a few chairs would be nice

Over the past month and a half my life has changed drastically. The wedding planning is finally over--something that totally consumed every fiber of my being for a very long time, especially the weeks leading up to the actual date (July 28th) and it's just been one big roller coaster since then! Here's the jist:

Our wedding day was perfect and almost exactly everything i'd hoped for--there's always a few glitches or surprises that you wished hadn't happened or happened differently, but what can you do? Life is not perfect and definitely cannot be planned to the T, including weddings. But it was definitely special and memorable and wonderful in everyway and I hope to never forget those amazing details. We spent the afternoon infront of several cameras and then a couple hours greeting family and friends and enjoying our wedding dinner. Then at the end I was seriously being dragged OUT of the room by my new husband as we went down to the car to get out of there. (we almost forgot that my suitcases were still in my parent's car! Luckily my younger brother came to the rescue and helped us tranfer the luggage.) We had a bit of a drive ahead of us as we headed up into Ogden Canyon to the beautiful Lakeside Resort Properties and explored the spacious and beautiful home style apartment we stayed in for our honeymoon.
Our honeymoon was amazing, relaxing and just such a great time we had with each other. I will post more details about the hiking, and dino park and shark week and all the other fun stuff we did later. Right now I'll move on to the rest of our adventures.
We then flew via US airways, which we've nicknamed U. Suck. Airways, as throughout our trip you will find out why. Our connection in Pheonix was more than a bad dream and several headaches later finally arrived in Atlanta with about a day to make final preparations for our backyard, poolside reception. Picures to follow.
With a couple of days in between to shop and pack, we eventually made the start of our wonderful journey to Europe with Scott's entire family (11 in all, the kids stayed home). There's no way I could blog about our 2 week adventure and cruise in this blog so...smile...details will follow later. We also have about a billion pictures so obviously i will have to pick and choose. My goodness I should have been blogging this entire time. Too bad I could not have access to the internet to do such things. :( Although I did get 10 minutes at an internet cafe in Florence, but obviously a 5 country cruise with some 10 odd ports requires more than just 10 minutes.
After a few more airline headaches, all 11 of us and our 14 pieces of luggage (we only managed to leave 1 in Venice and that was our cruise ships fault not the airline) that's not even including all our carry-ons, we finally made it back to Georgia at about 3 am. Scott and I had one day in Georgia--we packed and repacked and returned gifts from our reception that were too big or heavy to mail or take with us and then the next day were on our way to OHIO. YAY! Unfortunately we had even more airline trouble and got there late again. But we did get to spend a twinkle of time with my family before Friday and saturday's reception chaos began. This reception was at the stake center, but it turned out beautifullly. Yup you guessed it--pictures and details to follow. I 'm going to be blogging about this stuff for forever I think. Maybe i'll just start a new blog... ;) Like 4 isn't enough already!
And to think that it is STILL not over. Oh no. Scott and I journeyed to Utah through Colorado on Frontier--a great airline. So no troubles there. What a difference! We made it into Salt Lake and so did our 4 bags and 3 carryons. We most definitely had a lot more stuff than when we left! We made it to our apartment after meeting Scott's dad for lunch in SLC at PF Changs. Our very empty apartment. We then spent the rest of the day going from store to store looking for mattresses. I had to get some ice-cream from Cold stone to keep me going. We spent the night on a king sized airmattress from Sam's Club and then woke up early to get ALL our stuff our of storage (in one trip and 2 cars--one being a saburban, the other scott's midsized car) and then a big trip to IKEA to get some furniture. We spent a little more time at a couple mattress places, a lunch trip to Chili's and then unpacked a little bit. Then next day Scott had to go back to work, I spent the day unpacking box after box. Then Thursday the same drill except I felt unusually fatigued. By the time Scott came home I had zero energy and plopped down on the couch. I soon realized I had a fever when I was hot, yet shivering. I was really frustrated because there was still so much to do. Scott left for a couple hours to get camping gear and I ended up sleeping the entire time he was gone. The rest is a blur. He spent Friday at work and I spent friday being tired again but got a few things done. I went to campus to pick him up, but he dropped me off to meet up with Nikki and Melissa for dinner and he went home to pack and then go to Altonah for his camping trip and weekend hike to King's Peak. I spent 2 hours with Nikki and Melissa and then Melissa and I went to hang out with some old friends for a while which was really fun. I had to have Al and Steve pick me up because i didn't have a car for the weekend, but I finally got home and in bed. First night sleeping alone since being married :(
The weekend was lonely, but I spent Saturday shopping with Brenda and the girls. We got mostly everything for our apartment including cute things to put on the walls, but Scott and I are still missing a few key items--some chairs for our table and desk would be nice, and a sharp knife would probably come in handy too.
Anyway, Sunday I went to church with Jen, came home for a while but then went to her house to hang out for the rest of the night--she made french toast :) Then Monday more shopping, then a mass cleaning up of the apartment and the wait for Scott to come home began. It was like the reunion of the century--I was SO happy to have him home.

Anyway, now it's September and school has started. more...on that later :)