Thursday, November 29, 2007

My brother's wedding

On November 17th, my brother Chad got married to Angelina in California. Ben and I got to go and be with all of my family in Napa Valley. I've never to been to Napa, so it was a lot of fun to visit and see all the vineyards and wineries.

I was one of the bridesmaids and here is a picture of the bridal party.

(Me, Angelina's 2 sisters, Angelina, Chad, Ryan, Eric, Chad)


Then we went to San Francisco for half of a day, visited Fisherman's Wharf. Ben and I want to go back and visit again and see more of San Francisco. But while we were there, we got to our faces sketched. We were going to do a character one, but decided to do the serious one (which is more pricey).

What do you think?


Tuesday, November 6, 2007

7 Random Things About Me

1. I have tetanophobia (fear of lockjaw). Every time I yawn or open my mouth wide, my jaw pops when I close my mouth. It doesn’t hurt, but I’m scared that one of these times I won’t be able to pop my mouth closed!

2. Back in April (right after Ben and I got engaged), we hiked the Grand Canyon with his family. We went on the South Kaibab trail to Phantom ranch, which descends 4,820 feet in total, although we actually traveled about 7 miles down. 7 miles doesn’t sound so bad, but since it pretty steep most of the way, it was difficult! Going up (after spending a couple of nights down there) of course was harder than going down, especially since I was sore from the days before.

3. I was going through all my pictures and childhood stuff, and I came across my 2nd grade journal that I kept for my class. I died laughing after reading it all. One of the things that I would do is repeat all my sentences at least once or twice, for example, I would write: “I like my brothers. I love my brothers. My brothers like me. My brothers love me!”

4. I am late to work 5 – 10 minutes every day. It doesn’t matter if I say that I’m going to leave 5 minutes earlier so I’m on time and don’t, or I actually do leave 5 minutes earlier and I get stuck in traffic. My supervisor isn’t fond of it :-[]. I heard a quote a couple of weeks ago that say basically this: “The more in hurry you get, the more behind you get.” I hate that its so true!

5. I hate returning items to stores, especially Target! And for this, Target unfortunately will not be getting my business for a while. I’m sure most of you know about receiving wedding gifts and unfortunately having to return a few things (whether its because you got duplicate gifts, or you change your mind about certain items, or you simple don’t like the gift.). Well, Target decides to change their mind about how they’re accepting returned items. Apparently, if its over $20 and you don’t have a gift receipt (which most of my gifts did not come with one), you cannot return it, not even for store credit!

6. After I got engaged to Ben, my two older unmarried brothers (I have 3 brothers total), got engaged within 4 months. All three of us, when all said and done, will be married within a year (my poor parents! Although they don’t have to do much for my brothers).

7. Whenever someone ask me about my favorite book/movie/music/etc, I completely forget about what I read/watch/listen so it takes me like 5 minutes to answer (but most of the times I don’t/can’t answer).

I tag all my blog friends:
Becky (you've already done it)
Camille
Erin
Kelly
Kelsie D
Kelsie O
Laura
Meredith

Friday, November 2, 2007

My Photographer - Jana Miller

This is just a quick blog to say that my professional photographer posted some of my wedding pictures on her website:

http://photographybyjana.blogspot.com/search/label/Wedding (take a look!)

Her first wedding was for my sister-in-law (Erin, Ben's sister), which is towards the bottom of the page from the link above.

She was awesome! She worked well with Ben and I, she asked what we wanted and was able to work with it. I think she took some great shots and also put very nice effects on some of them. I definitely recommend her to anyone that needs a photographer!

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

1 1/2 weeks!

Well, its been a week and a half already since we've been married! And we are doing great so far.

We're still arranging things in our apartment so that it'll eventually look like we live there and not just moving in. My original plan was to be all moved in and organized before we got married so that we wouldn't have anything to worry about after the honeymoon. So we moved most of our stuff a couple of weeks before the wedding, but now 3-4 weeks later, about half of our stuff are still in boxes. But I'm really liking our apartment and I think we're pretty much set, except for kitchen utensils and a couch. So if any of you guys know of anyone selling a couch in a decent shape for a decent price, let me know!

Once I have the apartment a little more cleaned up, I'll get pictures up.

Sunday was our first day in our new ward and Ben & I really like it, everyone has been very friendly and welcoming so far! And there's also a good mixture of older families to younger families and I'm really looking forward to getting a calling and getting to know the ward.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Pictures outside of the temple


Walking out of the temple...


Posing for everyone :-)


The whole gang!


Everyone cheering for us kissing!

My side side of the family...


Ben's side of the family...


And all the kids with us!

Pics of Ben and I (taken by my family)






These are only a few of MANY that my family took of Ben and I at the temple. We did the "couple" pictures before we got married. This turned out good because there weren't as many people in the morning and it was cooler.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Guess what?!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to start out my blog with...

I'm married!

I just got married to Benjamin Packard this past Saturday, October 20th, in the LDS Mesa Arizona Temple. We took an awesome short honeymoon trip (since I had to get back to school and Ben back to work). We plan on going on a extended honeymoon on springbreak or something.

We moved to an apartment in Chandler and we got pretty much everything in there, now we just need to organize :-[]! Not really looking forward to that...

I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll try to post soon with pictures from the temple and from the Mesa reception. Also, we having another reception this Friday in Flagstaff, so I'll get pictures after that too.