Since It's Still Wedding Season

I love weddings. I particularly love weddings that break the rules. I think the best way to really personalize your big day is to defy tradition and really put your signature on one or many aspects of the day.

For those of you that came to Aaron and my wedding, we did this in a few areas. My favorite part though, was our first dance. It was totally Aaron's idea. We spent several days in our Singapore living room perfecting this. On the big day, it was a complete surprise to everyone. No one had any idea it was coming (that's also why the lighting isn't so great, my apologies.)



So of course I love what these people did at their wedding here in the video below. I think these kids take the cake. (No pun intended.)



Best wedding entrance ever. If you're getting married in the near future, expect me to throw this video in front of you.

Typical Saturday Conversations

Aaron: Oh! Awesome song. Brick (by Ben Folds Five) is the best song ever.

Megan: Uh, it's the most depressing song ever.

Aaron: What?! What makes you say that?

Megan: Do you even know what it's about?

Aaron: Uh, I don't know. Suicide or something.

Megan: Wrong. It's about a couple that accidentally gets pregnant and decides to get an abortion and the guy's girlfriend goes into a deep dark depression.

Aaron: Who told you that?!

Megan: Are you serious? Have you ever even listened to the lyrics?

Aaron: No. (He then proceeds to listen and sing along to the lyrics.) I don't think that's what it's about. I mean it's pretty vague. Unless the artist came out and said that that's what it's about you wouldn't really know. It's not like it comes out and says it.


At this point, I'm just going to throw my head into a wall.

I love my dear sweet husband that doesn't listen. :)

Here's a video of the song in case you live in a bubble and have never heard it.


Ben Folds Five - Brick (Official Music Video) - The best bloopers are here

Learning to cook, one burnt thing at a time

I'm trying to learn how to be a good cook. I've always envied the people that could take a few ingredients and throw them together at random to make something delicious. I was not born with this ability. I'm more of a recipe reader and an ingredient measurer. Not a splasher and dasher. I decided I need to change that.

So I read a lot of cookbooks, cooking magazines and cooking blogs. I own almost every one of Rachael Ray's cookbooks, get her magazine (Thanks Sis!), and have the Food Network.com bookmarked. I also watch what cooking shows they allowed to be played over here in the jungle.

But, you wanna know the best place I've found for recipes and cooking advice?

Pioneer Woman's website

This woman has really taught me a lot about cooking and I've never even met her. She is raising four young children and living on a real-life working ranch complete with cows and cowboys. She might just be my best fake friend. I just love her. She's so down-to-earth and funny. Plus, she's an amazing cook of the dasher and splasher variety. She uses real ingredients that you usually have on hand and makes delicious things. It's Midwest comfort food at its finest.

She's also a very good writer. Her recipe posts are never boring. AND she takes pictures of every step of her recipe so you know AS SOON as you've messed it up. Most of the recipes are also either her own creations or creations of friends.

I've made about five or six of her dishes and have loved every one of them. My all-time favorite would have to be her BBQ meatballs. Or her pot roast. Or maybe her baked mac and cheese. Actually forget it, EVERYTHING is delicious. If you're in a rut or need some inspiration, just check out her site. The options abound.

In the spirit of cooking, I have to tell you all about my first ever "created by Megan" recipe. It's the first thing that I made from scratch by just throwing some things together and saying a little prayer. It's Cream Cheesey Chicken Enchiladas. I'm pretty excited about it being both delicious and edible. Aaron and I love it so much that I make it about every two weeks. Plus it freezes well to reheat later when you don't feel like cooking.

To see the recipe, just click on the link to the right called "A Bun in the Oven". That's my sister and my cooking blog that we have slowly been adding things to. My sis is one of the best cooks I know and she's got oodles of delish recipes stashed away. She's also one of those people that can just throw things together and have it be delicious. She's a brat. :)

If you have any good recipes to share, please send them my way. I'm loving this cooking thing and I'm always up to try something new. Please just keep in mind that I live in Asia and I won't be able to find some things if you get too fancy, or American, on me.

The Spreer's First Year

Aaron,

Happy Anniversary. We've made it through our first year. It really flew by, didn't it? It seems like just last week that we hopped on the plane to begin our new life together in Singapore. We've endured a lot since that day. Each day since has been filled with new joys and challenges. And I couldn't imagine facing any of them with anyone else. Thank you for being you.

And for putting up with me when I'm me.
Love you always and always,

Me

Binderlicious

Remember the day I busted out of the house to get recipe binder ingredients? Well, after a SATC and gummi bear marathon for two days, I finished it. Um sort of. It's going to be a constant work in progress. I'll be constantly adding recipes as I get them. But it's finished for now.

I am so excited about it that I had to put it on the blog.

So here's the binder I got. Before I did anything to it. Yes Mom, it's pink. I thought you'd be excited.
And I bought some black construction paper. (The only package left in the entire store.)

And I got three different types of plastic sleeves. Here we have regular single sheet sleeves, four pouch post card-sized sleeves and double pouch half page-sized sleeves. Notice how most of the words are in Japanese? That was fun.So I busted out my "creative" supplies. I dislike the word "craft" because it reminds me of old women in the 80s who used lots of yarn, cotton balls and puff paint to make hideous monstrosities. Mine are "creative" supplies.


Here is the finished outside of my recipe binder. I'm mildly obsessed with it. Aaron didn't believe that I actually did it all by myself.

Hmph.

Inside, I have cover pages for each section. They are a lil cheesy, but sometimes I like cheesy.

For some of my recipes, I had to glue them to the black construction paper.

For others, I had to put them into the specialized plastic sleeves. See how the index cards fit great into the postcard-sized pouches? Now I can read both the front and back. Or I can even take them out if I want.

So yeah. I really like it. It's way cooler than the ones I saw at the bookstores. It'd be even cooler if I had a Hobby Lobby around here. I guess I'll just have to wait on that.

The Best Things in Life are Free

the rest are from IKEA for cheap.

I love our Expedit Entertainment Center. Please ignore the ugly regulator box sitting beside it and the extension cords that extend around our entire house. I barely notice them anymore.

My favorite part about our entertainment center?

Aaron says it makes it look like we live in a college dorm room. I don't care. They're cute.

I didn't have money to get cute things when I lived in a college dorm room. We also didn't have IKEA either.

The flowers are staying.

Our first Christmas in so many ways

I guess I'll get my nose out of my Twilight books and update you all so you know we're still alive. (I'm already finished with book two and I've only been reading the series for about a week. It's sad, I know.)

I'd like to dedicate this blog to the theme of "Our First Christmas". This holiday included many firsts and each one threw us for a loop. However, we surprise even ourselves at how well we can handle this now. So I go down the list...

Our first Christmas as a married couple: This one was probably the biggest adjustment. Coming from two families that have very distinct Christmas traditions, we were both hell bent on doing things our own way. Ya see, Aaron's family does their Christmas fun on Christmas Eve. My family does EVERYTHING (minus church, Grandma's house and the McDonnell's house) on Christmas Day. So I had to remind Aaron that it was against the very core of my Christmas-loving soul to open anything before Christmas morning. Keeping his hands off the wrapped gifts was a daily task. He even sunk so low as to say "Well, we can open it now and then rewrap it and open it again on Christmas morning on the Skype and then our family would never know we opened it early." To this I replied, "But God would know Aaron, and he'd be very disappointed in you." That shut him up until the next day.

So when Christmas morning got here, you'd better believe Aaron was up at 7am (we didn't get home from the previous night's festivities and to bed until 3am). But he was too excited. I was less than thrilled to be woken up at that hour, but thought it was sweet that he was that excited to play Santa. He'd also made our breakfast and a big pot of coffee (a.k.a. Megan niceness juice).

It was a perfect Christmas morning for just the two of us. It made me feel very lucky to have a husband that would make Christmas feel this special even if it's just the two of us. Our children are going to have a wonderful father. (Just hopefully not in Singapore.)

Our first Christmas in Singapore: Singapore goes crazy for Christmas. They decorate every inch of the city and every establishment has a Christmas tree. They don't give a hoot about political correctness either. Everyone is saying "Merry Christmas" everywhere you go. Being a Christian, I loved it. I liked not having to dilute the meaning of the holiday with "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays".

Christmas is also the only time of year that the stores are open past 9pm. In Singapore, most stores are only open from 11am to 9pm. It was really hard to get used to at first (actually it's still a pain at times). However, a lot of stores stayed open until 11pm during the month of December. Even though we don't do much shopping here. It was nice to have the option. Shopping in Singapore is very expensive and very crowded. It's a tourist city afterall.

Our first Christmas away from family: I was seriously dreading this aspect of our first Christmas. Aaron had already spent a Christmas away from home, but this was going to be my first one. Much like Aaron's family, my family is extremely close. Before I left, I spoke to my sister daily on the phone. My mom also called everyday, even when I lived at home before the wedding. I talked to everyone else at least once or more a week. So the thought of spending the most important holiday of the year away from them made me very sad. However, thanks to a little invention called Skype we were able to spend Christmas with both Aaron's and my family. We did Christmas Eve (our Christmas morning) with the Spreers and then spent Christmas morning (our Christmas evening) with my parents (in fact, we joked that we were the only kids to show up for Christmas breakfast at my parents house.) It was almost as good as really being there. Everyone else that we didn't get to see, called us in the spaces in between.

So all in all, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was kinda great.

Don't get me wrong though, I'd still have rather spent it in Kansas.

Marriage Retreat Weekend

The Chaplain's office held the first Marriage Enrichment Retreat this weekend and Aaron and I were lucky enough to be one of the first twelve couples to call them to get on the list. It was a free trip to Bintan Lagoon Resort and featured several classes with a marriage counselor to learn how to be a better spouse. It was a really great weekend. We even learned some stuff we didn't know we needed to know. Whoda thunk it?

Here are the pics from the weekend:

(The first questions usually asked by our parents is what the room looked like, so we took pictures for them. I think it's so they know that we didn't stay in a grass hut with a dirt floor.)

This is the pool that we never made it to.

On Saturday night, the couples were each given a golf cart to drive to dinner. We had no idea where we were going or what to expect. Below, Aaron and I are on the way over there. We quickly discovered that the golf cart had only one speed: bat out of hell fast. Look close in the picture, I'm holding on for dear life.

We arrived at a tee box at the top of a cliff over-looking the ocean. It was gorgeous. They had set up a dance floor and a table for two for each couple. It was really sweet.

The only bad part? The "Love Ballads of Broadway" CD that they had blaring for ambiance kept skipping. Indonesia's CD selection is limited, I'm sure.

Isn't it pretty? We loved loved loved it. The food was delish as well.

We left after the sun went down and giant beetles started attacking the lights around us.

The next day, we ate lunch at the golf course restaurant...and my husband is incapable of taking a nice picture. Sorry.

Here's the group that went on the trip.

Yeah. You'd think after a weekend of relaxing that we'd be all rested up. I guess not.

A few housekeeping topics

Everyday, local Singaporeans dig through everyone's trash in the housing area. Most wake up at the butt crack of dawn to do this in the privacy of their own dumpster, but this couple was caught red-handed...by me....in the middle of the afternoon. Ha! (Oh God, I'm that nosy housewife that spies out the windows.) We think they are searching for recyclables, but honestly, who knows. It must really suck to dig through our trash though cuz it's filled with Guinness' poop and dirty diapers from the baby across the hall. I think that's why this couple is walking away empty handed. Sorry for littering your treasure trove with garbage Mr. and Mrs. Dumpster Diver.

On a less dirty note, our living room actually is beginning to look like a living room. Thanks to an overly zealous office remodel and some turned cheeks, we have furniture! The couch was made for munchkins, I'm pretty sure, but hey, you can't beat free. We're currently looking for a cover for it cuz navy blue doesn't match the mammoth of a "Big Man Chair" that Aaron brought from home. I hope IKEA has some couch covers cuz they don't make couches this small in the US. We're all fat there and need things like "Big Man Chairs". (That's not a nickname. That's the name the chair is marketed under. It's like saying "Hey! If you're a fat ass, this is the chair for you.)

So yeah, it's mostly reject office furniture, but its still nicer than the crap we had from college. Guinness is a fan of the couch in particular. He is already "hiding" his toys on top of it.

We said he was cute...not smart.

There's a reason Mrs. Fields went under

I totally get why housewives of the 50s were always baking. Now that I'm a housewife, I see the light. These women weren't trying to appease their hardworking husbands and their well-behaved children. This wasn't love and selflessness for the sake of a family's happiness. Those chicks were b-o-r-e-d. Bored.

I am also bored. I am a baking fool. It's not funny either. Check out the list of things I've made in the past four months:

Cherry cobbler
Mexican cheesecake
Chocolate chip cookies (about 10 times, they're Aaron's fave)
Peanut butter bars
Cinnamon rolls (3 times)
Chocolate chip cookie bars
Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies
White chocolate macadamia nut cookies
Brownies

Isn't that sad? We don't have children. Only one of those things were made for someone else...kinda. We also don't go to community picnics that require I bring a dessert. We don't even donate to bake sales. I make these things and only two people sit around and eat them. Two! It's a wonder my ass isn't the size of the moon.

To make matters worse, we usually don't finish one item before I'm off baking the next thing. (Example: One portion of cherry cobbler still sits in the fridge and the macadamia nut cookies are already done and in the cookie tub on the counter.) This is getting out of hand.

I think someone needs to take away my baking sheets.

Prayer of a bitter housewife

Dear God,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to spend a 5AM mail run with my husband today. I should actually thank you for his boss, who if he performed his job correctly, would not have given me the chance to "volunteer". I say this because if he had let his bosses know that the office wasn't adaquately staffed, then I wouldn't have gotten the opprotunity to work for free today, in secret, at 5AM. He must have known that I needed more time with my husband.

Thank you for giving me the strength to not yell at or curse at my husband who has become quite a chipper morning person. While I do enjoy rap music, I'm not sure I can ever enjoy it cranked up full blast in a mail truck that early....or ever. I'm sure even Kanye doesn't get up at 4:30 AM.

Please help me to understand how the Singaporean women wear heels all day and don't wince in pain with every step. I'd like to have feet of steel like them, but not the kind that is distorted and has weird knobs on the toes. Please just fix my sissy feet. The eight blisters I got from my four hour outing last night still hurt.

Which brings me to my last need God. Could you please give scabies to the person who thought it was a good idea to close the ONLY Taco Bell in Singapore. I'm sure he or she does not realize the error of his or her ways yet. In time, I promise to forgive them, but could you just help me out with the scabies right quick?

P.S. Thank you for sarcasm. Without it, I may not get through the day.

IJN,
Amen

Our new Home Sweet Home and all of its flaws

We're officially in our new place. Yay! We cleaned, buffed and scrubbed our old residence last night and it passed inspection this morning. That means that we're not "in limbo" between the two places and the new one is officially "home". No more stinky nasty furniture-infested bachelor housing. Now we have pretty, shiny, no furniture-infested family housing. :)

The kitchen is the only thing that's completely unpacked. We're so excited about our new stuff that we've used nearly everything in it in only 3 days. However, all is not sunshine and roses. Our very small dishwasher broke last night and now I'm waiting for DS2 (the repairmen on base) to come and fix it. They've already been to our house twice since we've moved in. Yeah, they're going to LOVE us.

Then there's the bathroom. I love love love the big counter tops and the storage closet that it has. Yet, there is no stinkin' electrical outlet ANYWHERE in the dang thing! What the hell is that about? So now Aaron has to pick up a bunch of extension cords, plug it into the outlet across the room and string it around the walls to reach the bathroom. Can we say "ghetto fabulous"? I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of ghetto fabulousness in our Singaporean house. The bedroom only has TWO electrical outlets and it's not like in America where each outlet has double plug-ins. No no, my friends. Each outlet is a single. This establishes that there's gonna be a lot of cords and transformers in this room. So if there's ever a fire in Sembawang, there's a good chance it'll originate in our bedroom.

So other than those two big things and a night on the phone with upper management at Target (that's a whole other blog), things are going well. We are currently on the hunt for a couch...and a console table...and mirrors...and a kitchen cart...and a vanity...and the list will keep going, I'm sure.

Someday, Megan. Someday.

It's finally here

Moving day is in sight. Today, Aaron called me while I was Skype-ing with my parents and said that we have keys to our new place. This came as a bit of a shock as I was unaware that we officially had "a place".

They'd been trying to get us into the apartment across the way for a couple weeks, but we hadn't agreed to anything yet. We'd been reluctant to accept the apartment style house that the Navy was offering (ahem, telling us to move into) because 1) It was on the third freakin' floor, 2) It had 3 bedrooms and we're only 2 people that share ONE room and 3) We REALLY wanted a place to ourselves, away from other (noisy) families of 5.

Since we're the "youngins" on base, our efforts to rationalize our preference fell on deaf ears. So Aaron snagged the keys in order to look at the place before we signed on the dotted line.

Here are some pics. Minus our original complaints, the place is pretty nice...and freakin' huge.

This is the view of the dining room from the living room. I really like the columns and ledges. I already have several ideas of how to decorate these.

Here's as much of the living room as I can fit into one picture. It is massive. I have no idea what to do with it. We'll never have enough furniture to actually fill the space. Singaporean furniture tends to be on the rather small side...shocking, I know.

I hope you all can see that beautiful stove right there. I say "beautiful" because there are no celsius readings on the oven knob and the oven is normal-sized. IT'S AN AMERICAN STOVE PEOPLE. I'm so happy!

Here is our brand new American fridge. They also threw in a deep freezer that's located around the corner. On the other side of the fridge is a walk-in pantry. God Bless Family Housing.

This is the master bedroom. It has a bathroom and a storage room leading off of the other side.

This is Aaron's bathroom. We each get our own (which put huge smiles on BOTH of our faces). He gets the one with the stand-up shower and I get the one with the tub. I'm a bubble bath kind of girl.

There's many more pictures on Facebook. We're going to start moving our stuff from Bachelor Housing in over the weekend. Our packout stuff from home will be delivered Monday afternoon.

The man in charge of housing said that in August, more duplexes may open up and we might be able to move into one at that time. I dunno though, we may like this place better. We shall see.

Updates on several things

I've been asked a few questions by several people lately so I thought I'd blog to broadcast the Spreer family status in Singapore.

Guinness: He's finally cured. We took him to the vet last Tuesday and after only a day of meds, he was back to normal. The culprit of his illness? We've narrowed it down to the fact that he may have accidentally eaten some rubber bands. Actually, we know he did. I saw them "exit" on more than one occasion. However, he's taken one dose of worming medicine and is prescribed to seven days of anti-inflammatory pills for his inflamed large intestine. He's handling it very well and his "mom" is very good at sneaking his pills into dog food.

Moving status: It seems that we may be forced into the apartment-style place even though it is not economical for two people who don't desire to have Singaporean babies. Nothing is official yet and we're still pulling for a duplex. The Navy is not being so cooperative with our hopes and dreams. Shocker.

Our stuff: It's been here since June 23rd. No one bothered to tell us it was here. Thanks Navy. However, we still don't get it until we're officially moved into family housing anyway.

What are we doing to entertain ourselves: I spend my days watching Gossip Girl even though I vowed that I would never like it. (I'm now hooked. Loves it.) We went and saw Hancock on Thursday and really want to see The Dark Night this week. Once you get past the Chinese subtitles and the talkative locals, the movies are like an escape from Singapore.

Yesterday, we had lunch with a couple from Colorado: Jeni and John. We had a great time and were so excited to hang out with people from home. We had lunch at Brewerkz (a restaurant/brewery) and walked around Clarke Quay. They were a fun couple and Jeni has already seen and done twice as much as I have in her two weeks. I really should get out more.

That's all I got for now.

Trusting husband = ugly hair

Aaron finally talked me into cutting his hair last night. It was a long process to get me to agree to this. I was not at all excited to be in charge of the attractiveness of my husband. He is very picky about his hair and what possessed him to think I should cut it, is beyond me.

Anyways, we went and bought some new clippers because the voltage difference in Singapore fried his clippers from home. So we hopped over to the Asian version of a KMart/Best Buy and bought a "middle of the road" pair. Not cheap, but not top dollar. We brought them home and Aaron checked everything out and talked me through it for the hundredth time.

We soon realized that the new clippers did not have a number 2 guard, which is the guard he prefers to go around the back and sides of his dome. The numbers we had were 1.25, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. So Aaron told me to just use the 1.25 and it'll just be a little shorter. "It'll just mean that I can go longer before you cut it again." He tells me. Super, I thought, I'm now signed up to do this again already.

So I psych myself up and go in for the kill. After the first strip of baldness, I start laughing uncontrolably. "Aaron, it's really short!"

I'm not kidding you, it was to the scalp. I looked like I didn't even use a guard.

"No, it's fine, that's how short I cut it. It'll be fine."

To appease my freakout, we switched to the number 3 and did the rest of the sides and back until I felt comfortable. That wasn't so bad, but the bald patch from the first strike was still staring back at me. So I got the courage to return to the 1.25 guard to even it out.

This is where the horror began.

The more I tried to blend, the blotchier and higher the ugliness went. It was like, the more I tired to fix the situation, the more the clippers betrayed me and put random patches in his scalp. Finally I just gave up on the clippers and I tried to fix it by hand with scissors. Since I'm a beautician and all, you can imagine how that went.

I begged and begged Aaron to let me take pictures of his hair. However, because I can't look at him without laughing, he won't let me. It looks like someone shaved his head in the dark and then slapped a toupee on top. Then an angry bird attacked him from the sides and clipped off extra chunks. It's a mess and one we can't fix at that. His hair is so short that it's beyond help.

Here's the clincher kids. After all of that, Aaron reads the intructions to the clippers. Lo and behold, we find out that the numbers on the guards were not the numbers they use to number guards in the US. The numbers were the height of how short it cuts hair in MILLIMETERS. So a US number two guard would have actually been like a 5 or 6 on these....not a 1.25.

Oh the awesomeness.

You want me to choose?!

I just spent four hours going through our wedding pictures. Yep. Four. We got three CDs that contain about 480 pictures. Welcome to the age of digital. You no longer get 30 proofs of your special day. You get 500. In every angle and color distortion imaginable.

Unfortunately, all of ours are super cute. I may be a bit biased.

So my husband tells me "You're going to have to pick your favorite ones and that's what we'll print".

That's like telling a 4-year-old, "Here are all of the puppies in the world, now pick just one".

Really? That's so not happening.

Anyways, I loaded some on my Facebook and MySpace pages for those of you who know how to access them. For those that don't, email me at megjhawk@gmail.com and I'll send you the link or send you some in an attachment.

Our Favorite Day

The pictures are slowly trickling in. The photographer put together this slideshow for our friends and family to see. It's pretty cute. We'll be getting all of the other pictures soon. Until then, feast your eyes on these:

http://www.saratafoya.com/meganandaaron/

Can you believe it's been 41 days! Geez! I still can't get used to seeing my new name. It takes some thought before I sign it too. I feel like I should write my name with a disclaimer that says:

Megan (used to be Heffley) Spreer

I'm a nut.

My Sailor

Aaron and I went to Chief Higley's retirement ceremony on Friday. It was pretty neat to see an official Navy ceremony. It was held at the Terror Club's outside "event" area which is under fans and shade.

I get really excited when Aaron has to wear his Dixie cup hat because I think its ridiculously funny. The military is really stubborn about updating things, I'm finding. Amusing at times. Annoying at other times.

Still no word on our house. Still no job. God I love the US Military.

I'm a wife

It's still really hard for Aaron and me to call each other by the right title. I still catch him calling me his girlfriend and my friends catch me calling him my fiance. It just seems so odd to call him "husband" and for him to call me "wife".

However, when other people say it, it's nice. I visited Aaron at work a couple days ago and Jenny, the sweet lady that works the counter, hollered back to Aaron that his wife was there. I loved it! I know it's dorky and dumb for me to be that excited about it, but it just sounds so nice. We'll have to work on the correct word usage ourselves.

So Singapore is going well thus far. I got my "I'm a Navy guy's wife card" that lets me on base and lets me into the NEX to buy stuff. SWEET. This is kind of a big deal because even though the card says I'm a "dependent", it gives me independence by allowing me to run errands on base without Aaron. It's an oxymoron really.

The laundry's almost finished and I've started Season 2 of Dexter. All is well with the Spreers in Asia.

P.S. My brother Adam asked me if they have the "drawer bed hotels" in Singapore. I was intrigued as I am by most things odd and Asian. So I did some research and while they don't have them here, they do in Japan. They are the oddest thing ever! It's like a hotel, only your room resembles the drawers you'd find in a morgue! No lying. Here's a link to the site I found. http://www.capsuleinn.com/index.html They're called Capsule Inns. Very creepy.

Playing Catch Up

Whew! The last few weeks have really flown by! The wedding was perfect. The honeymoon was so much fun. The packing went smoothly. The plane ride was nicer when you fly together. All in all everything went very well. Minus the leaving everyone and everything you've ever known.

It was the hardest few days of my life saying goodbye to all of my siblings, friends and parents. I cried and cried as my husband told me what a good job I was doing being so strong. (I think he lies sometimes ha ha). However, now that we're all figuring out Skype...I think I talk to everyone way more than I did before I left. I love it! We're slowing getting out web cams synced up and it's so nice to see everyone.

Now that the jet lag is subsiding, I am going to get the blog up and rolling. Here are a few pictures to highlight the last few weeks that I've been crazy busy.

A few pics of the wedding (more to come!):

Our honeymoon in Cancun:

The day before I left :( This is of my mom and grandma.