The Wedding Day

Yup, it's finally time for some pictures of the big day! Although, our wedding pictures and my bridals were taken a couple of days early. But it's all the same. Be prepared for a large mass of pictures. It's so hard to choose which ones to share. :)

First of all, my photographer was my young women's leader in church when I was 14 and she was so sweet to do all of these wonderful pictures for me. I think she did an amazing job. Oh and she was also the one who did our engagement pictures too.

Here are a few bridals and wedding photos that I really liked. (Oh and by the way I made my own bouquet and flower hair clip, and my mom did all the fixing my dress needed. Except for pictures, we did the whole thing pretty much by ourselves. It's good to know people you can borrow from. :) We did a lot of borrowing.)

Bride and Groom with the Idaho Falls LDS Temple in the background. (That's where we got married.)

In front of the fountain on the temple grounds.

The Snake River is the water in the background. I was just sitting on some rocks.

(I think the sky is really cool in this picture)

Now for the photos of the actual big day! These are from just as we are coming out of the temple. :)

Trevor's victory punch after we came through the doors.

Since I had a dumb face in the last one, Trevor gets a picture with a dumb face. :)

The whole group who was either in the temple or waiting outside the temple supporting us!

A picture of my whole family.

Most of Trevor's family (one brother and his fam were unable to come).

Best Friend and me! Isn't she wonderfully gorgeous? She is the absolute best friend one could have. . . and I got her! So there. :)

Trevor and a couple of his buddies.

And these are from the reception which was held in my parents' yard.

My mom made my cake. It's just swirls of frosting, which was easy and still looks great!

Best Friend's brother. He is an amazing guitar player. 

The line.

All the centerpieces were just glass jars with a yellow viola planted in them and ribbon tied around.

About to cut the cake!

I was holding his wrist because I was worried he was going to shove cake in my face. I was right. 

Oh the fun times of the wedding! It was a lot of work, and my family put in so much effort. I really appreciate having so many people being willing to help. It made it so that I could just relax on my wedding day which was wonderful! Everything turned out perfect for me, including the weather!

Vacation!

Over the 4th of July, Trevor's friend and his wife invited us to go with them to St. George. Her family has a vacation home there. Of course, we accepted and had the opportunity to spend 5 days in their second home with Trevor's friend, the wife, and their 2 year old son. The house was beautiful, and very spacious. The back of the house had this huge window that looked right up Snow Canyon, and it was just beautiful. Looked just like a giant picture. (I wish I would have taken pictures for you.)

On the 4th, Trevor and I got to go to Tuacahn, which is an outdoor ampitheater and they do a couple of musicals each summer. This summer they are doing Aladdin and Hairspray. We got to see Aladdin and it was so good! I think the musical is fairly new. Maybe came out last year. It was very comical and even had a 3-D part (they had a screen to show the cave scene). The 3-D animation was really good too. And kind of weird. I haven't seen too many 3-D movies, but this was way better than what I've seen.

Since we rode with Trevor's friends to St. George, we only had one car, so we got to take the Porsche (bright yellow). Good thing Trevor can drive stick! I felt so dishonest driving it though. People probably thought we were made of money (which we are not). Especially because we driving such an expensive car and are so young. It was sure fun though! (Even if I felt unsafe that there was no roof protecting us if we were to roll). :) Trevor says I worry about silly things.

And there is my awesome husband, feeling (and trying to act) cool while driving a foreign sports car.  Trevor is 25 and I'm 21, but everyone thinks he robbed the cradle because I look like I'm 17 and he looks like he's 30. At first glance anyways. It's kind of fun to see people's reactions when they learn our real ages. 

That was off topic, but oh well. While in St. George, we spent two days on a lake boating. I had never been boating before so this was a fun experience. I also got to try wake-boarding, surfing, and the air-chair. The first day I was so terrible. I didn't get up at all in wake-boarding, but I did 2 times in surfing. The second day though, I was able to get up almost every time in wake-boarding, but I couldn't stay up for very long. And I was terrible at surfing. And I wasn't good at air-chair either. But! I felt successful anyway! I haven't even been snowboarding, so it was all very foreign to me. Trevor is pretty good though. Here's a couple pictures. 

(Trevor wake-boarding)

(Me wake-boarding)

(it's hard to tell what this is, but this is Trevor on the air-chair just coming out of the water)

(it's also about 2 seconds before he biffs it hard)

The only not-fun thing about St. George? It was so hot! I was so glad to be in an air conditioned house and to be on/in the water. Since we were so extremely sore the last day, Trevor and I just sat around reading books. I suggest reading some Brandon Sanderson books. He's a good, creative author. Elantris is popular (just a single book) and the Mistborn series is pretty popular (which is unfortunate because I'm having a hard time getting a hold of the second book). All in all, vacations are fun, but they are also draining. At least we didn't have to drive on the way back. :)

Get-Away Travels

Trevor and I went on our honeymoon to Jackson Hole. We had quite a good time kicking back and finally relaxing after the past couple weeks. Weddings are stressful. :) We rode the Tram, did some hiking, lots of eating, site seeing, and gallery viewing. We were also supposed to go white water rafting the last night, but unfortunately an insane wind storm blew in and we decided not to go out on the river in the wind, rain, and lighting. Anyways, I just wanted to share a little of our travels with you!

We did our hiking up on the mountain the Tram took us to (I'm sorry, but I don't remember names of in-animate objects). While hiking we found very weird masses of lady bugs. We weren't sure if they were mating grounds (how symbolic to find that on our honeymoon), or if it was a hatching nest or something. To be honest it kind of creeped me out. They were disgusting! Crawling all over each other and landing on us and such. Yuck! Well, here is what it looked like. We found about 5 of these as we were walking, and I'm sure we missed a large majority. This was actually the smallest colony we saw.

Isn't this just gross? And you can't even see them squirming and crawling everywhere. 

And just because you always have to take pictures of people jumping, we took pictures of us jumping, and you can see Jackson Hole Valley (or whatever it's called) in the background. Don't worry, we made sure to be a safe distance from the edge. 

(I do have to admit that this is my fist jumping picture)

(we set the camera on a timer for this picture)

(I have to tell you this because I knew you were worried someone else was there taking pictures of us) ;)

(this is a picture of the Tram on it's way up, while we were on our way down)

(the heights kind of scared me)

We also went into Teton National Forest and walked a ways around Jenny's Lake. We had our lunch/breakfast overlooking this part of the lake. It's a very pretty lake, about 3 miles to walk to the other side, but they also have a ferry to take you over if you'd like to pay money. We didn't take the ferry. And we didn't walk all the way around. We were exhausted haha. Exercise has been lacking in our daily schedule. 

And of course, we had to get a picture by the antlers, because everyone needs one of those pictures. :)

We really enjoyed the galleries in this part of town, although, once you've seen like 2 or 3, you've pretty much seen the majority of the pictures in all of them (there was probably 12 galleries on this one block). We also got some expensive ice cream to eat. Honey Lemon is what I had. Pretty good I thought. 

And that is that! Our wonderful honeymoon. It was fun, although I have to be honest. Settling into reality was just as fun, and lasts much longer. :)

Chocolate Banana Cake

Time passes so quickly! Trevor and I have been married for just over a month and already so many things have changed. We are buying a house! It has a few fruit trees so hopefully I'll get to try some new fresh fruit recipes. I have recently been into cooking and trying new recipes, making up my own recipes, and watching cooking shows (I have quite a bit of time on my hands).

This is one of the things that I recently tried. Chocolate Banana Cake. I like banana bread, but I wanted to try something a little different. And this is what I found. The exact site that I found this recipe on is this link: http://southernfood.about.com/od/chocolatecakes/r/bln273.htm. I'll write it down here as well. I even took pictures!

Chocolate Banana Cake:
- 1/2 Cup Margarine (softened)
- 1 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 3 Squares Unsweetened Chocolate (melted and cooled slightly)
- 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 1/2 Cups Mashed, Ripe Bananas
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Cream margarine and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat thoroughly after each. Stir in the cooled melted chocolate. Sift dry ingredients together and add to the batter alternately with the mashed bananas; stir in vanilla. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9-inch layer cake pans. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until cake tests done. Frost with a fluffy white frosting.

Notes: I didn't have brown sugar, so instead I used white sugar and added maple syrup (since I didn't have molasses). I added probably about 2 tablespoons of the syrup. The cake I tried was a little dry, and I think it probably would have been good with a little bit of milk added to it (lite chocolate soy milk would have been wonderful). I also frosted it with a cream cheese frosting (recipe below), but a butter cream frosting would have been great too (especially because the cake is really dense, so a lighter frosting would be yummy). And for the topping, I just did blueberries with sliced almonds to look kind of like a flower.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 1 8 oz package of Cream Cheese
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) of softened Butter or Margarine
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla

Notes: I doubled the recipe and added a little more powdered sugar than it asked for to make it a little thicker. I had a little left over that we have been eating with graham crackers. Yum!