My Favorite "Happily Ever After"...

I just completed my 7th wedding this year. I coordinated 4 on my own, and assisted in 3. Every single wedding is so different from the last and they all have their unique aspects. Everybody has their own idea of the perfect "Big Day" and it is so fun to see those little girl dreams play out into their wedding days.

However, I must say my favorite to this day is still MY own wedding.

I did not have a coordinator, I did not have little girl dreams that played out in real life, I did not have it all planned out to a T like you think I should. Instead my wedding was a BEAUTIFUL mess.

A little bit of a timeline - Jason and I were both in school at CSU and wrapping up yet another semester of classes and finals. We both got all of our finals moved around, so we were able to wrap those up Thursday evening, and fly out to Hawaii bright and early Friday morning. Yes, you did read that right... we tied the knot in Hawaii:) Destination wedding? Kind of but not really. For years I lived in Hawaii from December to May because my parents are snow birds, so it wasn't like we packed up, flew to a resort that had everything planned, and got married. We got to my parents place Friday afternoon and spent the weekend getting ready and making runs to the airport for more family. We had never met the pastor before the wedding day, but he turned out to be absolutely perfect for what we were wanting. Awesome how God orchestrates his plans like that. We rented a tent, tables, chairs, tableware, etc from a place in town and pretty much just winged it all.

My wedding day pretty much went down like this - got my hair done, picked up flowers which were an hour late being ready, grabbed my dress from the dry cleaners on the way home, and rushed home to get ready. THEN once I was already in my dress I put centerpieces on the tables, did my sister and best friend's hair (bridesmaids), and we all loaded up into cars. Now, I should put a little side note here: we got married in a private beach. While I can see everybody's jaw dropping at "how awesome" that must have been.... it took some serious work. The men all went down to the beach and cleaned rocks up, set up chairs and an arch, and got the sound all set up (a CD player run on electricity from my Aunt's car). Because Hawaii is a lava flow, the trip to the beach involved bouncing around in 4wheel drive cars for about 20 minutes for all of the guests. They were troopers, let me tell you.

The ceremony was perfection. It was as beautiful as they come in my mind.. We had about 35 people there and we tied the knot around 5:30 pm on May 14th with waves crashing in the background. Scratch that - it was probably about 30 minutes later because that is just how it goes when you don't have a coordinator and have a long bumpy drive to the beach.

Afterwards we took pictures and everybody loaded back into the cars and we all headed up to my parent's house for the reception. The reception was BEAUTIFUL too! My awesome family cooked all the food, and we enjoyed a traditional hawaiian dinner followed by lilikoi cake, and Hurricanes. Dancing followed on the porch with the music coming from an ipod playlist I threw together during cocktail hour. Finally, we hugged our favorite people and headed off to our honeymoon.

The timeline went from everything being done around 9 to us finally heading out around 10:30. We almost missed our flight to Kauai the next morning because it left at 10, not 12... I put out centerpieces in my wedding dress, everything was late, half the people saw me in my dress before Jason did, and nobody danced at the reception.

We got married in Hawaii... on the beach... in the perfect dress and a linen shirt, khaki pants, and flip flops. We celebrated with our two families, ate amazing food, got awesome pictures, and loved every second of it. AND ultimately we married the person that God had put on this earth for us. This was and is by far my favorite "Happily Ever After." There may be a few things I would have changed, but in the end I tell my brides - your guests will remember the food, you will remember the pictures and who you married... so think about what REALLY matters.

Elijah Moments

Life is flying bye at the speed of light. It feels like yesterday we celebrated Eli's first birthday, and here we are a little less than 2 months out from his SECOND birthday. It has been such a fun adventure. But I feel like I will never be able to remember all the little moments with him and that scares me. Every day is a new phrase that he has picked up, every animal is a new sound to learn, and every sound is another question.

Some phrases I don't ever want to forget:
"What's dat?" - literally EVERYTHING... sometimes he even asks me when he already knows the answer. I'm pretty sure he's testing me to make sure I know what it is.
"Where'd ______ go?" - EVERY time something is not where he remembered it being, or somebody had to leave..
"What happened?" - EVERY time he hears or sees something that is out of the norm..

Today at lunch I gave him his favorite - a cheese quesadilla - but added refried pinto beans into it. After I set it on the table he looked it up and down and asked, "What's dat?" I told him it was his favorite, a cheese quesadilla. He responded with, "No, that's PEANUT BUTTER!!!"  The horror.. to think I had added peanut butter to his precious cheese quesadilla and was trying to pull a fast one on him. My stomach hurt from laughing so much. He eventually tasted it and decided it was in fact beans, and not peanut butter.

A few weeks ago we went through a phase where he insisted on calling his Daddy, Jason. Every time he was doing something with Jason, or asking where he was, he referred to him as Jason. Quite a few evening football or baseball sessions went something like this - "Nice throw Jason!" "Nice, Jason!" "Nice catch, Jason!"

He will be a wonderful oldest sibling. He constantly tries to control any and all situations. When we are at the park I constantly have to remind him that other children don't have to listen to him, only their parents. When he hears a parent tell their child to get off the playground, or stop climbing up a slide, he takes it upon himself to make sure they heard their parents - "Get off! Get down, right now."

He is a very imaginative little guy. Lately he has been having all sorts of conversations with his animals that are laying around the house. Offering his zebra water, or his huge rubber ducky a sandwich is only the tip of the iceberg. He also tells his tractors to be nice to each other, and tells his giraffe - "No, that's Eli's quesadilla. Don't eat Eli's quesadilla."

Riding 4-Wheelers with Grandma is serious stuff!

Reading books and singing songs are favorite pass times of his. He likes to grab a few books so he has options. Then, he pulls them up on the couch and says, "Mom, read a book... how 'bout Tiger book, no? How 'bout ABC's Book, No? No like ABCs book?" and on and on until we find a book that I he thinks I would like to read to him. Songs go about the same way... "Let's sing Row Row Row Boat (just as I start to sing) NO, how 'bout Twinkle Tinkle, NO... how 'bout Jesus Loves me!"

I'm constantly amazed by how smart and aware he is of everything. If you let him, he can sing all the way through the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and a few verses of The Wheels On The Bus (his favorite being the shhh shhh shhh verse). He knows his favorite books cover to cover - one of them - Barnyard Dance (Cockadoodoo Book) has a cow standing on a table about half way through the story, and EVERY time we read it he yells, "Bad Cow!!! Get off table, cow!" He never hesitates to point out a motorcycle, train, bus, truck, tractor, balloons, or water that we might happen to drive by on the road. He is obsessed with stickers and coloring right now, and could do them for an hour if I let him - however he did get carried away when I wasn't looking the other day, and colored blue highlighter all over the rocking chair..? Ooops! Good thing the cushion flips over!

Eli is so excited to meet is baby sister, I can only hope the love and excitement carries on once she has arrived. He loves to blow raspberries on her (my tummy), give her hugs, kisses, and snuggles. And every now and then he will even sing to her.

Three Generations <3

I could go on for days about how much this sweet boy has stolen our hearts and makes us laugh till we cry, but I'll leave it at that for now. We are so looking forward to the next many many years with him bringing laughter and joy into our home, but for now, I want to remember each little sweet moment. They seem to be slipping bye too quickly right now.