Cowboys and Abandonment

That's right, folks, Kyler has abandoned me. He has left me husband-less and car-less... for a few more days at least. He's visiting his family in Canada for Canada Day, and I couldn't be more jealous. Plus, I miss him terribly. It means I have free time, though, so I can blog? So could Kyler: he has a ton of extra time, but he's just chilling with it. Convincing that boy to blog is a very difficult task indeed.

June has felt crazy. It kind of needs to slow down a little bit, so I can breath.In the last post, I talked about moving and Liz's wedding. The next week I got dreadfully sick (couldn't keep a meal down for four days kind of sick), but just in the nick of time, got better (or, well enough) to head up to Idaho for a quick family reunion. It rained... in Idaho... in June... while we were in a tent... but we survived on the whole. And we got to go horseback riding! One of my cousins (okay, my dad's cousin's kid) brought his horses and let us go! Fun.Leading the horse to be saddled. Later, I brushed and helped put the saddle on and everything! Yay.


Kyler on the horse, Sammy. He nearly fell off when Sammy decided to take a little jump over a log than just walk over it. Kyler survived, though, so it's all in good fun.


Here I am, on Cindy. My cousin called her his "bomb-proof horse," meaning she doesn't get spooked very easily. I call her his lawn-mower horse, because the entire time we were riding, she was trying to eat and had food in her mouth!


Kyler and Loradona thought the Converse in the stirrups was cool looking, and who am I to argue with that?


On the way back into camp. Left to right is me, Nicole, Daiquiri, and Jason, our fearless leader. (The horses are Cindy, Sammy, Leia, and Danny).

There was also karaoke, in which Loradona and I embraced our classic karaoke attitude: if we're going to make fools of ourselves, let's do a dang good job. The dancing and singing combo was popular with the fam, though sadly neither my husband or my mother managed to get a picture of the dancing.


Kyler playing the ukelele. I think most people are willing to claim him as part of the family now.

Now that Kyler is gone, time has slowed down... but now I don't want it to! At least he'll be home in time for my holiday and day off, even if he doesn't really celebrate it too much.

Oh, and... I signed up for the GRE. I need to study. Why did I decide to take it?

Weddings in the rain

And here we are, hoping to bring this blog a little more into the present by talking about the day we had yesterday... not much more present than that, right?

Kyler and I left our apartment by 8 AM, because we didn't want to repeat the mistake Kyler made last time he wanted to go to a wedding in Manti: they missed the turn, ended up getting there late and missing the sealing. As a result, we got to Manti about an hour early, and got to take a few pictures around the temple and get eaten alive by mosquitoes... at least 7 bites on my legs, fun.The sealing was good. Kyler and I realized that, because of his last ill-fated Manti trip, neither of us had ever been to a sealing other than our own. It was a different experience. I think I might remember more of this one than my own. Funny how that works. After the sealing, we waited forever for the bride and groom to come out. Apparently the slow one was Jake's dad? The father of the groom is always slow, I guess.Finally, they came out. Jake hit one of this groomsman with the door. That's what groomsman are for, right?


Of course, they had to kiss for the pictures. They had to do it multiple times, too, because they didn't do it for nearly long enough. Silly Liz and Jake. Kiss longer!


We got a few pictures taken by the temple but then the clouds that had threatened for a while in the distance came to fruition. The wind was something else... all of the bridesmaids had a Marilyn moment, and Liz was convinced the veil was going to fly away.

Next was driving up to Provo and eating lovely pizza. Then, after I helped Liz back into her dress and worked on fixing her hair with another bridesmaid, we drove up to the reception center. I was put in charge of the rings, and decided for myself that Kyler and I would try and keep the happy couple hydrated, fed, happy... I went and got them chairs to sit on at one point while the line was slow. Jake commented, "It's like you've done the getting-married thing before." Yeah, that's what I was there for. That, and because there are a lot of people I hadn't seen for a while, and I love seeing friends again.
Jaehee, Liz, and me at the reception.


Liz and I. Doesn't she look pretty and happy?
Note the dark clouds on the horizon. Spoiler alert: these will come into the story again later.

Right after Liz and Jake left the reception, it started to pour. Thunder, lightning, the whole works. The reception center had windows along the wall, so we got a good view of... the complete lack a view. We couldn't see anything except dark, scary clouds and bright flashes of light really close to us. I was convinced we were going to be struck, electrocute ourselves, and die.

Eventually, we left and made it back to our apartment a little before 11 PM. What a day. But so worth it. I got to see my best friend married to a great guy, finally meet all her brothers and friends from Ohio I've been hearing about forever, and think about that great day that this wonderful manmarried me for time and all eternity. All in all, a good day.

Excuses, excuses...

It's been a while since I updated on here, I suppose, hasn't it? We have several excuses ready... first, we moved. And, yes, we are still unpacking. Second, Kyler's laptop power cord died, so I couldn't use his computer while he played Warcraft--my most common blogging time. Third, um, we had a wedding to attend yesterday. However, Kyler got a new laptop power cord in the mail yesterday, so the laptop is officially usable. Yay!

So, we moved. On Monday, June 1st, we picked up our key. We entered our apartment, and per my mother's request, took a few pictures of it completely empty.Kyler's really excited to be standing in our kitchen... it has a dishwasher and a stove that actually distinguishes between low, medium, and high!


Doesn't he look dapper, standing in the completely empty bedroom closet?


Not the most flattering picture, but we actually have cupboards in the bathroom! It's amazing!

Then on Thursday, we packed up all of our belongings into a truck, with the help of a few guys in our ward, cleaned our apartment with the help of a nice girl I've known for about three years, drove up to SLC, and unloaded the truck with the help of some new neighbors, including a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old. We had them carry very light things.
One of the beauties of moving: our apartment, so clean and empty just a few pictures ago, became a disaster area. This disaster area has gotten better a little at a time, so, finally, a week and a half later, we can feel like we have a real apartment. Another beauty of moving: we found my sister's keys. She lost them while she was here for graduation, and we couldn't find them no matter where we looked. When we were moving the couch, we heard and saw jangling: her keys were in the couch, down so deep they were right above the netting at the bottom. We don't quite know how they got there, but Loradona's excited to be able to get them back.
Technically, it's not 100% done, but it's a big improvement, isn't it?

Wow, there's a lot of pictures here. This is going to be a really long post. How about we continue with wedding pictures at another time?