Emily's Wedding: Zoo

Even with our super late night, we had to get up early and clean up the beach house to be out of it by 12pm.  With Alexa in tow, we decided we'd spend our real last day of vacation at the Portland Zoo.  It was wonderful.

I loved watching this goat.  He never moved!

Alexa's portrait of mom and dad on the train ride.

And at the end of the day, it is so nice to be 3 so you can just lay down on the ground.

Burkdoll Wedding

On August 5th, my baby, but grown-up, sister, Hannah, got married.  Her and Matt spent a whole week in town and we had a blast:

Monday night, we had a bridal shower, but somehow managed not to take a single picture.

On Tuesday, we went go-carting,

and played mini-golf

and "drove" race cars

Wednesday night, we threw Hannah a Bachelorette party at my mom's house, because her i.d. was lost the night before

(it was found again the last night she was in town)

Sisters!

Could we look any less alike?

Presents

We were kinda sad about not being able to go out, but we had fun nonetheless!

Thursday night, we had a rehearsal and dinner

Bridesmaids

The soon-to-be Mr. & Mrs.

After the rehearsal the girls all stayed at my house for the night so Hannah and Matt didn't see each other before they took pictures.  Friday morning started early, with the boys playing golf and the girls decorating.  I kept saying how unfair that the boys do fun stuff while the girls work all day, but it worked out, because Hannah was up getting her hair done by the time the boys got back.  Mariah, Hannah's second grade teacher and the official photographer was great at capturing Matt's first look at Hannah!

 SISTERLY LOVE!

The girls!

Not the official one, but we needed some for facebook right away :)

It was such a beautiful ceremony.  I cried as soon as I saw her walking down the aisle, but having to look into Matt's tear filled eyes made it impossible to stop!

The next day, we watched them open all their gifts.  Most people were very considerate of their wishes of no gifts because of having a 20+ hour drive back to Kansas, but they still got some great stuff and it almost all fit into their car.

We're so happy for you two!!

Christmas

This year, our Christmas celebrations began on Christmas Eve. Marcel and I attended church and then headed to my mom's house for our Christmas there. We had delicious appetizers and desserts, which is our normal food when she has us for Christmas Eve. That group of people is getting quite large as just about all of us have spouses/significant others to bring. It was a lovely time together, but we didn't get any pictures.

Marcel and I asked for money for Christmas so we could jump start our cruise fund, but my mom still got us a few presents. I got new slippers, an iTunes gift card and a bathroom scale, which I already love having (especially this morning when it said I've lost a few pounds!). Marcel got a new purple argyle sweater, which he has been dying to have, and blank DVDs. Also, one of the traditions for our stockings is to get lottery tickets and I've never had much luck with them but this year, Marcel and I together won $33, hooray for more cruise money!

We hung out for awhile before heading home for a short night of rest before Christmas. Marcel and I got up at 5:45am, so that we could have our own Christmas before heading to my dad's at 8am. Yes, it was early, but it was so wonderful to have that time together. We continued our tradition of having monkey bread for breakfast and not having stockings. We'll start that one either when I find semi-matching stockings that I like or when we have kids, whichever comes first!



Our tree with presents

Trying on my too small slippers from my mom

Marcel's corn on the cob grilling tool, but the picture is even better because we both wrapped just about all our gifts to each other in either cereal, oatmeal or frozen waffle boxes.  We LOVE breakfast at this house :)

Marcel also decided to seal every edge of every box with masking tape so I had to cut them all open

Marcel got me a new wallet (which I desperately needed and asked for constantly) that I love and new slippers

Marcel and his Harry Potter movie collection (Movies 1-6)
I think it was what he was most excited to receive and now we're about to have a HP marathon

2nd married Christmas!

After presents, we headed to my dad's for our 3rd Christmas of the year.  We enjoyed another delicious breakfast of egg mcmuffins (are they still called that if they aren't from McDonald's?) and spent quite a bit of time opening gifts.  And yet again we were spoiled!  Payton & Presley got each of us new pajama pants, while my dad and Cindy got us a new knife block (the only thing we asked for) and a box full of $1 bills!

New hats from Aunt Dede

Payton & Presley each showing off their new iPods, which they LOVED and used all day long, even before they had music on them, bcause they record videos and play the radio.

A fun gift to receive :)

Emily and Matt were very happy to get a blu-ray player and surround sound system but are now asking to take Marcel home with them so he can get it all set up.

So excited to receive a box full of books (including the whole Harry Potter series)

Again, with the excitement for books.
Hope one day my kids will love reading as much as I did at this age (and these 2 do)

We enjoyed a great ham dinner and then hours and hours of playing Wii Sports Resort & Rock Band 3, where I was finally able to move up to medium level on the guitar/bass! We also watched the Top 40 music videos of 2010 according to VH1.

Overall, we had a GREAT Christmas season.  It always seems to be over so fast, but it is always so much fun!

Visit to Victor

For my birthday, my mom gave me money to take a vacation to visit my sister in Victor, Idaho (very near to Jackson, WY).  That same day we decided the best weekend for both of us would be Halloween weekend.  It was great until I forgot to request the day off from Michael's and ended up having to work Sunday, making us have to leave at 7am.  We still had a GREAT time.

There was snow in the mountains, but thankfully not in Emily's backyard like they had the weekend before

 On Friday, Emily and Matt both had to work so Marcel and I drove to Jackson and did the tourist stuff, which included sitting in this huge bear chair!

We also visited the Grand Teton National Park, but instead of paying admission, we simply chose roads around the pay stations.  We still enjoyed the beautiful park, but didn't see any animals.   

At Granite Canyon Trailhead, the one spot we got out of the car in Grand Teton National Park.  It is here that we learned you need to make extra loud noises to prevent bear attacks during mating season, but the sign didn't tell you when mating season was.

Marcel LOVES beenies that keep his ears covered, but we did leave this one at the store

 Emily and Matt live on a golf course, since Matt is the superintendent of it.  He does all the landscaping and other outside stuff to help the golf course run.  After Marcel and I got back from Jackson, we decided to play a few holes.  We are far from professionals, but had a lot of fun.  By the 3rd (and last) hole we played, I almost got the hang of it.

Marcel even accomplished one of his lifelong dreams: to drive a range picker.  Granted we weren't shagging the balls off the driving range, but driving is driving.  This is what we used as our golf cart because the golf carts were all parked behind the mowers, and it was simply too cold for golf that required walking!

After a great partial round of golf
(this is the view out their back door!)

We got up early Saturday morning to head to Yellowstone, but our first stop was Mesa Falls, which Emily had yet to see too.  It was 114 feet high and 200 feet wide.  It was here that we discovered it is always a good idea to carry toilet paper in your car because you can't depend on the public restrooms at nature scenes to be stocked!

I think there are better pictures of us at the falls, but this one is my favorite because you can see Emily & Matt taking their picture at the other outlook.

Don't tell, but we actually took this picture on our way out of the park ;)

Elk...we followed directions and didn't get out of our car to take a picture and to not add to the near accident behind us, Marcel used the side mirror to get this picture.  The only other animal we saw was bison/buffalo.

 The best part about Old Faithful was that we got there about 30 minutes before the next eruption.  It was cool and now we can both say we've been there, but I would have been very disappointed if I had to wait the 90+ minutes between eruptions.  We also watched a very cool video about the eruptions, that Emily would be more than happy to explain!

We crossed the contintent many times.  After I looked at the map I undertstood why.  Who got to decide to make the divide a very crooked line?

We got out of the car at Yellowstone Lake, which was gorgeous.  Marcel and I even put our fingers in the water, which was freezing, who would have thought, right?  It is also where we took this awesome picture.  Good thing for self-timing cameras, because no one else stopped at the lake.

The whole drive through Yellowstone, Marcel was pointing out the scat and after the lake decided that he needed a picture with it.  He actually got 3, but this is the only one I'm posting because I don't like the one where he's pretending to lick/eat it.  I will say that he was very disappointed that the one we found for our picture wasn't ripe.  In fact it was very frozen.  Being the photographer, I, however, was very grateful for its condition.

Look at MaryBeth be artistic!

 After Yellowstone, we headed back to Jackson, to get a souvenir.  We didn't get them our first time through because we were hoping for some from Yellowstone, but their store was super lame.  Plus, Emily said we had to get a picture under this arch.  We were kinda bummed that even though the Christmas lights were already wrapped around the entire thing, they hadn't been turned on yet.

We also enjoyed seeing a deer on our drive to their house, watching some cable shows, playing Wii and helping Emily get her Pro status back at bowling, watching a scary/suspenseful movie, grocery shopping, touring Victor & Driggs (both tours took about 5 minutes!), listening to the sound checks of 2 bands putting on a concert at the restaurant we ate dinne at, and plain ol' time to catch up, none of which was caught on camera.