inch by inch... mile by mile...

I need to get better at posting... How long have I been saying that? No matter how many times I say it, it's true.

The wedding was beautiful! And yes, I'm just now talking about the wedding that was well over a week ago. It was an outdoor wedding with a BBQ reception. The dress? Georgeous. The ceremony? I cried. The whole thing? Magic. The entire time I was standing up at the alter, I had a certain someone in mind. Even if that person may not exist anymore, I'm still in love with the memory and what could have been. And for some reason, I could still see myself walking down the aisle towards him... I can still see us having our first dance (and have even hea

rd what song would play in my dreams...)

I saw her walking down the aisle with her father, and the 200 guests stood up as they always do, and the tears started coming. The photographer must have thought it made for a good picture, because he started taking pictures of me and Allie, the MOH, who was also crying. She got to the alter, was handed of to her future husband, and the ceremony began. It all started with a yellow Jeep....

When they turned for the first time as husband and wife, and began to walk back down the aisle, Another One Bites The Dust began to play. Classic. We made it through another wedding and I know it won't be the last. Even though many of my friends swear they're never getting married, myself included, we know it will happen at some point. Sure, it may not be for another 20 years, but it will happen. Baby steps...

My VersaSpa tan looked great in the pictures! I wasn't orange at all and it looked rather natural... in the one's I've seen so far anyway... We had taken the entire day to get ready.... MAC for makeup, and HairPort for hair.... A stop at CPK for some lunch. It all took a lot longer than I expected. But everyone looked so pretty. And as each thing on our check list was completed, I started to get more nervous for the bride.

Chelsea played it cool the entire day, because she knew other people were freaking out. Like her mom. And the groomsmen. Here's a little hint to anyone getting married.... I know it sounds like a good idea, but never have the bachelor/bachelorette parties the night before the wedding. It's your own damn fault if you stay away until 5am drinking beer and then get upset because you didn't get any sleep and you have a wedding to plan. Don't get mad at the bridal party because they took their time getting pretty. We played the night before and knew what we were getting ourselves in to.

But in the end everything worked out. There were rose petals lining the aisle. Large vases with river rocks, branches, and goldfish lined the aisle. The cake matched her dress with the same color and design on each tear.... Her dress fit perfectly. The bridesmaids looked great. The food tasted delicious. The garter was on her leg and was kinda uncomfortable like they always are. The bouquet was thrown to the maid of honor who had been making not so subtle hints to her boyfriend, the best man, all night. Sure there was some chaos. Like one of the groomsmen not being able to make the ceremony for certain reasons... But things like that are better left unnoticed. I tend to think of the good things. Having some champagne and wine in my system helped a little bit too.

I hardly got to hold Tegan the entire night. She was in someone's arms the whole night. Some strangers, and some old friends. But she did fine. She fell asleep and my mother took her back to the inn before the cake was cut. She just missed the toast.

We headed to the after party at some bar with an 80's cover band. It was Allie's 21st birthday! Woot! Lots of drinks were had. Lots of dancing happened. A little bit of shameless flirting with a guy that looked like Charlie from It's Always Sunny, and some other guy with an accent. And the guys in the band. The bar slowly closed down and we made our way out. I rode with Rachel and her boyfriend back to the Inn, leaving my purse in the back of Allie's car. Awesome. She sent it to me. No worries.

The dive back to Utah wasn't so bad. It took a long time, that's for sure. We left the inn later than we expected. We were 3 hours away from home when we decided to stay the night in Burley, ID. My friend had come home from his mission, and we decided that it would be better to stop and say hi on the way home instead of driving home then back tracking another hour back up to where he lives.

Tegan did a lot better on the way home with someone in the back seat with her. She cried less, we stopped more, and everyone had a better time. Overall, the trip was just what I needed. I got to relax and breathe. I got some time away from work and enough time away from the baby to be my own person. I'm totally content being a mother now and feel more comfortable in my own postpregnant body.

Tegan is pretty much crawling now. She's got the army crawl down and can get up on all 4's like she's been doing it forever. Her only problem is once she gets up she crosses her legs and rolls over, and then this look pops on her face that cracks me up every time. She has found her toes for sure... She sucks on her big toe every chance she can get... Speaking of... she's crying. So I've gotta go. I'll try to do better with posting!

from rose stems beauty grows...

Oregon was amazing... It was so fun to get out there and to see friends from the past. A lot happened...

But it's all a blur! We already talked about the coast and the aquarium... Let me tell you what else happened....

Wednesday, I ran around with Chelsea, bride to be, and we did a couple wedding things. She came over to the hotel, and we picked out shoes and I showed her pictures... Then we ran to her cute cute house that she and her now husband live in together! It was kind of a mess, but so adorable! I would live there in a heart beat. And there is a about an acre and a half for their 2 dogs to run around in. They are very very luck to have such a great place! Except, the owners are building on it and they're trying to find a new place to live... On the way back, we noticed one of the houses had a ton of roses in full bloom with a bunch of different colors... What a coincidence! We needed to find roses for free from whoever we could for the flower girls and for the aisle runners. Chelsea's mom had gone through a whole mess Tuesday night when she was trying to get them, and hopefully there would be enough there that we wouldn't have to bother too many people.

The house belonged to an elderly couple, who had a daughter that would come to visit every Wednesday. There were two rows of rose bushes on the side of the house with about 10-15 bushes in each row. And more roses in the back... How lucky we were to find that house! Chelsea ran inside while I stayed out in the car with Tegan, and she came back with a thumbs up! We got out of the car with a garbage bag and clippers that Chelsea had packed just in case we were to stumble on such a lucky occasion. We trotted down the hill and started clipping roses. I held the bag and Tegan, and Chels clipped the ones she thought would work perfectly. The elderly couple came out, the man with a wheelchair, followed by their daughter and someone else, and they began to dig up bulbs that had passed their prime as we clipped.

The man was stubborn... Chelsea had seen him earlier that week with an edger, and he was edging his own yard from the wheelchair! He hacked away at the ground and his daughter came to tell us a story. Apparently, at her first wedding (she's divorced now) they had beautiful roses in a vase up at the alter. Her mother thought they were so beautiful, that she and her husband decided to give them to her. When she thought the roses were dead, her now ex husband took them and found a way to make them grow from the stems. The roses on the side of the house were from their actual wedding ceremony, and he made sure that his mother in law could enjoy them for as long as possible. It was one of the sweetest thing I had ever heard! We had gathered enough roses to fill up the garbage bag, and headed to her mom's house to put them in water before we went for our pedicures....

After the pedicures was the bachelorette party! WOOO! It was also the first night that I would leave Tegan over night with someone else... Very very scary. I do not need to publish the details for the bachelorette party, because the people that need to know what happened already do and were there. There were some very interesting conversations.... Ones that have possibly given me new hope and one in particular that opened my eyes to some very positive thinking. I will say that love never fades, and this should hold true for the happy couple. After all, they've been together for a total of six years, and are now finally married! Wait... I should say "love is not dead" because the actual reason I got the tattoo still hold true.

I didn't know the other girls in the bridal party very well... But this party definitely helped break the ice and make things not very awkward on the actual wedding day. They made me feel like I was part of the group and I believe that I made some very good friends. It made it very hard to leave when the day finally came.

I drove home in the morning, and found my baby happy and well in the arms of my mom at the Lakeshore Inn. I had been nervous the entire time, and could not wait to get back to her. But she had done just fine and actually slept through the entire night.

Blessings and car rides.....

It's cold.  The second week in July, and I have to wear a sweatshirt.... I must be in Oregon!  Home sweet home....  This is where I spent my early years, chasing after ice cream trucks, and playing in the river.  I spent a lot of time in the library, and picking strawberries in by the creek at my friend's old house.  Driving around town made me think about a lot of random memories that I hadn't thought of in years.

Let's start with the journey here...

Sunday was the last day to actually get ready and pack before we had to make the long long drive from Utah to here.  But that wasn't the only thing going on.  Tegan had her baby blessing on Sunday, and we had around 60 people over at our house afterwards eating food.  So we moved the garage around and set up tables and brought all the food down so that people could mix and mingle and eat in a more open area.  Which was awesome.  There was a lot of food.  A lot of family.  And a lot of love.  It's hard to have a small get together with my family.... Because we're not so small anymore.  7 kids, 6 spouses, 15.5 grandkids, a mom, a dad, two grandmas and a couple aunts and uncles and just a few cousins.  It makes for a good time.... My sister was in town from Arizona with her family, so it was fun to see them while they were here.  Her boys are huge... Yes, I'm talking about you Tyler, Jaron and Cameron.  McKaden is pretty big too, but he's only six.  They all need to stop taking their vitamins and shrink back to the tiny kids I remember them as.

My dad gave Tegan a beautiful blessing.  He made sure she knew that her family was always going to be there for her.  It was very well thought out.  There was another blessing before hers and it seemed so short in comparison.  But it was just as meaningful, I'm sure.

Okay....  On to the drive.

I had the car all packed and ready to go.  My mom had packed all the food.... bla bla bla.  Tegan was strapped in her carseat, and we were on our way to Oregon at 7:30 in the morning.  Pretty good, considering we didn't get a lot of sleep the night before!  We made it to about 45th South on I15, when my mom couldn't think of where she put her wallet.  Which made me wrack my brain to figure out where I had put mine.  Mom found hers, and I couldn't think for the life of me where mine had gone!  I searched the diaper bag, my purse, and every place I could think of.  I remembered putting it somewhere, but I had no idea where.... So we turned around.  We made it to the point of the mountain when I realized I had put it in my backpack that was in the back seat.... I'm a genius.  Wallet in hand, we turned back around and headed up I15 again....

WHEN.... I realized I had to pee when we got to the exit by my grandma's house.  Stupid coffee.... Keeps me awake and makes me pee.  I should drink it over a longer span of time... not in five minutes.  So we made a quick stop at my grandma's house in Bountiful and said goodbye... and then we were on the road once again.

Mom drove the first part of the way.  Bla bla bla, yadda yadda yadda.  Nothing to interesting happened.  We talked.  I slept.  We listened to music.  I pumped while she drove and fed Tegan in her carseat so we could stop less.  She did really good riding in the car for such a long time... But I felt terrible.  Part of the time she was screaming, but I couldn't do anything to stop her.  We made multiple stops so we could get her out of her seat and play and snuggle a little bit, and continued on our way.  I drove through part of Idaho after we got some gas.  And got pulled over for... Guess what?  Go on ahead... Guess!  Okay, I'll tell you.... I was going 5 over the speed limit.  5 over!  Are you kidding me!?!?  He was nice and let me go with a warning.  Whatever.

By the end of the trip, I was in the back seat, holding Tegan because she couldn't stop crying.  Her poor little butt must have been so asleep.... riding in a carseat for 14 hours.... The poor thing didn't understand.

We finally made it into Lake Oswego and the Lakeshore Inn at 10pm.  Not too shabby.  Chelsea and Maclain came by and said hello and played with Tegan....  Maclain was absolutely adorable with her.  He's going to make a great daddy one day, but I'm hoping they'll take their time with that one.

We went to bed really really late.... but all 3 of us slept really well.

Tuesday was beach day!  And I'll have to write about that later.