First Day of School, 2011-2012

Today was the first day of school. C is in 5th grade, K in 7th. J missed the cut-off to start Kindergarten by less than a month. Oh well. He is in Mom Preschool and loving it. :)

C was in Kindergarten when our elementary opened its doors. Now, he and his classmates are the first class to make it all the way through the school. Pretty cool.

The bus stops were changed this year....further away and I cannot see the stops. Makes my Mommy-Heart a little nervous, but they are big kids.

This picture is C before he left for the bus stop (he did NOT want me walking him to the bus stop!

My two kiddos:
K before going to her bus stop almost an hour later....and, wow!, she looks so old to me today!
I have to say that this is the first year in quite a few that S has not gone to school with us on the first day. I know she is definitely old enough not to, but we did miss her.

A tradition continued.....first day of school cookies. YUM!
Another tradition (as of last year at least)....Yogurtland. We did this for our Family Home Evening tonight. It was fun.

C and K, I hope you have a wonderful year! Do your best, be nice to everyone, smile even when you aren't enjoying life, and always remember that your Mom loves you!!!

Getting Ready: Night Before and Morning of the Wedding!

These posts are definitely not in order. I am going back to the night before the wedding as well as the morning of the wedding preparations. I am so glad I documented this time via pictures. It has only been a couple of weeks, but it brings it all back to see the pictures.

The kids and I left the K Family reunion after K's birthday cake. I am so glad that I stayed in a hotel with my kids that night. My friends and my sister also chose to stay in the same hotel. How fun!!! :) It was the relaxation I needed before the wedding day.

Friday night, we all went to Olive Garden for dinner. There was one on the same property as the hotel, so it was an easy walk over.

These are two of my favoritest friends ever: J and A.

My sister and her family were able to join us there for dinner after a LONG drive. Their kids were awesome and I have missed them so much.
T is my niece. She and I had a lot of fun together. :)


After we got done eating, our dear friends that used to live in Texas, S and Q) came to visit. They brought C (who is my C's age) and B (who is K's age) to visit.

We tried unsuccessfully to steam the wrinkles out of my dress. We were told it would be easy. Hmmmm....Nope. Not so much. Oh well. It was too late to worry, right?
S and I.
Then, we decided we needed to practice getting this monster on. It was a chore. Q took the kids down to the pool and three ladies working on getting my dress on took almost an hour. :) It was a chore. I just stood there while they worked.
After we were all done, I started to worry about if it would be possible to go to the bathroom with the dress on. Hmmm....what a challenge! I love this picture! The toilet is closed...I am not using it, but just sitting there created a fun picture.
J at the pool.
Friends forever. I am so blessed.
J was pretty cranky all day, especially at the end. Finally, his whining ended and he was asleep on my lap. I love that you can see the dress hanging there waiting for the big day.
Wedding morning!!!!

I slept off and on all night...not nervous, but definitely excited. I also wanted to be sure that I had enough time to get ready without stress. Here I am after my early shower.
We all ate breakfast together. How we love our cousins!
I loved this shot of all of our shoes lined up and ready for the big day.
Make-up...of course!
Kids just bored and waiting for their time to get ready.
My dear friend, A, came to do my hair.
In this picture, you can see the dress and me with my hair half done in the same shot. Classic!
Good thing I have friends that can help do K's hair before the wedding!


And....within a few minutes, CK will come pick me up and off to the temple we will go. So blessed. So blessed. Life just doesn't get better than mine right now.

K Family Reunion

CK's Family has an annual reunion, usually in Idaho. This year, we had the reunion in conjunction with the wedding. It was very fun and it was especially nice to have my children get to know their new cousins. I am so impressed with how the K family has welcomed all four of us with loving arms. We have been included as dear family and I am so grateful.

We got in very late Wednesday night (by the time we got there, it was actually Thursday morning)...about 1:30 am.

Thursday morning, Grandma made the four kids breakfast. She is awesome.
Then, that afternoon CK and I went and got our marriage license from the courthouse and met the rest of the family for a fun afternoon at the waterpark with a picnic after.

The big kids loved this slide:
Eating the picnic:



Talking and laughing. This is my new sister, M. I really like her. :) I love the whole family. They are great. CK is so lucky.
Grandma then had the big girls all to her house for a sleepover. They had a lot of fun and it was really good for K. (If you look closely at the sleeping bags, there are girls hiding from me in them!)
Friday morning, we packed up and started a new K family tradition. This year, there are 3 cousins old enough to perform baptisms for the dead in the temple. We decided that this would be a fun tradition to add to the family reunion. I am really excited about it.
We went to the Idaho Falls, ID temple (Where CK and I were married the next day).

Here they are: B, K, and T, after the baptisms.
Then...D had us meet and go bowling. The cool thing was...there are 24 of us, so he divided us into 4 groups, mixing ages and families. We were teams. It was so fun and a great way to bond with each other. I thought it was a great idea!
It was K's birthday and she was just such a great sport. She brought extra socks for me...in case I didn't want to dig them out of my suitcase (I did not). We had fun wearing the crazy socks together.

We finished the day at D and K's house for a presentation of the team bowling trophy and for K's birthday cake.

What a great reunion!!! I am so blessed to be part of this family. Again, the blessings are overwhelming. I feel so happy. :)

My kids and I then left to spend the night in a hotel to get ready for the wedding (at this point less than a day away!)

Our Wedding

Our wedding was amazing. Truly. Nothing went wrong. Everything was very, very right. It was a beautiful day. I felt like a princess. I hope that I have many memories to cherish forever.

I don't have our professional pictures back and I don't even have the pictures that others took with their cameras, but I did send my two cameras around (mostly with C and my brother, S). Here are some of the ones I loved (in random order) to help document this best day of my life:

This is my cousin, B, and me. He is the cousin closest in age to me and we have always been close (just not in height!):
These next pictures are of my family outside the temple. This first one I included because it is the only one where you can see the six of us and the temple in the background.


This is my family...My brother J, my brother A, my Mom, ME, my Dad, My sister S, and my brother S. Because of missions and other events, we haven't all been together in years. Although it was brief, it was awesome!
My sister is one of my best friends. She is amazing in every way. I may be older, but I look up to her a lot!
I have a couple of the kids playing games, I guess while we were having our pictures taken. Loved them. :)
These are my Texas friends...A, M, T, CK, ME, S, Q, J, and A. I am so grateful for the sacrifices they made to be there. Some have since moved from Texas, but they still have Texas running through their blood. :)
As we got ready for the parents' picture, someone snapped this shot. I loved the look on our faces. There is love (and a little humor) there.
Wow! Isn't J handsome?!?
This picture brings tears to my eyes every time I see it. It was the first time I saw K after the wedding. You can just see the love we have for each other. Also...note the CAT machine and torn up dirt in the background. The temple grounds were being torn up. Didn't matter. What mattered is the ceremony inside.
Again...I kept this in to document the dirt. Part of our story. :)
Loved the temple in the background, just over my hair.
Whatever it was....we found it funny!

The Happy Couple.....and we are soooooooooooooooo happy!

This is my dear friend, S (Another one from Texas, but no longer in Texas). She couldn't make it to the ceremony, but we got to see her just as we were leaving. I am so glad. I love her.
So...There you have it. A beautiful day. Again, so blessed. I am happier than I probably have ever been. So blessed. Truly, after the tears comes the joy. Happiness follows sorrow. I can testify to that. :)