cop out...

uh, yeah, i'm copping out on you guys once again.  at some point in time, i will finish telling you (yes, all five of you) about our honeymoon trip.  promise!

tonight i'll actually be on the road, heading up to a Kansas State University IIDA meeting!  whoop whoop!  i love visiting my alma mater!  the fact that i'll be eating at So Long's doesn't have anything to do with how happy i am about a Manhattan visit....no....nothing at all....

so i'm writing this post a little early and scheduling it to post later.  that's the first time i've ever done that!  wow, the things you learn on the internet.

anyway, i realized this morning that i hadn't shown off my wedding pictures on my blog.  yes, i did plaster them all over facebook, but that's probably only for a while.  i want to go through, pick my favorites and whittle it down to one album.  that's only 200 pictures, so i guess i better pick my favorites of my favorites!  so many to choose from!

here's the link to the blog post from my awesomely talented wedding photographer, Jackie Cooper, of jackiecooperphoto!

I WAS FEATURED!

well, maybe featured isn't quite the word...but one of my DIY projects for our wedding made it on DIY feature page for my absolute FAVORITE wedding website, WEDDINGBEE.COM!

actually, i've been on there before, for the penguin toppers i made that i've already showed you, but yesterday our guest book (that doubled as our Quaker wedding certificate) was featured as well and this time i got a badge for it!

over there
--------------->
is the badge

you can see the certificate here and the penguins here.

what is a Quaker wedding certificate, you ask?  well, it's been made pretty popular as a version of a guest book in the past few years, but it goes back to when Quaker's were able to get married at any time that they want.  basically, when a couple felt that they were ready to marry, they would stand up during a meeting (basically, it's a church service) and state their intention to marry.  the meeting of Friends, would then assign a clearness committee to meet with the couple and make sure that they were ready for marriage.  then, after the clearness committee had decided that the couple was ready, they would recommend at the monthly meeting that the wedding be taken "under their care" and assign a different group of people to ensure that the couple had everything they needed for their wedding, which included making the wedding certificate.  essentially, Quakers are allowed to marry themselves, as traditionally, they had non-led meetings (in other words, they had no preacher) and the certificate was to bind the relationship together by everyone who had witnessed the ceremony.  in fact, many Quaker churches don't require that you register your marriage with the government and many governments will still accept the Quaker certificate as adequate proof of your marriage.

anyway, i thought the tradition was pretty cool, i took my own spin on it and actually just designed the thing in adobe indesign and printed it on our large format printer at work (shhhh....don't tell on me....)

i love the way it turned out, but i do wish i had had time to paint one.  i'm hoping i can modge podge it onto a canvas and paint over the printed words.  but, we'll see, i love it the way it is and just can't make up my mind!  my favorite part was that kyle's uncle already knew what it was!  (he married us and is a Quaker preacher, in a much more contemporary Evangelical Friends church in Oklahoma City.)  he said that he and his wife have one as well.  i love that everyone that attended the wedding got to sign our certificate, in a sense, especially since in Kansas the couple doesn't sign their own wedding certificate.  just two witnesses (thanks, erin and eric!!) and the preacher sign it.  we think it's so weird that you don't sign it yourselves...but, whatever, that's Kansas for 'ya.

oops?

i actually had intended on blogging last night.  i really, really had.  buuuuuut, kyle has been overseas for the entire week and i haven't been sleeping well.  i never do when he's gone.  anyway, i chatted with him right after work for a while, turned on the tv....

....and woke up at 1 am.

so i guess my excuse is i physically could NOT have posted last night.  oh well, i'm sure you were all sitting on the edge of your seat to hear about the next day on our honeymoon...right....

in other news, i picked up kyle from the airport today and life will be able to return to normal as soon as he adjust to our time zone again.

here's to hoping i can continue blogging tomorrow!  :)

taking another break

from posting about the honeymoon that is.

to show off some of my favorite photobooth pictures!  yay!  

{warning, picture heavy post ahead!}

{ps - all pictures taken by jackie cage, our second shooter to our wedding photographer, jackie cooper!  i think anyway...i guess i should ask one of the jackie's if cage was the only photobooth shooter.  either way, she's the only one that took pictures of me in the photobooth!}

i loved all of the pictures with the kids in them!  they are just SO creative!  these are my cousin amy's two little girls...precious!

awww, my bridesmaid kara and her beau (and my coworker) daniel.  my favorite part is the flowers in daniel's mouth.  daniel, i just noticed you rocked the argyle socks!  sweeeeeeet!

my new brother-in-law and sister-in-law!  i think they may have won most props per person in this one!  those glasses are awesome, i hope they survived, keeping those for possible halloween costumes in the future!

 i love this one for a few reasons...micah hates weddings, but he came to mine!  i feel so special!  also, these two have to be some of the most photogenic people i've ever met.  now, i don't usually pour over tons and tons of wedding photos (let's hope that only happens once in my life time....it's a bit overwhelming) but i have a feel that erin's photog skills give her great intuition in front of the camera, too, because she rocked the photos, there isn't a single bad one of her!

but, this photos also just cracks me up.  the glove is a little creepy, micah.

OH.MY.GOD.  how can this photo NOT make it!  these two are related to kyle and have to be some of the cutest kids in the world.  sophie caught the bouquet and andrew rocked the dance floor ALL NIGHT.  what  trooper!  those mustaches are a trip on them.  love it!

 who has four thumbs and is an awesome newlywed couple.  THESE GUYS!  the avila-william's family!

 keeping with the newlywed theme we've got going here, kyle's groomsman, ryan, got married two weeks after us!  (in a DROP DEAD GORGEOUS wedding, don't worry, pictures coming soon, in the honeymoon posts!  oh, and did i mention, their engagement photos are on a really popular wedding blog?  yeah, they are that awesome.)  these two are hilarious and absolutely perfect for each other.

 i suppose i can't pick photos of the best man and one groomsman without putting up one of the other groomsman, luke.  oh wait, this is one of the most appropriate ones.  okay, that's a lie, but this is the funniest one!  

don't worry, they weren't the only ones who made my vintage ladies gloves into something dirty...

 HAHAHA!  the look on sarah's face (on the left) is freaking hilarious.  so serious!  and michael looks a little worried there...probably because we all want him to propose already so we can have another awesome wedding to go to next year...hmmm....

 eva showing of her muscles while her husband (yet another set of newlyweds....we all jumped in at once, i guess!) shows off his miller lite.

 my brother, chris, and his adorable girlfriend amanda.  they have some hilarious ones, but this one is the ONLY picture i have of him on my wedding day where he is smiling.  and it's cute.

 more kiddo pictures!  ummm...i taught this little one how to swim...when she was 2.  i'm getting old.

 i'm not sure kevin was quite ready for the photo, but how adorable is his wife, sarah!?!  get it grrrrrrrll!  and yes, another set of newlyweds.

 you would be correct in assuming that three of these four guys are related.  they are the brother's dunn!  michael is admitting he's the only non-dunn, i think.

 who doesn't love pretty girls in dresses with mustaches?!?

one of the better group shots of the entire wedding party.  if only jackie had told poor mike he wasn't in the shot.  :(

and last, but not least, i LOVE that the band got in on the photobooth action!  just shows what a fun group they are!

honeymoon road trip: day 2

after a really horrible first night experience at the first hotel (there was dog hair on the sheets, i mean, come on, gross), we woke up bright and early to head to The Flea at the Downs.  what?  most newlyweds don't go to a huge flea market on their honeymoon?  well, they are missing out!

this is actually from AFTER we spent half the day there, but still.  you can kind of see the "mothership" (as they call it, it's really just a large outdoor tent) in the background.  honestly, The Flea wasn't as large as i thought it would be, but we still found some pretty good deals there.  i'll have to take pictures of them and post them sometime.  i think my favorite find there was a group of three small apothecary bottles for nine bucks!  we saw some in trinidad the day before for $20/each, so we thought we got one heck of a deal on those.  kyle also scored two antique cameras for $5.  we have no idea what they are worth, but they look pretty cool on top of the piano.

here's a better picture of the mothership.  The Flea at the Downs is called that because it's at an old horse track.  the downs looked pretty cool, i wish that we could have gone inside, but the entire flea was outside.  :(

after the flea we headed to lunch at a restaurant near our hotel that was recommended from the hotel.  remember how we didn't love the hotel?  yeah, we didn't love the restaurant either.  after that, we headed down to the downtown square, where we found this really cool old church.  (randomly, i put these pictures on facebook, and my friend cody that i worked with in college graduated in this church!  how cool is that?  way better than century II.)

the our lady of guadeloupe is on the town square and is really gorgeous.  unfortunately, i couldn't use my flash and the pictures really don't do it justice.

here is the center of the town square.  there was a large christian youth group singing conference or something like that.  there was lots of dancing, singing and little kids running around.  kyle and i both have this thing for old towns (and architecture, furniture and basically anything that is old) but we have added "must have a town square" to any city that we live near.  we love them.

and the last one i wanted to share is a picture walking from the square, looking up towards our lady of guadeloupe.  the rest of the day was spent at the square and we made a trader joe's run (one of many...).


up next: day 3!

nerd alert!

i'm too busy watching the election results to continue my honeymoon post from yesterday...yes, i know, i'm a giant nerd.  so, to entertain you this evening, here's a list of five super nerdy things you may or may not know about me.

1.  i love lists - HAH!  if you read my blog ever, you know this.  i'm constantly making lists.  i make lists of lists i need to make!  some call it organized...it would probably be organized if i actually attempted to DO the things on the list.  although, to be honest, whenever i check a thing off my to-do lists i get a little giddy.

2.  i love to read - anything and everything.  i'll read a book that got the worst reviews in history, just because it's a book.  i always had my head in a book when i was younger.  i think it used to annoy my parents, but hey, at least i was reading and not doing drugs, right?  that's gotta be saying something.  the sad thing is i don't feel like i get to read as much as i used to.  i've been reading barack obama's book dreams of my father for almost 6 months now.  granted, i was planning a wedding and going on my honeymoon and other things, but it's small enough i should have finished it in less than a week.  great book, by the way, i love the writing style.  and he lived in indonesia, which is awesome.

3.  harry potter - yup, i'm obsessed.  that's probably enough said, you guys know who harry potter is, just admit he's awesome.

4.  i'm slightly ocd - this probably ties in a little with #1, huh?  a few examples: i sort my skittles and other colored candies by color and i eat them in ROY G BIV order, table confetti (you know, the stuff people put out at weddings and parties and stuff?) yeah, i pick it all up and stack in with like words/pictures and line it up in front of my chair, i sort anything and everything in some sort of order, alphabetical, numerical or by color, and i count all the time (i just found out this is weird...kyle says it is anyway) i count things like how many steps it takes me to get from one place to another or how many stairs i just walked up.  that's all i can think of right now, but i'm sure there is more.

5.  politics - this isn't really nerdy, a lot of people are into politics, but i'm really into researching and getting into the issues.  i hate when people just vote by party, so i look into the voting records and personal beliefs of each and every candidate before vote.

i'm sure there is more, but i'll save that all for another post!

and because no post is fun without a picture...

PHOTOBOOTH!!  my mom sewed the curtains!

NaBloPoMo

in an effort to get myself to blog some more (really?  the last time i wrote anything was two days after my wedding...which was only, you know, over a month ago.  blogger fail.) i'm going to attempt to participate in NaBloPoMo.  i'm going to assume everyone knows what that means, but just in case, it's National Blog Posting Month and i will attempt to post a blog each and every day of november!  get ready for a fun ride!

to start things off, i thought i'd share a couple of my favorite shots from our honeymoon.  oh, i didn't tell you i went on a honeymoon?  whoops.  well, i know you'd rather see the pictures, so here's a few from our Great American Road Trip Honeymoon, day one (walsh, colorado to sante fe, nm):

we waited a week to leave for our honeymoon, so we left wichita the friday after our wedding right after work.  actually, kyle made me leave work at 3 to meet him at the rental car place, but that's a whole other story.  we drove from wichita to walsh, co to stay with his maternal grandparents.  the next morning we woke up bright and early to visit his paternal grandparents.  we wanted to visit his grandmother in the nursing home.  she recently suffered from multiple stokes and she and his grandfather were unable to make it to the wedding.  after we visited with her and tracked down his grandfather and chatted for a while, we headed out on our trip!

 we stopped in trinidad, co for lunch.  trinidad is near kyle's grandparents cabin where we stayed on our engagement trip.  i love the town, it is so quaint and nestled into the mountains.  our usual lunch place was closed for the day, so we tried a new brick oven pizza place.  yum!

this bird cage statue is new.  and huge!

 trinidad is a large coal mining town and the last time we were in town this coal miner's monument was under construction, so i was glad it was finally done so we could see what it looked like.

a coworker of mine gave me this vinyl sign to put on the car when we left the wedding.  since we didn't do a grand exit (we were going to take the trolley, but the last one left right before we made it out of the museum) so i decided we'd use it for the honeymoon!  this also showcases our pimp gold elantra that we rented.  i make fun, but it was actually a pretty good little car and we didn't have to drive one of ours!

 kyle's uncle, who was also recently wed and spent some time after his wedding in the area, told us to take the scenic route from trinidad to santa fe.  we are SO glad we did.  it added about 1.5 hours to the drive, but it was gorgeous.  we weaved in and out of mountains and national parks and then through taos.  taos was gorgeous.  i think i'd rather go skiing there than colorado!

i have a ton of pictures from that drive, but i won't bore you with them, they are similar to the picture of the mountains above this one.  this lake is the last one i'll show.  we wanted to stop, but weren't sure how much longer it would take us to get to santa fe and we were getting a little hungry.  (us?  hungry?  NEVER.)

that was the gist of the first day of travel.  good thing for me, i can probably take up at least 10 days with just honeymoon pictures!  10 day trip, 10 days of blogging about it?  probably.