likes small dogs better and since it will be an inside/outside dog and our inside is not huge) but it may be a big dog (because I think I like big dogs better and if it's inside/outside anyway, if it has too much energy, that can just mean it's time to play outside.) If it's a little dog, it will probably be a mixed breed one (a yorkie-poo/chorkie/pomchi/yorkie-pom/porkie, etc.) because those are cute and have the benefits of mixed-breed dog (eg, better health and temperament). If it's a big dog, it will probably be a great dane. We'll see.

Wedding stuff!

I'm not a very consistent blogger anymore, but that's okay.

We've been busy like crazy!

1. We had our engagement session with

our photographer! It was a lot of fun. We loved it. My future in-laws are having Greg from Photography by McKenzie shoot J and I's wedding. And bridals/groomals. And engagement pictures. (J and I met McKenzie and Greg at the Grand America Bridal Fair*, and we just thought they were fantastic. And then they had great specials for March. And then it turned out that Roger & Anne had McKenzie do their wedding, too. Small world.)

We did our engagement pictures in Lehi, Utah. Our gallery has hundreds of pretty pictures, which we just love, but several good ones are posted on McKenzie's blog, right here. We ended up deciding to send one of the ones on her blog, but I won't say which one so that it will still sort of be a surprise when people get their invitations.

2. We also got our invitations! Erin helped me design them, and I love them! I had Mercurio Brothers letterpress print them, and I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. They're gorgeous. To save money, I had them printed on smaller paper ("A2") instead of 5 x 7 paper, which I had planned to use. I also bought (smaller "A2") envelopes locally (at xpedx) instead of paying to have them shipped, and paying even more to have them rushed so that I could start addressing them. I did want the envelopes to be thick, though, so they are. We had inserts digitally printed (much cheaper) by Alphagraphics; they point people toward our wedding website. I wanted to line the invitation envelopes, but envelope liners get kind of (okay, very) expensive, so instead I lined the envelopes myself. I used 3 1/2 rolls of wrapping paper that I bought at the dollar store, and it just happened to be the perfect shade of blue! Partway through the envelope-lining project, I had some (much appreciated!) surprise help from J's mom and J's niece.

3. We've been assembling invitations. I wanted to write the addresses in calligraphy, but paying $2-3/ envelope was totally out of the question so I decided to do them myself. So I started addressing envelopes v e r y s l o w l y a while ago. I got a lot of them done, but we're still collecting some addresses. (My calligraphy is getting better and better! Now that I'm about done writing addresses, I'm getting pretty good at it. So. If your address looks a little, uh, messed up, know that it was written by hand, with so much love.) We sent one big batch of invitations out on Friday, more invitations out this Monday, and we have another batch of invitations ready to go out tomorrow.

We ordered our pictures from Ritzpix.com, and since the invitations were smaller, 3 1/2 x 5" was the size we wanted! We picked Ritzpix.com because they have a deal every Tuesday and Wednesday where you can get 3 1/2 x 5" prints, same-day, for 6 cents per picture. (Instead of 19 cents per 3 1/2 x 5" picture from them on other days, or 12 cents per 4 x 6" from Costco, which we would have needed to be trim.) That was our kind of price!

4. J ordered and received his tux. He was going to rent a tux, because we're not just so fancy that he needs to keep one. But, he was going to have to rent it for bridals/groomals (this Saturday), and then for a whole week from our wedding (20 March) to our California reception (27 March), and it was going to cost more to rent it for the three events than it would cost to just buy a brand new one online (at Buy4LessTuxedo.com). So instead of paying to rent a tux, J has his very own, brand new tuxedo, tuxedo shirt, man jewelry (= cuff links and button covers), and shiny man shoes, and he gets to keep all of them. He didn't try on the tuxedo shirt, man jewelry, or shoes, but he did try on the actual tux, and it looks really snazzy. As his future wife, I know that it will be my obligation to seek every opportunity for him to wear his tuxedo, and it's a duty I'm prepared to accept.

5. I picked up J's ring! It's... Hm. Well. I don't remember what it is, I guess. I think it's Tungsten with a band of silver around the middle? (Maybe?) I don't know. It looks very nice. And we got a very good deal on it, which was one thing that we wanted. (Although, not as good of a deal as Jess and Mitch got, unfortunately.) It looks very manly, but also pretty enough to look like a wedding ring. We both really liked it.*****

6. We got our marriage license! On Friday! We were really excited about it, actually. I asked the lady if we could take a picture inside the building, in front of the Marriage License bulletin board, and not only did she let us, she offered to take the picture for us!**

7. We had our Bishop's interviews! This Sunday! Tomorrow we get to meet with our Stake President. (Since we are choosing to be married in an LDS temple, we need to have interviews to obtain special temple recommends.)

8. Jess threw me an excellent Bridal Shower! I don't have any of the pictures from it yet, but we had a great time. She had printed up some of my favorite engagement pictures and she made cute decorations, and we had little chicken salad sandwiches, cream puffs and lots of fruit and vegetables, and a bunch of my favorite people came. Highlights included: a mad-libs game about how J and I met; a game where everyone wrote down a problem in marriage on one paper and a solution to the problem on another paper, and the papers were jumbled up and read so that problems had funny solutions; and fresh strawberries and pineapple. I loved being with friends from Provo that I hadn't seen in a while.

9. Also this weekend, J and I celebrated our one year anniversary, of when we first met***. For Valentine's Day we went to Rubio's (on 13 Feb, actually), which is where we met up for our first date, but I don't really care for their food all that much, so instead we went to JC Penney to spend my $10 free JC Penney money (which randomly came in the mail) on red shoes to go with my wedding dress, and then we made**** little chocolate cakes (which I had been craving) and worked on invitations (of course). We did talk about some of the neat things from the first year of our relationship, though, and we expressed our love for each other, and hopes and excitement for this next year together. It was really nice.

I really need to get back to homework, so I think I will.

* (More stories about the bridal fair to follow, probably.)

** Getting our marriage license was the best government experience J and I have ever had, I think. The ladies in the office were super efficient and friendly, and didn't make us wait much at all. When we went over to pay, one of the other ladies raced over to swipe my card before our main lady could get to it. It really was a race. When would people race to help you at the DMV, you know? (They smiled and told us we were a nice couple. Which, you know, they probably tell most couples, but that's fine.) Also, our marriage license cost $50. J and I agreed that our marriage license was a much better value than vehicle registration fees.

*** J is much better than I am at remembering these--we have anniversaries for when we first talked, when we first actually went out on our first date, when we first became a couple, when we had our first kiss, etc.

**** J doesn't have an oven, since we're cheap and we don't want to spend money to replace his, so we used his toaster oven. It actually worked all right.

***** It has no diamonds. J kind of liked man-rings with diamonds, and we've had an ongoing joke about how he wants one that matches mine. I think I sometimes embarrassed store-people when I would suggest rings for J that were thick bands that were clearly still bride rings. We knew it was a joke, though.

I probably shouldn't mention this...

but Jessica is doing...


HER FiRsT GiVeAwAY!!!!!!


I sort of hope nobody else enters because I want to win. But aren't they so cute?

(And doesn't it look like they're from a picture out of a magazine? I think Mitch's camera has Photoshop built in. Like he takes pictures and the instant they're taken, things are posed perfectly and everything is edited. It's just a theory, but I'm pretty sure it's true.)



Hm. Now I need to do a *-GiVeAwAy!!!!!-* too.
J and I have had a lot of *-cRaFt NiGhT!!!-*s, so I'll need to think about what I can make two of next time. I think my next cRaFt!!! will be to install some linoleum tile as part of sUpEr FuN cRaFt. I'm pretty sure I'll have some extra, but my craft is versatile, (ha! punny!) you know, so I'll have to decide whether to take pictures of it with sparkling cider (for a New Year's giveaway), or with pictures of Presidents (for a Presidents' Day giveaway), or with little hearts (for a Valentine's Day giveaway), or what. I guess it might be a little while before my giveaway is ready, so I you can enter Jessica's in the meantime.


My goodness, I have so much to blog about, it seems kind of crazy to finish a blog post and not mention anything else. Here's a quick overview (from the document on my desktop "To blog about."). I'll blog more soon, now that I'm FINALLY done with this semester.
1. I have been SO busy with school this semester. I should have taken one fewer class than I did. And not been so sick for so much of the beginning of the semester, which caused me big problems.
2. J and I went to CA for Thanksgiving.
3. I interviewed J's dad for my Folklore/ life story class. I think it ended up being like 9 1/2 hours long, in 3 interviews. I'm still working on that project. I have neat stories to tell from it, though.
4. We've had a couple exciting chicken incidents worth mentioning. I think all of the birds were laying until a couple weeks ago. We got a bunch of the green eggs before everyone stopped laying. That was fun.
5. I'M ENGAGED! Seems kind of funny to mention it like this, but when J first proposed, it took a few days before all of the family people knew. And by then it seemed kind of weird to set my status on Gmail or Facebook to that, so I just didn't. And I've been trying not to think about it too much anyway, because really, no, really, I had too much school stuff. So I promised I would Really Try not to think about wedding plans at all until after my school stuff was ENTIRELY done. Because otherwise I would pretty much for sure be repeating a class or two, and I just really don't have time for that if I still want to graduate in May. (Which I do.)
6. Another neat thing is, we had an awesome sacrament meeting in church a couple weeks ago, which I took really great notes about because I wanted to share it. It was a Christmas talk, so I'll try and post about it tomorrow.