Happy Two Months!

Has it only been two months? It seems both longer and shorter. The great news this month is that I have wedding pictures!!! I've had so much fun looking at them... I'll let them speak for themselves. 

At least one of us was ready to get married....

Our beautiful venue, Le Jardin

Cute nieces as flower girls

Button, button, who's got the button?

Mom always knows best

The cuteness!

Handsome boys! Someone coached Carson really well, it looks like :)

We're married!! Cue the Hallelujah chorus!

Our dear family and friends

Tyler: It's tough being almost 2 

My cute nieces and nephews!!

Grandparents with their grandkids

My beautiful mother

My handsome father

My four brothers - a rose between the thorns? That, or some seriously awesome bodyguards. I'm the luckiest girl to have these brothers watching out for me!

Sweet Tyler

The Burgin Family

The Smith Family and friends 

The Smith Family

Kids are the best!

Possibly the best bouquet shot I've ever seen captured on film! 

True love 

Pennsylvania Apples

Last weekend, Dave and I drove up to Baltimore to spend some time with Jenelle and Jeff before General Conference. I love having a few friends out here that are close enough to visit on the weekends or the occasional day off. Jenelle and I had time to take a short(ish) walk together and it was so soul-soothing to have that connection and just be who I always have been. Navigating marriage and a new city and looking for a new job and fitting into a new ward.... there's so many new things going on that it is truly precious to spend some time with a friend who has known me for ten years, through all sorts of other "new" phases. Those twenty minutes were probably some of the most precious for me. However, Jenelle and Jeff are awesome at finding cool local events to attend! So early on Saturday morning, we hopped in the car and drove off for Gettysburg - and the local apple festival in the next town over.

Making cider with an antique engine. You could smell how sweet the apples were! It only took about 5-10 mins for them to get apples through the cutter/chopper thing, then pressed into the white bucket and strained twice before being poured into half-gallons. 

Apple pancakes for breakfast!

The shyest little apple-worm you ever did see.

Aww, look at all of us having a blast

Miniature horses in the petting barn

A nifty steam engine hooked up to an old-fashioned shingle-making machine

The apple orchards

Being silly in the orchard - I'm pretty sure Dave was smiling 

The Smith Family

Dave sometimes talks during picture time

Jenelle made a joke about us being newlyweds and all over each other, hence we had to ham it up and create some lovely photographic proof of such! You can't see it, but he started the funny kissing and trying to eat my face. Sadly, I'm the only one that looks truly strange. 

We eventually got a kiss in, despite our silliness

Obligatory jumping picture!!

It has started!!!! (more gratitude)

My new life is finally taking a tangible step forward!! It has started!!! I accepted a full-time job offer today with Cornerstone Home Lending and I'm so thankful to be ending this year employed once again. (It really is time to address my sleep schedule now.) Throughout the past five months of searching for jobs, and searching for myself a bit too, I have always held to the belief that the right job would work out in the right place and the right time. Assistant loan processor is probably not the job I was chasing after in my dream-life scenario, but things work out for reasons. And it feels like the right move. Speaking of moves, I'm also planning to take my country, wide-open-spaces self into the heart of Salt Lake City and try out the downtown scene! I've never considered myself a city girl, but thankfully SLC is one of the smallest big cities you could run across, and it has grown on me a lot in the past few months. 

It's been quite the journey this second half of the year. Quite the journey. I'm so thankful for family that took me in and kept me housed and fed and feeling loved, no matter what. I'm thankful for friends who poured out their support in June, and who have continued to support me through my arduous job search. I really do have a TON of friends!!! I'm thankful for Amber, who helped me in the most difficult moments and is now a great friend for doing crazy/fun stuff! I'm thankful for Jenelle, who was basically a therapist to me through a lot of everything. I'm glad she got married so I could meet Dan, a great friend who helped me come to love SLC and believe in myself again. I'm thankful for my adopted ward in Farmington, who took me in even though I'm an outsider. I have made some great friends in that ward, including Annika, who referred me to this job! I haven't feel so accepted and loved in a ward in a quite a while. I'm thankful for dance - the opportunity to maintain at least one part of myself through thick and thin, stay connected with my friends, and perform. I'm thankful for oodles of down time that allowed me to doodle around and start developing a talent that I hope to one day market. Not to mention all the time I had to work on my cross-stitch project. I'm also extremely thankful for the time I've had to go to the temple regularly and feel peace. To build deeper relationships with family members. To better understand how family always loves you and wants to help you... that was a lesson I learned from so many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

And finally, I am thankful that I can go home for Christmas this year. It just wouldn't be Christmas without my mom and dad and a handful of brothers, all of us doing our holiday traditions in Missouri.  

Good words

Rare
Beautiful
Intelligent
Unique
Spiritual
Amazing

Good words. Words to make one happy, strong, and believe in oneself. It's been an interesting week, but I'm thankful for these good words from a friend who sees me better than I see myself sometimes. 

Thursday Times

What an interesting day. Good moment: I had a great interview with the company InContact for an Education Consultant position. Basically I'd be training people all the time! I have a second interview next week where they get to see me in action, so I'm looking forward to that. Bad moment: super lame rehearsal. Seriously, we sat all too much time tonight. There were also some interesting cuts (?) made that were rough on all the girls except the 12 who got the top spot. It was not very fun. I did not enjoy it. Obviously, I was not one of the blessed 12. Darn favorites. Granted some girls really deserved it from their dancing. Some I think I was just as good as. Oh well. So tonight was a rough venting night for a bit. And I'm excited for Friday!! It will be an exciting day for sure, if for no other reason than it will be better than tonight. 

Happiness not a destination; it's a way of life. 

"Romantic" Getaway

Now here is a fun story. When Amber and I went to the State Fair, we totally lucked out! See, the first day of the fair they had a vendor tent where people were handing out free samples of their local wares. We totally made the rounds through the tent, trying everything from garlic olive oil dip (pretty awesome on peaches), ice cream sandwiches, local honey, meat, granola, salsa, apples.... to cheese and cake and all sorts of yummy stuff! As we were heading out to see the actual fair, we passed a KSL booth with a drawing for.. well I'm not sure I paid much attention to what it was.... but it was for a weekend getaway to Park City. Amber and I both put our names in, just for the fun of it. We said we'd take each other if one of us actually got drawn.

Guess who won?

ME!

It took a few weeks to get it scheduled up, but we went up to, not Park City, but Deer Valley! It's the swanky ski area. And we were at the fancy Austrian-themed hotel, the Goldener Hirsch Inn. David Duchovny stayed there during Sundance last year! Amber totally got a kick out of that. We had a three-course meal our first evening there and were so stuffed we practically rolled upstairs to our room! I wish I had taken my camera down that night.... actually I also wish I had taken extra batteries on the whole trip, because I ran out during our day out! Thank goodness for my iPod. So here is my romantic getaway to Deer Valley with Amber.

Quaking aspens along the lift ride

Red rose in front of our intricately carved mirror

The sign to our hotel/inn. It's modeled after a much larger space in Salzburg, Austria. I loved the charm of the interior!

The front facade with beautiful wood decks. You can see our deck from here! Top.. middle?  Somewhere on the top. 

With Franz, the famous bear!! 

We are close. And happy. He's on Main Street in Park City, which is where we spent our day Saturday. It was so fun to see such an old-style town and just wander the ritzy streets. (Because it's very old-style, but most shops cater to the Sundance crowd). 

View along Main Street. We were up there during the peak off-season, which I really enjoyed. I'm not a huge crowd person. The weather was also super fantastic! A little cool, but the most perfect fall day ever. 

Loosey the Moose! They have some fun random art up there. 

If I had written this post after I got back, I could tell you some smart fact about just how old this theater is.  So I went and looked it up for you! The original Opera House was built in 1888, but a fire burned a lot of the town, including the original building. This version opened in 1926, highly influenced from the discoveries at King Tut's Tomb. Maybe next time I'll go inside and give you a better description. 

Statue of a miner. Park City more or less got going through silver mining in the mountains. Had the city museum actually been free, I could also share more details you don't exactly care about. Sadly for us all, the museum cost money so I didn't get a great history lesson beyond what I saw along the streets. 

Still, the streets have some great pieces of history. This building was not a hotel anymore, but it still had the original (?) glass work in the pediment space above the doors. Oh, did I mention there were several art venues there? It was great to go see the works of local artists, along with a few works by famous deceased artists. Oh, and they had some stunning sculptural pieces. Loved the natural stone and organic design. 

I saw this cute store front and just had to get a picture! Seriously, Park City Main Street has so much character along that strip of road. Tons of charm. 

We rode the lift up the mountain for some nice scenery. They're probably resort homes, but talk about cute and charming! 

Fall leaves and ski runs.

Probably my favorite picture. I love the look of quaking aspens (thanks mom!) and these ones just looked fabulous with the blue sky behind them. No editing done. Lol, do I ever edit pictures? Umm.. not too often. 

Awesome "closet" at the Inn. I think this one was in the hallways, but it's super cute. I love the hand-painted wood  and the European charm. Some of these had names over each door, kind of like a his and hers. Cute. 

Hand-painted chest with old butter-churn  on top. 

They had lights in the trees!! I love lights. 

There is a hilarious story relating to Amber and I going out and taking pictures. It was a little chilly outside. She had already used the jetted tub (while I was gone at a dance performance). I had probably too much make-up on and both of us were in a state of dress... well that you don't usually go out to meet company in. Especially if it's cold. And then as we dropped the key off with the front desk, I made a brilliant comment about pants. We were wearing them. Flannel ones, even. However, I sort of did not use an adjective with the  pants comment. Rather than saying, "That's why we're wearing long pants, or warm pants," I simply said that to combat the cold: "That's why we're wearing pants."

Did I mention they thought we were a couple when we checked in?? Lesbians that wear no pants. Awesome impression. For what it's worth, I did some damage control for the pants comment once we got inside again to pick up our key. We talked to the front desk guy for like 40 minutes, so I think we effectively removed any ill effects of my awesome comment. It was in that conversation that we learned how expensive our room is during Sundance ($1200+ per night), that David Duchovny stayed in the hotel last year, and that if we come back during Sundance, he might give us some tips for star-spottings.

Old trestle downtown. 

More trees from the lift ride

Us on the lift! It was chilly in the shade. Sorry for the picture on the side...  I clearly didn't figure out how to import from my iPod very well. 

We stopped at this restaurant for a late lunch. I got some great pizza and lunch was fun... until I took an entire glass of water to the lap!! Their tables aren't very stable. Pretty much everyone in the restaurant saw it happen... haha at least they told me that it didn't look too bad and that I was rocking it. 

Two cool things: jetted tub and fluffy robe. You bet I rocked that out, complete with bubbles!!

And that was our romantic trip to Deer Valley! I wish I had food pictures and spa night pictures to share... well... I may have spa night pictures :) But I don't think you really want to see my face with goo on it. If I get the food pics though, I will definitely update! That meal was to DIE for.

Perfect weekend to kick off fall. I've decided this year to embrace the fall season and so far, so good.