New blog

I'm starting a new blog. It's called A Lively Bunch. Isn't that great??!! Please change your blog rolls to our new address: http://alivelybunch.blogspot.com/ (after you look at my bridal pictures here first, of course!) See you at our new blog!

Bridals

The wedding was sooooo fantastic. I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful day. The sealing ceremony in the temple was beautiful, the reception was so fun, and everything went superbly. I'll post more about it later, but for now....here's my lovely bridal pictures. Enjoy!

I love how the cowgirl one turned out. It's my favorite!

The photos were taken by Elisha Snow at Garden Park and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Oh, it was so fun to feel like a princess!

I'm getting married tomorrow!!! Auggh!

So all the plans are made, everything is done and ready to go. It's kind of a weird feeling knowing that in less than 24 hours from right now, I will be married! It's one of those things that you think about your whole life, and now that it's actually here you don't quite know what to do. I've been getting everything ready for the past 3 months....it's so strange to not have any wedding stuff to do right now.

Even though it is crazy, I feel so calm and peaceful about it all. (I definately have had my freak outs over the past several weeks though.) But I'm so excited to get married and be with my best friend forever. I feel so lucky and blessed to have him in my life.

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to run the Days of 47 10K race. It was so much fun! I love that we are both into stuff like that and can enjoy it together.

So, we are going to Victoria, Canada for our honeymoon. Fun! So this blog won't be very exciting for the next week or so. And....next time I post, I'll be Christy Lively. Weird!

Bye bye Mickey...

...and hello big, beautiful diamond! Matt gave me my real ring last night and it is so beautiful! I love it so much.

He set up a cute little table in the middle of the park, complete with martinellis, a red rose and a red checkered tablecloth. We had a lovely picnic dinner, and then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him (again)!

It was so cute! I said yes (again) and our wedding is in 5 days! Holy smokes!

I love you Matt!

Showers

This has been the week of bridal showers. Fun stuff! My dear friend Caron threw me a bridal shower pool party. We decided that we just wanted to have a fun party instead of a lame shower, so we had a pool party/BBQ. It was tons of fun. We made kabobs and had a grand time swimming in the Margetts' pool.

Bekah was not there so the synchronized swimming did not happen, but we did discover that it is much easier to do chin-ups on a diving board than on those chin-up bars in the high school gym.

I got lots of fun gifts. Thanks everyone!

One of the funniest gifts I received was from Sarah Ann. She said that a new home needs to have lots of pictures, so she gave me a lovely one to start with. It's Sarah Ann and her brothers. I about fell in the pool laughing! I also received a very funny gift from Emma, but I will need to refrain from posting a picture of it on this G-rated blog.

We also discovered that some of our friends have some hidden talents. Here is Jill demonstrating her newfound talent.

My grandma and aunts also threw me a shower this week. It was a lot of fun. Here is one of the games we played. There were a bunch of candy bars in the middle of the floor and you had to guess which candy bar went with which word on the poster.

I also got lots of fun gifts at this shower. My favorite was a quilt from my grandma and aunts. My grandma makes a quilt for all her grandkids when they get married, and she decided this one would be perfect for Matt and me.

It is a reversible BYU/Utah quilt!!! How funny is that? I love it! Now the only problem is that we may have a disagreement on which side to put facing up. Hee hee! What a fun week!

Tri tri again

On Saturday, Matt and I completed the Echo Triathlon. None of the events got canceled and neither of us got injured. Hurray! I didn't do so hot, but I had a lot of fun. We decided to do the sprint distance instead of the olympic since we haven't had much time to devote to our training because of wedding planning and such. But before you think we are pansies, the sprint distance is still pretty intense...it's a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, and a 3 mile run. Matt did awesome and got an overall time of about 1:35, with a 17 minute swim. Sweet! I pretty much sucked, but at least I finished all in one piece. And we had a lot of fun, which is really all that matters.

The course was awesome! I loved it! I think it's my favorite out of all the races we have done. I am so lucky to have such a great fiance who likes to do this kind of stuff with me. :)

Last week, I had to go to a conference in Park City for work. There was a Cannondale bike conference going on at the same time. So on Thursday night, Matt came up to Park City to hang out and we went and saw all the new bikes. We even got to "test drive" some. I test drove a sweet road bike and now I want a road bike really bad. It makes such a difference.

Matt was in heaven being surrounded by all the bike stuff and bike people. It was a lot of fun. Oh yeah, and I saw Elder Nelson at the temple last week. He smiled at me and shook my hand and said hello. Two apostle sightings in one week! Lucky me!

Cowboy boots, a wedding dress, and Pres. Eyering

Earlier this week I was getting my bridal pictures taken in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and guess who walked by? President Eyering! He smiled and waved at me and had this cute little grin on his face. It was so fun! I wish I would have thought to get my picture taken with him.

For some of my bridal pictures, I really wanted to wear my cowboy boots and hat, and so I did. I was walking around Temple Square in my wedding dress, cowboy boots and cowboy hat and EVERYONE was staring at me. It was so funny! And I got several hilarious comments from lots of people like, "Oh, it must be a shotgun wedding." or "There's got to be a story behind those boots." There really is no story, I just thought it would be fun. And it was. That's it.

Weekend retreat

Each summer we take our student leaders on a retreat to help them bond with the other students and also to teach them leadership principles. This year we took them to Salt Lake and Park City. We visited many of the Church's historical sites and learned a ton of cool things.

We hiked Ensign Peak and had a really neat devotional at the top. We saw Brigham Young's house (the pink one!), and went to This Is The Place State Park.

The park was so much fun. I had never been there before, but there is so much to do. You can see an old blacksmith shop, cabinet makers, dance hall, old cabins from the 1800s, and more. Here are some of the student in the barber shop.

At one of the houses we learned about courting candles. When the gentlemen would come over to the house to court the ladies, the father would light this courting candle and when it burned to the next rim, he had to leave. But do you see the little turny thing at the bottom of the candle. If the dad liked the guy, he would raise the candle up so it would take a longer time to burn. Funny huh?

We also went to Memory Grove, Jordanelle Reservoir, the Salt Lake City Cemetery, and more. Here we are having lunch from the back of the van!

The cemetery was really neat. It was fun to see all the past church leaders' graves and learn more about them. Even though spending a weekend with 35 very energetic students is exhausting, I had a ton of fun. Have I mentioned that I love my job?

Sunday afternoon fireside

Sunday afternoon Matt and I were enjoying the Sabbath when we get a call from Matt's roommate telling him that their apartment building was on fire! He said their specific apartment had not been burned at all (it's on the bottom floor and the fire was on the top floor), but it was really smoky and the firemen had to break down the doorknob to make sure no one was inside. There was also some really gross-smelling water leaking from the ceiling into Matt's room.

So we headed over to the apartment to see what was going on and taped to the door was this big red sign that said it was unsafe to enter.

They told us that the building was unlivable so we had to pack up Matt's stuff and move him out. We just took his clothes and valuables and anything that would absorb the smoke smell and took it over to his parents' house and to Garrett's brother's house. Luckily Garrett is housesitting for his brother for a few weeks, so they can stay there for awhile.

It wasn't quite the fireside we were expecting to attend on Sunday! Now Matt just may move into our apartment a few weeks early instead of waiting til the wedding. He should be able to move in this week and he'll just stay there until we get married since his apartment is unlivable for awhile. No one was hurt though and none of their stuff was damaged, so that was good. What a crazy turn of events!

Walking and Olympians

At my work, we have these health challenges every two months. For the past two months our challenge was to walk at least 8,000 steps per day. I am proud to report that during the months of May and June I walked a total of 622,479 steps, which averages out to be a little over 10,000 steps per day. Yay for me!



Our next health challenge for the months of July and August is to win the Olympic gold medal. As of July 7, I will officially be an Olympian going for the gold! There are 6 different events--I will be in the biathlon event, which consists of running and swimming. In order to win the gold medal, I have to run a total 60 miles and swim 12,000 yards by the end of August. That averages out to be about 1500 yards of swimming and 7.5 miles of running per week. I can totally do that! Let the games begin!

It's my birthday...shout hurray!

My birthday celebration started 19 days ago on June 1 and will continue for 11 more days until June 30. Why celebrate just on your birthday when you can celebrate the whole month? Anyway, on June 1 in honor of the first day of my birthday month we had Chinese fondue in China at Greg and Rinda's house.

This is the fondue birthday cake creation that Rinda made for me. It was delicious. :) We enjoyed some Chinese fondue and I got sung to in 4 1/2 languages. Chinese, English, Spanish, Pig Latin and Double Dutch. (Caron only made it through about half of the song in Double Dutch before we started laughing too hard for her to finish, so that is why it was only 4 1/2.)

Then last Saturday, my friends and I headed up to East Canyon for a birthday campfire. It was also Ryan's birthday so we made sure to light a marshmallow on fire for him to blow out. We had birthday tin foil dinners and birthday smores. We had a lovely time. (Well, except for when Bekah's car got rear ended on the way up and we had to assess the damages and talk to the cops.)

Matt did a great job of making our tin foil dinners (they were sooo yummy!) and getting everything together for the campfire adventure. It was so much fun!

Then this morning I woke up early to go for a lovely morning run and found this fun little surprize from my cute roommate, Rachael. I especially love the music card!

Oh yeah, and my sister sent me a text at 12:01 a.m. that said, "Fried Chicken, Country Hog, It's your birthday...HOT DOG!" This is reminicent of our favorite Seattle restaurant...Jimmy Mac's. Whenever we go to Seattle we ALWAYS go there and if the waiters are singing to someone, we all (meaning all my cousins and a few aunts and uncles) stand up and clap and sing with the waiters. Even if we don't know the person whose birthday it is...it is great fun. We even went there for my cousin's wedding dinner and sang the same song. Hee hee!

When I got to work, I found this delicious piece of chocolate cake on my desk from my boss. Then one of my students came and gave me a bag of chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Have you ever had those? They are divine. And I don't even like normal cinnamon bears, but these ones are so good. And he gave me a card that said, "It's good if you have another birthday because that means you're not dead yet." Ha ha! Another one of my students gave me some more cake. They are so cute!

My grandma, great-grandma, some aunties, and some cousins came to take me to lunch at the Brick Oven.

And cute little Lily Bug came to give me some birthday wishes.

When I came back from lunch these flowers were waiting for me in my office. Thank you Matt! I'm not sure what kind they are but mmmm....they smell good.

Then after work Matt took me on a birthday picnic and then up to Park City to ride the Alpine Slide. It was so much fun! I haven't done that in years!

I lost miserably in the race down the hill, but that was OK.

We had a great view of the sunset as we started down the mountain. Anyway, it was a great birthday and thanks to everyone who helped make it a special day. Here's to a great year of being 28!

Wedding plans update

Here's a little preview of our engagement photos! (Umm...we had like 700 taken.) We had them taken by Elisha Snow, who used to work at CK Media with me. I think they turned out great. We had so much fun just goofing around during our photo shoot.

Awww.....aren't we cute? Anyway, the wedding plans are coming along quite nicely. I've gotten my wedding dress, we have the temple and the reception center all squared away, we have ordered our flowers and cake and the bridesmaids dresses, and I have finished designing the announcements and sent them off to the printer. Last week we went to go taste cakes and it was so fun! We picked some really different, yet delicious flavors so you'll have to come to our reception to taste them.