Random Summer Happenings

So I am one of those people who LOVES year-round school. I also blab about how great it is, to anyone who asks. It is one of my favorite things about my job.

Except in July. July is the part where everyone else is halfway through their summer and halfway through their tan, and I am just starting my summer while also about to end my summer. In my school, teachers get 2 weeks off, then go back to school to set up our classrooms and sit in meetings. Kids come back after the third week.

(Secretly I still kind of like this, because I don't feel like I need a huge long summer if it means fewer breaks throughout the year. But I like it in kind of a hateful way. Like I like it, but I hate it. It's a love-hate kind of a feeling.)

Anywho, here are some random pictures of things I squeezed into my summer:

1. Shimp family reunion! We stayed at the Westgate Hotel in Park City, which was really fun in and of itself, and also put us close to Olympic Park. Our first room was about the size of my living room. (I'm not kidding.) There was one pull-out couch bed, one king-size bed in a private part of the room behind some pocket doors, and a shower that we couldn't figure out how to operate.

Being in such close quarters for 10 minutes made everyone go a litttttle bit crazy. Brandon trapped Logan in the sauna shower. Logan started screaming that he couldn't breathe. Stephen mooned his brothers. Michael commented that at least the view wasn't bad and we all got confused because the window looked out on some cement stairs. Mama Shimp sent us out to the car to bring everything in, and texted us to not forget the  marshmallow sticks so we could roast marshmallows.

When we had cleared out the car and brought everything into the eensy-weensy room, the Shimp parents went downstairs to get a different room and Stephen and I took the kids to the pool. We came back just in time to help move everything to the other room, which was on another floor and in another section of the hotel. This room was awesome!! It had some quirks, but at least we were all able to recover our sanity in here.

The main quirk was the bathroom. It was a huge bathroom, with a double vanity, sauna shower, jacuzzi tub, and obviously a toilet.....and a window looking in on the bathroom from the master suite. When I say window, I don't mean a dinky little thing with frosted glass. I'm talking about a 5'x5' hole in the wall that you could climb through and you'd wind up in the tub. From window to wall, the bathroom was set up like this: tub, shower, toilet. So the toilet tried to hide, but when you took a seat, you'd be staring into the mirror over the double vanity. And whatever that mirror showed also conveniently reflected off the mirror next to the tub, so no one got too much privacy during this trip.

*Pictures soon to come of this anomaly of a bathroom.*

One time, someone - who will remain anonymous - fearlessly tried to take a dump in these conditions. Then some cousins came to visit.

"Wow, it's really nice in here!" they said.
"Look at all this space!" they exclaimed.
"You guys got a cool room!" they said.
"Oh yeah, except the bathroom has a window in it," Logan said. "You guys have got to see this." And he led them back to the bathroom.

Locked. So he led them into the master bedroom to show them the window.

"What??" they said.
"Why would anyone put this here?" they wondered.
"Oh, hi Stephen," they said. And continued to stand there marveling at the bathroom with a window in it.

While we were there, we roasted marshmallows, swam, played ping-pong, went to Olympic Park, had a baby shower for Stephen's aunt who is our age, and went to lots of things for Stephen's cousin's wedding.

We went on the drop tower at Olympic Park in Park City!

My other favorite part about staying in this room was the sleeping arrangement. Stephanie and Craig got back from a different vacation just in time to spend a night in the hotel, and Natalie got back from a student council retreat on the same night, which meant that 3 more people had to fit in. It was quite an adventure trying to find spots for everyone! 

In the end, the parents and Natalie slept in the bed, Stephanie and Craig slept on the worst couch-bed I have ever felt, Stephen and I slept on our sides squished on the couch, and Logan and Michael made beds out of pillows and blankets and slept on the floor. Brandon started out on the padded bench at the kitchen table, but that got old after about 5 minutes, so he came in and started gathering up bits and pieces of Logan and Michael's beds to make one for himself. Obviously that didn't go down too well. At first, Stephen and I didn't have a pillow, and Logan was highly frustrated when Stephen tried to take one of his five, but eventually it all worked out. 

Until someone farted and Logan almost had a meltdown, but then things got quiet again!

Until Brandon started to feel like "dude I'm seriously either about to throw up or poop for like 5 minutes straight dude, I'm not even kidding," and Logan just about lost his Shimp telling him to be quiet.

Okay and then things were pretty much quiet until poor Brandon got uncomfortable again.....and you guys, I don't even know what happened, I'm pretty sure he just ended up sleeping on the floor with no blankets or pillows or anything. 

Through all of this, I could not stop laughing! And Stephen didn't help because I was trying to be considerate by laughing silently into his shoulder (which was jammed in my face anyway because remember we were both trying to sleep on a skinny little couch), but every time I started to calm down, he would start shaking like he was laughing, just to get me to laugh again. It just reminded me so much of that scene in Snow White, where all the dwarves give her their beds, and then they have to find a place to sleep, so they all go in cupboards and tea cups and fireplaces. 

#2. Jackie's wedding. Stephen's cousin Jackie got married at the end of the Shimp family reunion, so a lot of our activities revolved around that. She and Aaron got married in the Bountiful temple, which I had never been to before, but it was beautiful! 

The wedding reception was a lot of fun. It was at my new favorite venue, the Bungalow. The food was good, Jackie's parents danced the legit tango, there was a photo booth, and I had the cutest dance partner in the whole place. 

We love the Bruners!

It is really hard to get a good picture of a photo booth picture.

I guess the only person who didn't have fun was Logitos, when he didn't catch the garter and he had to get under some coattails. 

#3. Studying. Most of our summer was consumed with studying. Stephen was preparing for the DAT, which he's actually not going to take until next spring / summer, and I was preparing for the Praxis, which I didn't think I needed to study for originally but then I got freaked out when I read some stuff online about it the week before my test. So some of our days looked like this:

PS I just got my scores back and I passed :)

#4. Lagoon. Remember when I won something with 97.1 ZHT, and I got to jump in a big....pen kind of thing full of lucky charms with 20 other people, and somebody won Taylor Swift tickets and everyone else won something a little less cool but still cool? Well I won Lagoon tickets that day! Stephen and I went with Natalie and Brandon, and it was so much fun. 

#5. Stephen's birthday! I already blogged about the most interesting part of that, but I also want to share a few pictures here.

In our house, errbody gets to wear a crown on their birthday, even the boys. 

I made him this delicious (kinda yellow) breakfast and was very proud of myself.

Remember the candles I got that were a 2 and a 6? I tried to redeem myself here. 

This "cake" was amazing! It was basically a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake. You can find the recipe here.

#6. We erm......broke our scale.

I literally don't even know how this happened. I just walked in to find it like this. Stephen said he just nudged it and it shattered into a million pieces.....but I mean why?!

#7. Mob. We love Moab because, well, because it is Moab, and also because it was where we took our first mini-vacation together! This time, we went with Stephen's family. We found a cool little lake that I'm assuming was man-made, rented some paddle-boards, hiked to the Delicate Arch, and did a few other mini-hikes.

We were unaffected by the Dad-Bod trend, thankfully. 

#8. Lady A and Hunter Hayes!!! (And Sam Smith but no one really cared about him. #rude? Maybe, sorry.) Caitlin won tickets to all the shows this summer, and even though Stephen meanly rejected her Toby Keith tickets, since he hates country, she was still nice enough to take me to Lady Antebellum. We fangirled it up and I'm now even more obsessed with Hunter Hayes than I was when Stephen picked his song for our first dance.

Um, we were pretty excited.

Sorry that my phone camera is not the best TERRIBLE, but that is Lady A. I thought they were in love, but actually, the girl is just in love with the drummer in the band. And the boy lead singer who is tall and way better-looking than his poor brother that let him live in his basement years ago and came onstage to sing because he LIVES IN UTAH so why not, is actually married to someone else who had fertility struggles but is now pregnant. (Where would we be without Google, amiright.)

And there's Hunter Hayes! Stephen said that if he pulled me onstage and kissed me that would be cheating. So I guess that will never happen. 

Lady A came out into the audience! They were right at the end of our row and it was so great.

#9. Babay shower! So many baby showers. So many, guys. I guess it's just the phase of life I'm in. I love it because baby clothes are fun to buy, especially baby shoes. Ahhhh I die every time!! Anyway, the only one I got a picture at was Christine's.

#10. Back to school!

Here was my first day of school bulletin board! I'm still doing a circus-themed classroom, as you can tell.

And now I'm in Week #2 of my first 3-week break of the school year. We just got back from galavanting around the West coast, and I'm working on those blogs now too. Howwwww was everyone else's summer!?

Bangin' Balloons

There are these ladies who I love, called the Dating Divas. They have this huge (slightly overwhelming) website with oh, I dunno....LITERALLY A BILLION ideas of ways you can be nice to your husband! They have all these creative date nights, cute notes, scavenger hunts, printables, calendars, game nights, etc, for any occasion. Their website is like the Google mecca of dating your husband. 

So when I'm in a bind, I like to pop over there and brainstorm ideas for how to spoil Stephen. This time, I found an idea called "Night of Surprises." Basically, you plan different activities to do at specific times of the day, label a balloon with each time, and then put the activity on a piece of paper in that balloon. When your husband pops the balloon, they'll know what you have planned for right then. 

I started with that idea, but when I was almost done blowing up the balloons, I had a little spark of creativity: why not put something in this balloon?

It was the 8:45 balloon. The balloon that was supposed to come after rock-climbing, and after dinner, and after dessert. Mhmm. That balloon. 

Luckily, if your fancypants underwear is really more skimpy than fancy, you can easily roll it up and stick it in the balloon. And actually you can easily roll up and stick in three, if you want to give your husband options and you don't mind the balloon being a little heavier. 

I was feeling very smug about my creativity at this point as I secured the 8:45 sign on the balloon. 

And then I realized, I could make this surprise even awesomer! I could take the balloon with us to the restaurant. Give it to a waiter. And tell them to bring it out to our table at 8:45. Stephen would be all, Oh another balloon! I've popped 4 of these already. Just a little piece of paper is going to fly out and that's it. 

He would never even suspect! The waiter would never even suspect! And then, amidst a flurry of stretchy balloon plastic and lace, I would capture everyone's hilarious reactions on my little crappy phone camera, and I would have a delightful memory to entertain me for birthdays to come. 

I left Stephen a note on the morning on August 3rd. "Don't pop all the balloons while I'm gone!" I said. 

I'm doing such a great job building the suspense, I thought. 

"They're all for tonight," I added, out loud. "So just wait until I get home, okay?"

"Okay!" said the Birthday Boy. 

Then I got home from school. After thinking about my surprise all day, I was so excited to just put my plan into action. The time had come! I went to gather up all the balloons....and there, on the table, sat a poked balloon with an 8:45 time card. It's contents were littered around it. 

"Yeahhh sorry," Stephen said, looking at me nervously. "I thought it was AM. I was just really excited....so I popped it, and then I saw what was in it and I realized I wasn't supposed to do that!"

I picked up a piece of the balloon and looked at it in dismay.

"But you can fix it, right?" Stephen asked. "Can you just put it in a different balloon?"

"Babe," I said very calmly. "You just ruined your birthday." 

He laughed and gave me a hug and said he was sorry and promised to forget all about it, and asked if I could just put it in a new balloon. 

So I thought, Okay, the surprise isn't toooootally ruined. Maybe he'll forget which balloon it was, and when we're at the restaurant, he'll still be surprised. The waiter will still be funny to watch. This could still work....

I put together a new balloon, again stuffing it with the paper and all my pretty unmentionables. But somehow this balloon had three tiny holes in the top, so air was slowly eeping out. I had already put everything in it, so I just taped it together, ugly, and hoped that the waiter wouldn't be a total dunce and drop the balloon in the deep fryer or anything. 

It would be funny if Stephen popped it and everything flew out onto the table. But how freaking embarrassing would it be if someone popped my balloon on accident in the kitchen, before they were supposed to bring it out at 8:45, and then a group of 8 waiters stood there saying stupid stuff like "Ohhhh, shooooot, duuuuude, we need to get another balloon! What did you do??" I could totally picture this happening, actually. 

But I comforted myself with the thought that if that happened, they would definitely need to give us a free meal, and it would still make for a funny story. 

THEN. (Oh no! It's not over yet!)

We went over to Stephanie and Craig's house to help them out in their basement. "This will mayyyybe take an hour," Stephen said. "And then we can go hike Stewart Falls! And then go to Applebee's." 

*Stewart Falls was not in the plan, but since it was Stephen's birthday, we obviously were going to do whatever he wanted - planned or not. 

Anyway, we ended up staying there until 9pm (after 4 hours had gone by), and not going to Stewart Falls, and not going to Applebee's. Stephen, as it turns out, loves doing handyman stuff when it's not his house and he doesn't need to pay for it or meet any deadlines. He has actually really been enjoying his time in S&C's kitchen. Obviously. Since that's where he chose to spend his birthday. 

We got in the car at about 9 and went to In'N'Out. 

"Can we do the balloons tomorrow?" Stephen asked. "I really am excited about them, is that okay?"

Um, of course it was. Birthday Boys get to make all the rules. 

We invited the fam over for some birthday dessert. And while we sat around saying what we loved about Stephen, his brothers Michael and Logan found the balloons.

And started batting them around. 

And beating each other with them. 

"Hey," Logan observed. "This one's heavier. See look, it falls so much faster." *Drops it* "What's wrong with this balloon?"

And so it went, for 45 minutes. 

"Please don't pop," I thought over and over. "They probably won't," I convinced myself. "It'll be fine." 

"Hey!" Stephen yelled all of a sudden, when he realized what was happening. "There's sex stuff in those balloons!" 

And that's how everyone started laughing and passing the balloon around, and how I died. 

The end. 

Don't ever try to do anything for your husband's birthday. 

Dinnertime Humor

My Facebook exploded this weekend, I don't know about yours.

In discussing this over family dinner on Sunday, I decided to share my favorite status that I read, posted by my cousin. I pulled it up on my phone and read it aloud:

"The American people have been served a great justice this week and we are a stronger people for it. My heart is full and I will proudly tell my children and their children how I lived in a time where wrongs were righted and brave people stood on the right side of history. In short, thank you, Disney, for banning selfie sticks."

I looked up, excited to see everyone's reactions. Logan and Michael had stopped paying attention by the second sentence. Brandon too. Natalie was still waking up. Stephanie and Craig chuckled. Stephen's parents blinked at me.

"Isn't that funny?" I prompted.

"They don't get it," Stephen said. He shook his head. "Read it again."

I did. This time Natalie gave a little laugh.

"So do you get it this time?" Stephen asked his parents, who were still looking blankly at me.

"I just....it's crazy, the way this world is going," Mama Shimp said.

"Okay, but do you get what he was doing, with that status?" Stephen said. He grabbed the phone. "You don't get it, because you probably weren't on Facebook this weekend. But seriously every other status was something like that, but talking about gay marriage."

"Oh, I heard about the new bill, I know that's what you're talking about. I get it." Mama Shimp did not get it.

"No. Diane." Craig tried to jump in to explain and got interrupted by Mike.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, now I'm going to sound really naive here....but what I don't get is, what is a selfie stick?"

The whole table erupted with forehead smacks, groans, and cries of "A selfie stick?? Oh my gosh, DAD!"

"I know what that is!" Mama Shimp cried excitedly. "Mike! You are old!"

Once everyone knew what a selfie-stick was, we had to then explain that Disney just banned selfie-sticks.

"Okay, but," Mama Shimp frowned, "What does that have to do with gay marriage?

"It's just funny," Stephen said feebly. "It doesn't really have to do with that. He was trying to make it sound like he was talking about gay marriage, but then you get to the end and realize he's talking about selfie sticks at Disney parks, and it's funny."

Jokes aren't usually funnier when you have to explain them. Usually, they just kinda turn lame. But in this case, I think it was the opposite. The joke was much funnier after our half-hour explanation of it.

Whole 30 Week 1 - Still Enthusiastic

So, I'm 1 week into Whole 30.

Seven days. 

An eternity.

Actually, it's not that bad. Truthfully, I am really enjoying it. And I'm not just saying that to trick myself. I've been feeling very strong, and my six-pack is already starting to come in, so that's fast enough results for me to be a believer. 

Here's my basic life:

Sunday, plan the menu. Prep meals for the week that I can prep. Create a grocery list. Look through ads so I can ad match at Walmart. 

Monday - Friday. Err morning, drink a green smoothie. I pre-packaged frozen fruit, flax seeds, and spinach in ziploc baggies in the freezer, and I just throw one of those and some almond coconut milk in the blender. It is so loud and wakes up probably the whole neighborhood and most likely makes our renters hate me. I hope they wear ear plugs or have a loud fan roaring at them all night and they miss it. For lunch, I have leftovers and an apple and lil cutie. I go home after school, we work out at UVU, and then for dinner, we have whatever I planned :) It's a great life.  Here are the challenges I have faced (and overcome!) so far:

- a donut for Coleman's birthday

- crepes for Danielle's wedding reception uhhhhhh they looked so good!

- also the wedding cake but I don't really like wedding cake and this one was green so that wasn't too hard

- lemon cake for dessert on Sunday - that I made, people.

- candy at Alex's house

- all the candy all the time in my drawers at school

- also all the granola bars!!

- soup, bread, chocolate-covered strawberry, and roll at Zupa's when I went with friends on Saturday. I literally picked off the chocolate and ate the strawberry plain'ol

- all the candy at Stephanie's dessert party for her graduation

- also the Nutter Butters there which for some reason looked so freaking good

- also the chocolate fountain. I just ate strawberries and bananas because that was all I could eat!

- the jelly beans we gave our kids on Sunday

- the Reeses peanut butter cups we gave Aleya (one of our girls at church) for her birthday

- the free popcorn at Ace Hardware where we got fertilizer

It was so hard!!! But also, not that hard at the same time. I don't really miss those foods. If I was hungry I think it would be harder, but I've so far been really good at planning meals and prepping them ahead of time, and so I feel full after meals and enjoy what I'm eating, so it's good. It is also easier because Stephen is doing it with me. We follow some rules but not all. 

- white potatoes are technically allowed, but we don't eat them.

- they limit fruit and I'm like I will never limit fruit, thankyouverymuch

- if you want mayonnaise or almond coconut milk, you have to make your own. .........we do not. 

- they say no beans and I'm like that's stupid, and we eat beans. 

- they also don't allow you to make fries / chips out of sweetotatoes or other vegetables, or like pancakes out of bananas and eggs, because that's tricking yourself and psychologically you still feel like you need those foods. But I'm like whatever, if I'm just slicing my sweetotato and putting salt on it and baking it, then I can have these fake chips. 

- apparently peanut butter is also not allowed, and neither are peanuts. But other nuts are so I don't participate in that discrimination. 

- fruit juice isn't allowed but we welcome it into our smoothies.

Full disclosure, I did have a mini-meltdown this week. Natalie had a play on Thursday, so we got a salad at Wendy's, went to the play, and then didn't get home until 10, and then Stephanie graduated on Friday, so we didn't eat either dinner I had planned for that night, either. So I was starving for basically two days in a row, and on Friday, after Stephanie's graduation party, this conversation went down:

me: I'm soooo hungry. 

Stephen: I'm not even that hungry. I just want to go to bed!

me: Can we please go home? I need food. 

Stephen: Let's just stay here, they have food and it's free!

me: I can't eat any of that! I've literally had nothing but strawberries and bananas and I'm starving!

Stephen: I can make you some eggs?

me: I'm just so hungry. 

Stephen: Well, what do you want? 

me: Okay Stephen I am not a rational person right now! Stop talking to me like you're expecting a logical response! I just want food to be in me! Like this isn't good! I'm supposed to eat! I'M STARVING!

Stephen: Okay, so you want me to make you some eggs, or do you want to go home.....?

Me: What did I just say? I WANT FOOD

Stephen: Well I'm just trying to figure out what you want - 

*Me throwing myself dramatically on the bed*

Stephen: Okay! Okay sorry! I'll make you some eggs.

So he made me eggs and bacon and I stopped being a monster. 

Conclusion? If you're going to do Whole 30, get good at saying no. Also, convince your Stephen to do it with you. He is a fantastic support. 

Merry Shimpmas

So, Reese Witherspoon is pretty much my homegirl. We know this. But she and I differ on one thing - Christmas.

Actually I have no idea how she feels about Christmas. But in her movie with Vince Vaughan, "4 Christmases," she hates Christmas with her own families, and Christmas with Vince's families, too. I, on the other hand, love having Christmas with both families.

We had Shimpmas the weekend before real Christmas. It went like this:

Friday
-Michael's birthday
-Presents and cake
-Aaaand a scavenger hunt to the best present: leopard geckos!

Lacy and Leo :) Hopefully they make some leopard gecko babies soon!

Saturday
- Wake up in a twin bed. Actually on the floor, next to a twin bed. Somehow Stephen and I fell asleep in Logan's bed, and Natalie fell asleep in Michael's bed, and Brandon fell asleep in his own bed, and the birthday boy fell asleep on the couch, and who knows where Logan slept. All I know is, he had to have been more comfortable than I was.
- Go home to shower and gather up presents.
- Go to lunch with the Shimp parents and Craig and Stephanie. We are adults so our lunch consists of talking about our goals, discussing relationship secrets, and shared fries and cocoa.

- Go home to get ready for ice skating. We have planned to leave at 6:30.
- It is 6:30 and the parents are nowhere to be seen. They are last-minute shopping.
- It is 7:30 and I'm almost done curling my hairs.
- It is 8:30 and the parents are back! We pile in the car.
- See the lights at the temple

- Go ice-skating at the Gallivan Center
- Watch a couple break up on the bench next to the skating rink
- Get taken down on the last lap around by Logan (aka Pretzel-Legs)

- Get videoed by some guy standing on a trashcan and recording falls, laughing hysterically each time he catches someone
- Hold hands with errbody else because sometimes, Stephen likes to leave me behind and ice skate as fast and dangerously as possible without me holding him back

We are now at the level where we do tricks, like this one. Which I like to call, the headless lifter.

- Watch Michael pro it up all over the ice and decide that he needs to take hockey lessons

- Go to eat dinner (at 11:30pm) at The Pie, where we were probably the only BYU fans in the whole joint
- Everyone gets a little freaked out and asks if I was "wild" in college and if I am "trying to kill us" by bringing us to this "sketchy place" where no one "has ever even heard of kids or something"

- Then everyone sees the pizza and gets a little freaked out because it is the biggest pizza anyone has ever seen and we can't even eat half of it
- Drive home and promptly pass out

Sunday

- Wake up and get Christmas jammies!! Logan was NOT happy about this, since it is a Christmas Eve tradition and we were opening them early and breaking tradition. But they are my absolute favorite thing.

- Christmas gift exchange with the kids
- Christmas for the couples who are leaving. We got prettttty spoiled with clothes, a Shark something-or-other that cleans our house, gift cards, and for me, workout clothes that I am so thrilled about I might just work out next year.
- Go to church
- Play Scum, which one of these times, I am going to write a blog post exactly transcribing what happens in a game of scum up in here. It is so hilarious.....even more hilarious than dinner here.

So Christmas #1 was great! We've somehow managed to do 2 out of 2 married Christmases with both families, and even though I know it can't be like that forever, I've loved it so far :)

Look Lively

I was not invited to Kate and William's wedding.

I know, I know. I was as shocked as you are. It was probably an oversight, but regardless, I was not in attendance. However, this last weekend, I went to a wedding that was just as spectacular as that one. The bride was blonde, and the groom wore gray, and the Queen of England didn't come, but I still felt like I was there at that Royal Wedding. This one was just a little less Brit and a lot more Lively.

It all started in November, when Craig and Stephanie got engaged.

And then December, January, February, March, and April were all filled with wedding prep. And by "wedding prep" I mean tons of boxen filled with wedding stuff showing up on my porch, endless phone calls, the cutest bridal shower I have ever attended, and like 3 dress catastrophes.

Mama Shimp came to town at the beginning of Wedding Week. It was lovely having her, as usual. Throughout Wedding Week, different family members arrived almost every day, and eventually, we had a living room full of Shimps.

Stephanie went through the temple on Thursday. It was so cool going through with her!

I love the Timpanogos temple.

We didn't even match our bags on purpose! Well okay, maybe a little bit.

On Friday, all the girls stayed at the Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City. We went out on the town for dinner and a little....ehm....fitness class, and had a great time getting to know each other.

Sorry about the quality of these picture. Pole-dancers have a specific set of skills, and it would seem that photography is not one of them. (Neither is public speaking, but apparently no one told our teacher that...)

Then it was Saturday morning....Wedding Day! Stephanie had to get up butt-early to get ready, but the rest of us just had to be at the temple by 11. Luckily, everyone made it there on time, and the sealing was beautiful.

I would compare the SLC temple on a Saturday in spring / summer to....Disney World on a Saturday in spring / summer. I counted 6 other brides from the time we spent in the temple, and outside was absolutely crazy. There were tons of people waiting for their couple to exit, and tons more people waiting for a prime spot for pictures.

Stephanie was the most beautiful bride of ever.

I love how beautiful the temple grounds always look! And I guess this is our go-to pose.

After a few pictures, we headed over to the luncheon in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Every detail about this part of the wedding was just perfect.

There was a menu and a program.

These were the favors - jars of honey that said "Meant to Bee." 

Besides being delicious and pretty, the luncheon was fun! There were a few toasts and a video of Craig and Stephanie's love story.

After the luncheon, we headed to Lehi for the reception. The reception center was great because there was a room for the bridesmaids to hang out and plan our surprise dance nap on the table.

Okay, look behind me. Mama Shimp & co. decorated everything for the reception. It turned out amazing! I helped with some little candle votives, but that's all I can take credit for. It took all day Friday to put it all together. I'm sure Stephanie will put up more pictures of the decorations, but there's a little sneak peek.

I didn't get too many pictures of the wedding festivities. partly because there was already a videographer and a photographer taking care of that, and partly because, well. This is what my pictures looked like. (Actually that's a pretty good one....but the rest were not.)

It was just a really lovely and fun reception, filled with more toasts, sugar cookies, bunny ears, the Cupid Shuffle, and only one minor injury at the grande sparkler exit. Congratulations, Stephanie and Craig! Thanks for a beautiful day!