Tuesday

the grass is always greener somewhere...

I think I messed up that phrase. Anyway, thoughts thoughts thoughts... oh yeah!

I've never been one to look at other people and be jealous of how good they have it. I appreciate the blessings in my own life fairly well,  I suppose,  so I'm putting a different meaning to the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side". The "other side" I make reference to is the other side of trial.

I'm no stranger to trials. I've had my fair share of tests in this life and I know it's only a fraction of what I'm in store for. One thing I've realized,  even been told, is that blessings come from being faithful through trial. After all Ether 12:6 says "...ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." (That's in the Book of Mormon) and it's true! The only way we learn is through being tested and tried. Sometimes it takes a few times for us to learn what we're supposed to, but we learn even more along the way.

I realized today that the grass is always greener on the other side of hard times. When we've mastered what it was we were supposed to learn, life is sweeter. We can look back and be grateful for those rough patches because it got us to the beautiful pastures we are in today.

Wednesday

The Honeymoon

We went to Star Valley where Jared's grandparents have a cabin. We got there around 4 or 5 to a treat!

Whoever winterized the cabin turned every. single. breaker off.

There was still food in the fridge.

But not just food. No no. That would have been too easy. There was nearly 20 POUNDS of rotten meat in the freezer. Oozy, rotten meat. It stunk a little bit. So we spent our first night cleaning out the fridge. And don't worry about the fact that we had things that needed to go in the freezer. But since it was still very much winter in Wyoming, we just packed one of the coolers full of snow and put the frozen things in it. Mostly it was just ice cream. And good thing that was the only thing we put out there because it didn't work. The ice cream melted almost completely. (that's okay, it wasn't that good, anyway.)

But don't worry, that wasn't a precursor of what to expect out of the rest of the trip. We went to Jackson the next day and just walked around downtown. It is so cute and just a lot of fun. It started snowing big fluffy wet heavy flakes as soon as we got there. We bought heavier jackets. And they are so comfy and waaaarm!!! As we were walking around, we found the Ripley's Believe it or not museum. FUN!

Of course we went in. That Ripley guy found some really interesting things on his travels.

As we were leaving Jackson, we went to the Smith's and got some groceries because everything in Star Valley is closed on Sundays, which I can respect. Then we decided to get some massage oil because our backs were killing us from the bed we slept on. it's an old one. Anyway, our search for massage oil led to me getting a full body massage from a professional. Well, it was amazing...ly painful. But it was good.

We pretty much just hung out the rest of the week. It was chill and relaxed and just so nice to hang out with my husband and not care about anything else. We had to be back so he could work Thursday night. We left Wednesday and took our time to come home. Since I had never been to Soda Springs, that's the way we went. I didn't know there was a geyser in Soda and Jared said "There's a geyser somewhere" and I looked to my left and there it was, just shooting right up. Turns out it goes off every hour, on the hour for about 7 minutes. It was 3 pm at the time so we really got lucky to be able to see it. After the geyser went away, we drove home and ended the day by opening our wedding gifts. 5 crock pots. 5.



 This dog is made out of children's toys the artist collected

This poodle is made out of bottle caps


This is a coffin. This describes it. 
V

 Need a belt buckle?

 This is a true two seater bicycle.
 The presidential seal made out of nails
 How about a buffalove seat?


 Matchstick train
 World's largest cigar


Soda Springs geyser.

Have a good day, y'all!

I got married

It was a pretty awesome day. I could not ask for better friends and family. I had so much help from everyone and it made things go by so smoothly.

Cue the highlights reel:

While working on some of the decorations, my dad slipped and cut his hand. We have matching scars now. And I can say with full confidence that blood, sweat and tears all went into making my wedding possible.

Allison was able to be there for all of it. I hadn't seen her yet since i got home from my mission and to have her there meant a lot to me.

I cried because I was able to have President Harper marry us. He has always been there, he watched me grow up and I've always looked up to him. He set me apart as a missionary, and he released me from being a missionary. It was really special for me.

It was cold! Of all the days in March that the weather decided to be unseasonable, it definitely wasn't our day. But at least it didn't rain. It sprinkled, but that's okay. Our pictures turned out really good, so I'm not complaining.

The reception was fun. It was semi-traditional. Definitely not traditional in the Mormon sense, even though my mom really wanted us to stand in front of the backdrop. It served as a good place to take pictures. We didn't want to stand in one place all night...it's the worst. We circulated the room and greeted people. I think we did pretty good at catching them all. Allison was the best! She made sure we were doing alright, checking if we needed water or anything to drink. I didn't realize how parched i was until i sucked down like 5 glasses of water! Getting married is exhausting!

The night ended and we just wanted to get out of there! The pickup truck was dressed to the nines! And it took forever getting the stuff off. As well as all the CONFETTI OUT OF THE SEATS! don't ever do that. Ever! It's really not a good thing. We got to the hotel 5 minutes after the front desk closed. We went to the Black Swan Inn in Pocatello. We stayed in the Mayan rain forest which was awesome! It has a tree house with the two person jet tub in it and a huge king size bed and two person shower. We didn't touch each other all night. What a good way to kick off the honeymoon!

Here are some pictures for all of you to wish you were there! and for those of you who were, time to reminisce.





























































 "WHY would I shove cheesecake in his face??"