the best day ever.

Here they are... our wedding pictures.
Obviously these aren't all of them, but I picked some of my favorites to share. My good friend Sarah Richardson did a fantastic job. She is super creative, and besides being awesome at taking photos, she is also a writer at shelovesmagazine.  And her second shooter Carey Rose was awesome too! (Take a second and check out their work here and here). We were blessed to have each of you be a part of our day! :)

I did my own hair and makeup because I am a bit of a control freak. 

I was SO EXCITED to see Aaron. We decided long ago that we wanted to see each other before the ceremony. It was still a very special 'reveal', and we were able to spend our entire day together. It really eased my nerves and made for lots of fun memories and laughs with each other and our wedding party before the ceremony.

These guys are all so special. It makes me heart so happy to see this picture. We are blessed to be geographically close to a few, and I often pray that God will put us in closer proximity to the rest.

:)

Sarah lined us up and instructed Sophia and Talicia to tell us a joke. I'm not sure was Sophia was saying, but I'm pretty sure Talicia said, "I wish we near a cemetery because I've got a good joke about those."

:)

SO HANDSOME. 

 

I love this.

I have two sisters now!

Our flower girls and ring bearer were AMAZING. They had many, many questions on technique and form, but they executed their duties perfectly. They looked good too! I love them all.

I'm blushing because I don't usually post kissing pictures ANYWHERE.

This is my favorite of all of our pictures.

Our moms are pretty much best friends now. And our step dads are twins with their shades.

Up until just a few years ago, I still hoped for more siblings. I know, I'm weird. But God heard my prayers, and now I have TWO sisters and FOUR more brothers. :D

My grandpa fit the style of our wedding perfectly without even meaning to! :)

It was busy and crazy but SO NICE to see Sarah and Ru for a number of hours over the Friday/Saturday of our wedding.

Mother/son. :)

Mother/daughter. :)

This was not posed. I just love him a lot.

Sidenote about the bouquets... my mom and Joe drove up to Seattle on Friday and bought out a stand at Pike Place market. Then sweet friends and family put together all the bouquets and decorated the entire place with the leftovers. Jake, who is basically family and also 16, made all the girls bouquets. I WAS SO IMPRESSED. 

For how vague my descriptions were for flowers (wildflowers with lots of colors... no color scheme please!)... they turned out even better than I imagined.

The Orting Bakery provided our cake and all the sweets. SO GOOD.

We had a few speeches, but Dave's was the only one caught on camera.

I'll leave you with this. I love all of our crazy faces.

Adventures in preaching, Seattle and DIY haircuts

This weekend flew past me. It was spent packing and cleaning and running. We originally planned on heading to Spokane on Sunday afternoon, after Aaron preached at church. But, in a lovely turn of events, Uncle Mark was not able to go to the Sounders game. And we were. 

As I first said, Sunday morning Aaron preached at Abundant Life. (You can listen here). His message was titled "Redefining Giving" and I am so proud of him. I love the way that God speaks through Aaron. And not just to me, but to students and friends and sometimes even our whole church family. Anyway, listen and be challenged!

After church we spend the afternoon adventuring in Seattle. As I posted on instagram, I am trying to get better at taking pictures of us. Because I usually don't think about it. 

We went to Pike Place Market, a few really cool shops downtown, P.F. Chang's and coffee all before the game. We realized we hadn't been to Seattle together since before we actually started dating! LAME! ;) We had so much fun though. 

The game itself was good because we won. It wasn't a pretty win. But a win is always nice. (Fun fact: I've actually never been to Sounders game without them winning. No draws, no losses. I like it.)

Like two young, crazy adults... we decided to drive straight through the night to Spokane after the game. To clear any confusion, we left Orting at 12:45AM, and pulled into Spokane at 5:45AM. It was fun. We were delirious. We chased after wildfires. Aaron did not believe me when I said we had already passed Ritzville. Bottom line: I like making memories with him, even if they involve staying up all night playing copilot. :)

Now here we are, in Spokane, relaxing at home with the family. 

Sidenote: I've spent most of our relationship convincing Aaron that I can cut his hair. It may or may not have started with me seeing a post on Young House Love about DIY haircuts. Anyway, he promised that in the summer (this summer!) I could try. That way if I messed it up or cut his ear or something crazy, he had time to heal/grow back his hair. So today was the day. I rewatched the DIY video, I grabbed some scissors and BAM! Perfect haircut. So good in fact that Jake also let me cut his hair. (Not pictured, but also good.)

So handsome! :)

I promise my next post will have wedding photos. Maybe.

Our awesome wedding week and two-part honeymoon!

Let me start off this post by saying that this is going to be really long. And probably uninteresting. Unless you really love Aaron and me, in which case you might love it. But I feel like I need to somewhat explain my life from my last post up until my wedding pictures. You know? So here it goes.

When we set the date for our wedding, we kept in mind that it would be nice to have a couple weeks off from school before we had the wedding. That way we could relax, enjoy the company of our out-of-town friends and family, and do any last minute details without the distraction of work. 

The end of this school year was especially bittersweet for me. I was SO EXCITED for our wedding and to get a much needed break from all 35 of my crazy kindergarteners and first graders. But for some strange reason, the kiddos turned on the charm and sweetness for those last couple days of school. They brought me gifts and constantly wanted to be holding my hand or sitting next to me at snack. I'm telling you, they were NOT like this at all during the regular school year. Their shenanigans could fill another blog post, but I'd rather not give myself a migraine. Anyway, I snapped this picture on the kindergarteners' last school day. I was down to only 4 at this point, but this picture shows the personalities perfectly.

So, a week went by. It was filled with moving and having garage sales and 347 trips to our storage unit in record high temperatures for western Washington. It was a lot. And it was a lot of fun. (Mostly because our friends and family helped out SO MUCH.)

And so one week before the wedding, Aaron's mom Ruth and sister Alexis headed over from Spokane. I took this picture when we got home from dinner. They are obviously related. :)

Ruth and Alexis stayed all week and hung out with us, helped with wedding stuff, and just made our wedding week more fun and memorable. 

By the 4th of July, Phil (Aaron's stepdad) and his parents, plus Dave, David and his daughter Trinity, and my friends Kristin and Heather all made it in from out of town. (Spokane, Northern Ireland, Alabama...) My mom and Joe opened up their house and hosted us and all our out of town friends for the 4th. IT WAS PERFECT. 

We grilled, we did sparklers and smoke bombs and baby fireworks. We watched the neighbors practically blow themselves up. That is what I love about the 4th... watching other people literally blow up their money. :) If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a failure of a photo taker. I am working on it, so I'm sorry that I didn't get pictures of everyone at the party, or the food spread, or aftermath of fireworks littering the street. ;)

[Trinity and Alexis doing sparklers.]

[Aaron and the baby fireworks. They were buy one get one free, and we had a wedding two days later, so you better believe we weren't spending 100's of dollars. :)]

Now right here is where we skip the entire wedding in my blog post. I don't have the photos yet, and it kind of deserves an entire post. :)

The night of our wedding we stayed at the super fancy Hotel Murano in Tacoma before we headed out to Canada the next morning. Our summer has been filled with many, many firsts for me. Like my first room service order. Scrambled eggs, bacon, red potatoes, toast and orange juice. DELICIOUS. And I'm thankful I ate a big breakfast because it was a long trek to our resort in Canada. :)

Aaron took a ton of pictures of our place in Canada. (But right now he is doing sermon prep and has his super sonic headphones on, so I'm not about to bug him for the pictures.) We stayed at Point-no-Point, just outside of Sooke on Vancouver Island. IT. WAS. PERFECT. We had our own little cabin with a full kitchen (we loved that because we LOVE cooking) and a hot tub and fireplace. There was no cell phone service or wifi or TV. So we got to relax and read and what not. 

One day we ventured into Sooke and found the coolest coffee shop called The Stick. The coffee was delicous (and roasted on site), and their pastries were great too! The first day we were there, a man walked in (we found him to be the owner), and immediately looked at us and said, "You must be the newlyweds!" and proceeded to give us free cold brew coffee. From there on out (you better believe we went back everyday) he affectionately called us "Washington" and chatted us up about coffee and life. We loved it and I really hope we can go back there someday.

We also adventured around Victoria for an afternoon. The food highlight of our entire honeymoon for Aaron was going to Dim Sum in Chinatown. He has brought it up so many times since we were there. He said it was as good as the place he went for Dim Sum in Hawaii. I'm trying to be adventurous eating, and tried some things there, but it is not for me. 

We also walked through the Empress Hotel, which is amazing. It was funny to be in Victoria because the book I was reading at the time was a true story set in the PNW. The main women in the book had been staying at the Empress in 1912, just after it was built. I thought that was cool. 

So after our chill, laid back honeymoon part one in Canada, we came home for exactly 36 hours. In that time, we opened all of our gifts, returned multiples, did laundry and repacked for Mexico.

This was our second time together in Cabo, the first being when Aaron proposed! :)

We continued to kill the list of things we'd never done. We took an ATV adventure tour (okay, Aaron had done this before) that took us up a mountain and down to the beach. It was super hot and dusty, and they made us look like banditos with our bandanas. But it was SO MUCH FUN. Its definitely on the list of things to do in Mexico again.

At our hotel, one of the guys at the front desk told us how we could walk to this popular beach that most tourists only get to by water taxi. We had never been, and it was awesome. There were some spots where we had to scramble over rocks and wade through a foot or two of water, but we got the beach in no time. I definitely did not take my phone or camera on that trip for fear it would fall into the Sea of Cortez. :)

A favorite of Aaron's family is Mi Casa. Its a Mexican restaurant that has an open roof. It is really neat. And the food? Best fajitas I've ever had. This was my third attempt at a panoramic shot of the place (waiters kept walking through), so that explains the excited look on my husband's face. :)

Lastly, I just have a few quick shots from around our resort. Playa Grande is so beautiful, you wouldn't really need to leave the resort itself.

They offer a free breakfast if you tour the resort with a timeshare salesman. We did it, and our salesman, Steve, was super cool. We pretty much told him right away that we are teachers and newlyweds and a timeshare in not in our budget. He showed us anyway and told us of all the great features for future considerations. :) Below is the newer resort that we toured, which I believe is owned by Playa Grande. It's called the Grand Solmar... and it is beautiful! (Its the building off in the distance more, with the giant crane. Phases one and two are completed, and phase three is still under construction.)

This may be one of my favorite spots from our honeymoon. Our room at Playa Grande was bigger than our house. I'm not exaggerating. And while I laid in bed during the hottest hours of the day, I could see and hear the ocean. Talk about relaxing.

So that's all for now, I'll try to be a better blogger in the future and keep from having to do massive 3,497 word posts with 100+ pictures. ;)

210 #2

 Welcome to our home. Little lime green 210 #2. It is one of five little units in town and I have grown fond of the bright exterior. It was hard to get any pictures of entire rooms, but I tried. And if you're that curious to see the rest, come visit!

Above is our front porch, complete with a thriving strawberry plant that Uncle mark and Aunt Sarah brought down when I first moved in. I am really excited about it.

 These guys are the cutest succulants I've ever seen. Aaron's mom Ruth gave them to me after my bridal shower in Spokane, and I love seeing them in the kitchen everyday.

 Our kitchen table has had flowers on it since April. First from my Spokane shower, then lilacs from the alley (yes I cut flowers out of our alley...) and now from the bridal shower my bridesmaids and mom threw me this past weekend. They definitely add to the place.

This mixer is cool. I like it.

 

This is the view of our kitchen from the kitchen table. Can you see now why its hard to get pictures? Its tight quarters, but cozy. We have tons of cabinet space, but don't try to open the fridge and oven at the same time. And yes there are dishes in the sink. :)

 Now this is awesome. We are in the process of building a coffee bar. I will update when it is complete, but for now we've got a trusty drip brewer and a brand new shiny espresso machine. I want to add a shelf for some of our cooler mugs, and set our french press stuff up as well. It's a work in progress but quickly becoming one of my favorite areas.

The living room from the dining room table. The couch was Aaron's, and then at his parents' house for a long time. Now they are ours, and pretty nice for a first place! And yes, our living room is mint green. We did not pick out the colors and aren't allowed to paint, so we're just trying to go with it. :)

This is the other side of the living room. I want to paint or replace that dresser, but we need to storage space for clothes. This place only has one closet! Anyway, we have vertical blinds throughout the house, so making curtains is also on the must-do list. But thankfully all our furniture fits perfectly (so far)!

I am about to live with a boy. Good thing I don't mind video games. (This is only the Wii, Xbox will be joining us in July.) We also use this basket for the few regular games we have... Yahtzee and dominoes! :)

 

Our bathroom is one of the surprising rooms in the house. Everyone who comes over is immediately like, "Whoa! Huge bathroom!" It's because the rest of the house is so tiny. :) I am just super thankful that we have a washer and dryer!

Lastly, the bedroom. And honestly, I can't get a good picture because the bed takes up the entire room. But this chalkboard... I want to do something with it. We're using it for something at the wedding, but I think it would make a cool headboard... maybe?