thoughts after year one

Stephanie & Eythan from A. Green Films on Vimeo.

this year flew by.
we decided this video was perfect because the day was chilly and damp but everything else was so warm and cozy and happy.
we laugh together. often.
i love everyone who was there last september twenty fifth and everyone who couldn't be, too.
the scene with eythan and shay, <3
the scene with jaime doing my hair, too.
and my sisters.
lillie should have been there.
tracie, your torso made it in!
i should have worn my veil for more of the pictures.
someday i should write about the whole day.
someday we should sent out the rest of the thank you cards.
oddly, thinking about my wedding makes me think about how grateful i am for every single person i know and love and often miss.
what a strange year. kind of chilly and sad outside, but warm and cozy and happy.

in which i play catch-up

I added this picture because there needed to be some color up in here.

Ugh there are so many things that have happened and deserve to acknowledged. I was always really bad at writing in my journal. Every few months....or years..... I would get back to it and try to play catch up. And I would write pages and pages about what I'd been up to and the important milestones that had passed and hadn't yet been recorded. This would leave me totally burnt out and I wouldn't touch my journal for several more months. Or years. I eventually started just picking up where I left off instead of trying to cover everything that happened. It worked well, but I clearly haven't learned a thing because I'm going all the way back to April for this one. Although I will be using pictures and I'm typing instead of writing so my hand won't cramp up. Let's go. 

QUESTIVAL. Sometime in April we went on this big outdoor scavenger hunt called questival. The task list was pretty much everything cool to do in northern Utah. It was loads of fun. However, were we to do it again I think I could contribute more as a team manager instead of a member. Because let's be honest, I was all about the color coding and navigating, and place-finding, and picture-posting, but I wasn't the one trail running and climbing mountains and snowboarding. Though I did write our llama limerick, so...... there's that. We also signed up last minute, so we didn't have the time to gather equipment and map everything out the way we should have. If we'd had things like a paddle board or an extra mattress we could have gotten way more points. PLUS I told someone I'd cover their shift so I had to ditch out early which was AWFUL. Basically, we would have won if we'd had more time and money. Maybe. But anyway, Lindsay, Caleb, and Eythan are champs and it was worth it because it was superawesome hanging out with them. Especially the part where Lindsay and I found the rope swing in the dark, braced ourselves, hopped on, and it just spun in a lame circle. ALSO when the Peruvian restaurant just gave us cut-up hotdogs and french fries. haha. 

Then for my birthday my mom and dad took me and Eythan to see Les Mis at the Hale Center Theater, and it was fabulous. Like, so good. And the songs were stuck in E's head for SO LONG, it was hilarious. We took a picture with one of the actors who we had taken a picture with a few years before when he played Joseph (of the amazing technicolor dreamcoat variety - which E still has not seen, which is a crime.)

AND THEN on the morning of my actual birthday, this girl from work calls and asks me to come in, and I said no. And then I told E and he still had to set some stuff up, so we figured I might as well, and then I got to Victoria's Secret and my FRIENDS were there, and I was like *what a happy coincidence! good to see you!* And the scariest of all the managers said it was all a joke and I didn't have to work and my friends game me an envelope from E with cash and card because he knows I love shopping and my friends so he sent my shopping with my friends and bought us all cafe rio. My only regret is that I had worn my ugliest work clothes, so I just bought something else to wear. WHAT A CATCH. <3 <3 <3

Then we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and I wore my new nail polish, but I think those pictures on on E's phone. And we stayed at the Little America and played Jenga and it was very fancy.

We ate pizza on the floor, reminiscent of our early days at Wymount when we had no furniture. 

And once we drove out the lake and watched a movie on our laptop because we don't own a TV anyway and the lake was a better backdrop than our cinder block walls.

THE BEST was when we went to Disneyland again, with my family. E almost bought that stylish visor, but didn't want anyone mistaking him for an early bro from the 90s.
The first day in Disney we were Buzz and Woody.(Eythan even had a red handkerchief around his neck for a while.)

 
 (I am not very good at this game, but I beat him at Midway Mania every time, which seems a little backwards considering  I was  supposed to be Buzz.)

And the GREATEST THING EVER was finding out that Ashten was there on the same day! But we met up right when our Tower of Terror fastpasses were expiring so we only saw her for like two seconds, and that is the pits.

Doesn't this look like it should be called "photography" instead of just a picture. Disneyland, if you want to use this for a brochure, that's fine with me.

Space mountain family selfies.

Rachel went on Indiana Jones for the first time since she is finally tall enough, and she also went on Tower of Terror, despite mom's protestations. She loves Tower of Terror. And even mom went on it and said it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. (And she bought the bathrobe in the gift shop, so clearly she secretly loved it.)

We got a gumbo bread bowl for dinner - we share a lot of things because we are broke.

I used to exclusively ride a carousel horse named Feather, but she disappeared after the renovations. :( So this time I rode Dasha, who is magnificent, and  chose his horse, whose name is Reginald.

And one day we dressed up as John Smith and Pocahontas. (notice the blue necklace -- it's all in the details.)

 

We went to the Animation Studio six times probably- these are pictures from when we were waiting for it to start and experimenting with taking "lens blur" photos - which didn't REALLY work out. Later, we had some of our drawings rolled up and we went on the tower of terror--and to me it looked like Eythan tossed them up a little bit to see if they would float, but he claims they just flew up on their own--either way they went right out the front of the elevator and were lost in the twilight zone. And when we went to look at our picture, we saw that  vvvvvv which made us crack up, but I was also very sad. (though I have since gotten over it.)

E tried his first dole whip!!!!!! Which he found "refreshing" and "delicious" and we were just in a great mood after that.

'

There's this thing they do at California Adventure called the Mad T Party, and there's a white rabbit DJ and once we saw a band with an undead or possibly just steampunk  Alice and Mad Hatter and this time we saw both Tweedles Dee and Dum as bouncers, which turned out to be a necessary precaution as some kids got busted for underage drinking right next to us.

 

We played with the kiddos in nursery a lot. And we LOVE THEM.

I finally hiked the Y after living in Utah County my entire life. And it was  pretty cool, I guess.

 E is still teaching old people at the senior MTC with his buddies. AND we just bought him some new dress pants because he has to wear them everyday and we're pretty excited about that.

 

We had shawarma with the Eckersleys, which is big in Romania and is in that credits scene on the Avengers. We shared, again, because we're broke.



  I refinished some furniture and maybe ruined the concrete on our balcony and spent a lot on spray paint.



 Plus we got invited to Rachel's Fairy Princess party and my mom is a master decorator/crafter/even planner. She handmade little fairy dolls and there were cupcakes and fruit and toadSTOOLS (toadstool stools if that was too quick for ya.) And I did fairy makeovers with shimmery eye shadow and bright pink lipstick (but I was only wearing neutral pink lipstick and didn't take any pictures of the kids.) Some of the seven year olds were pretty unpleasant and I didn't like them, but most of them were darling.


When were in Lehi one day, we went to the park where we first kissed/got engaged and climbed THE TREE, and there was a basket with sparkling cider and flowers and a necklace in the ring box and apparently it was the anniversary of our engagement and it was then that I learned that E is 1000x more romantic and thoughtful that I am.

 

Then Annemarie, Hannah, and I threw Aimee's bachelorette party. We don't ever remember to take pictures because this is the only one that I have! We had lunch at Zupas and then played games including Jaxson Jeopardy and had mocktails. *clink* Lovely.

Made dinner on a fancy stay-at-home date.

I am getting so bored of writing this. I am a terrible blogger. This is a neat picture from the orem summerfest. #nofilter. #fromthetopoftheferriswheel.

 Also from the top of the ferris wheel. yeehaw

The Stallings family had a reunion for my grandparents' 50th anniversary and I was really excited to take Eythan! We "got wood" from the wood pile, played some games, did some fireworks, and maybe did some things that the younger cousins weren't allowed to witness that led to even better fireworks.....

Eythan seemed to hit it off with the boy cousins (+Mynnette), and they lit off firecrackers in water bottles and stuff like that, and we played Betrayal at House on the Hill, which was a very elaborate, pretty creepy game.

We visited the Great Northern Carousel which is also an ice cream shop, as per tradition. There was also this place called the Staggering (pronounced stay-gering) Ox where they made sandwiches in tin cans and had a lot of hippie art everywhere.

This little girl was riding the carousel too and decided we were bestfriends for ten minutes. It was a little weird, but I liked her.

Then there was the party, and Heather suggested that we decorate the grandparents' car. So we ran (kind of literally) to the dollar store with Mynette, Hyrum and Andrew and managed to put streamers on a wet car and make it look pretty good. Grandma loved it, but Grandpa was not pleased.

So cute. But Grandpa had it washed and cleaned by like 9 AM the next morning.

(Grandma as they were being sent off: "Oh, did you get us a hotel too?") hahahaha

We bought cheap, neat fireworks to bring home to Utah. (legal here, just not available.)

Eythan climbed too high in some trees. I believe he fell out of one as well.

We sort of hiked Mt. Helena.













And got pasties! I believe they're a traditional English food that the miners would pack for lunch, and they're filled with meat and potatoes. Our family always makes them but it was fun to get them from the pasty truck. They tasted pretty much the same and were delicious. (Unfortunately they were out of huckleberry cream dessert ones, so maybe we should try making those.)

E thought it was so funny to take gross pictures of me because I sleep in the car for most of every road trip.

I'm not too vain to put these out there.











Eythan had his first bubble tea and we had some pretty gross Chinese food with the Eckersleys.

And this happened actually before Montana, but it is a freaking pain to move the pictures. We went to Idaho to see E's family and went to Yellowstone. On the way we were delayed by a GIANT HERD OF SHEEP. It was hilarious and it seriously sounded like people were making sheep noises which was super freaky. That was maybe the highlight of the trip, but we also went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone,

Dragon Hot Springs (I think? Maybe Dragon's Mouth Cave or something),

And took a picture by this sign because we were going to Montana like 3 days later.

We did Fourth of July stuff with E's family and someone graffiti-ed with a smoke

ball.

Once we went to a wedding at a legit Provo mansion, that had an entire play village in the backyard.

Aimee and Jaxson finally got married!!

 And the bridesmaids got beautiful corsages. (I was a bridesmaid. FINALLY. Lifelong dream fulfilled. And I will not be told that I was a bridesmatron, ANNEMARIE.)

 Also, my bestfriend came home from her mission!!!!!!! And has moved to Provo, so hopefully we will be seeing plenty of each other once we get into this year's groove.

 We also found some tickets and went to Ancestry.com's company party at Seven Peaks, which is really the only way to go because there's free food and free tubes.

 The boomerang was a terrifying as ever.

 I wish I wasn't so burned out from typing all this so that I could do justice to the Murder Mystery Party we went to. It was fabulous. The Eckersleys invited us because they are our couple friends, and we didn't know anyone else there, so I was kind of nervous. We got these character packets a couple of weeks beforehand so we could learn our roles. I was Vicky Damiano, who was the ex-wife of the guy who got murdered. Eythan was Stefano Hervey, the Italian mob boss from New York. The hosts did a spectacular job with the decorating. There were feather centerpieces, a chalkboard drink menu, legitimate poker table, etc. etc. They had candy cigarettes and very authentic mocktails. (read: they were sometimes pretty gross but tasted like the real thing which made it more exciting). I won't get into the story and whodunnit and all, but I will have you know that Inspector Garland is a no good two-timer, and that my Rebecca did what she had to do. SPECTACULAR. And now I want to host my own murder mystery, so if you're interested......

 Went to the zoo.
Saw the bird show.

And the pachyderm show. (Eythan loves elephants!)

 

They do tricks!
















 Tigers are my favorite animal, obviously. 

 We were only supposed to babysit two, but the whole gang came along and that was fine with us! Good thing we had popsicles, popcorn and teddy grahams on hand.

 We went camping with my fam, and Eythan built  discovered this fairy cottage.

And he picked me some flowers.

Ok now I'm all caught except we also just started school but forgot to take first day pictures :( So bye!