One Year Anniversary

Yesterday, August 14th, was our one year wedding anniversary!  It is so hard to believe that we have been married for a year already, time sure flies by when you're in love.  In honor of our anniversary, and because sadly I didn't have a blog when we got married and couldn't post pictures and memories from it, I'm going to do a post that combines both our wedding day and our anniversary celebration.

This is a picture of all of our friends and family that were at our wedding ceremony in Manti, Utah.  We were so thankful and blessed to have so many loving people who supported and shared this amazing day with us.  Even though we were in a random city of Utah and the sun was blazing hot, everyone that was a part of our wedding helped to make this day so incredibly special.  One of the biggest questions we got about where we were getting married, and still continue to get about where we chose to get married, is why Manti?!  Well ladies and gentlemen, look at this next picture of my amazing hubby and I in front of the Manti temple, or should I say castle of a temple, and this might give you a good idea why.  This temple is absolutely gorgeous, it is the house of the Lord and we were able to be married for time and all eternity.  When trying to decide which temple to get married in of course my first instinct was the Portland temple, my home temple.  But when discussing all of our wedding plans with Mykel, we both decided that it would be best to get married in the central location of Utah, where most of our family was located or could get to easily.  Then we went on the church's website and looked through pictures of all of the temples in Utah.  We quickly agreed on Manti, went for a little day trip down there to check out the temple and town, and knew it was the perfect temple for us.

The wedding planning continued and I had no trouble deciding what my wedding colors would be.  I wanted a summer wedding since I was a little girl, and anyone who knows me wouldn't think twice about what my favorite color is, which I'm guessing you're smart enough to figure out just by looking at these wedding pictures.  Next I decided on my flowers, which were beautiful, bright gerbera daisies.  And of course the dress shopping, which was an intimate and special day spent with my mother finding the wedding dress of my dreams.  Let's just say that the classic story of crying when I found the right dress definitely applied to me and I was so blessed to have such perfect details added to my already perfect day of marrying the man of my dreams. 

Our photographer was incredible and really gave us some amazing shots.  I would highly recommend her to anyone in Utah or even outside of Utah if you were willing to pay for transportation and she also does portraits, family pictures and baby pictures too!  She was so fun to work with and had such great ideas.  We were able to do a photo shoot with her a month before our wedding of our bridals/groomals.  Some people are against the groom seeing the bride in her dress before the wedding day, or don't think these shots are necessary.  But I am so glad that we decided to do them because we had some beautiful pictures with a mix of scenery.  The biggest positive part of it was that on our wedding day I didn't have to stress about getting the perfect wedding picture or about getting a certain amount of wedding pictures, because I knew we already had such amazing shots from our bridal/groomal session.  Here are a few more of my favorites from our wedding.

August 14th was one of the very best days of our lives and we were ecstatic to be able to celebrate it again yesterday, being one year later.  Now I guess that I should admit that there is one negative thing on this post... we forgot our camera on our anniversary weekend...  Isn't that ridiculous!  We managed to pack everything else but forgot our camera.  Luckily the hotel we stayed at had pictures online that I downloaded so we can share that, as well as the restaurant, but no pictures of us haha.  Oh well, we still had the most amazing weekend and memories to last a lifetime!

I mentioned the website City Deals on the post about our birthday celebrations and am definitely going to give props to the website once again.  An entire month before our Anniversary, when we still weren't sure what we were going to do to celebrate it, I found the ultimate deal!  It was a one night stay in a really nice hotel in Park City, Utah.  The hotel was actually called Hotel Park City and our room was an "executive suite".  This included a king size bed, jetted tub, triple-headed shower, balcony, fireplace and a kitchenette.  The deal also came with a $25 gift card to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, as well as a $25 spa credit for a purchase of $100 of more which unfortunately I knew would go to waste haha.  And all of this put together for the incredible price of $105.  Now of course that didn't include the hotel "fee" and hotel "tax", or the fact that Ruth's Chris is one of the most expensive restaurants I've heard of... But it was all SO worth it.  Here are the pictures from hotelparkcity.com of our room:

We got to the hotel on Saturday at about 4pm to check it and relaxed in our room until our dinner reservations at 6.  Ruth's Chris was basically a part of the hotel and so all we had to do was take the elevator down to the 1st floor and we were able to enter the restaurant from inside the hotel.  Now if you haven't been to Ruth's Chris they do everything "A La Carte" and it is definitely pricey, but the steak is sensational!!  We each got a filet mignon and Mykel got shrimp with his and then we got a side of mashed potatoes to share.  They gave us a free dessert because it was our anniversary and we barely had any room at all to eat it.  But of course my stomach always makes room for chocolate dessert no matter how full I am.  This steak dinner was probably the best filet we've ever had.  They cook the steak in broilers at insane degrees and then bring them out on 500 degree plates with the butter all over the plate sizzling.  The steak was so tender, cooked perfectly and tasted incredible with nothing but the salt, pepper and butter. 

We definitely spent a lot of time just relaxing in the hotel and enjoyed having some quality time together without any worries from the world around us.  We drank lots of Martinelli's sparkling cider, watched a few movies, and did some other celebrating that I definitely won't be posting about...  Anyways, check-out Sunday wasn't until 1pm so we were able to have a relaxing morning with lots of cuddle time.  On our way home from our anniversary weekend we of course stopped by the Park City outlet mall and bought a few things.  Who can pass up outlet prices? :)  Overall the weekend was incredible and it was so special celebrating and remembering the event that happened one year ago, our marriage to each other for eternity in the Manti temple.

Summer Vacations

This summer we were able to take two vacations, one to visit my family in Oregon and the other to visit Mykel's family in California!  We had so much fun with both our families and wish we could have had longer vacations with them.

The first week of July we both took work off and drove down to Oregon!  Instead of making a long one day trip like usual (about 13hours) we decided to leave Friday after work, stay in a motel, and finish the drive Saturday so that we could get there at a decent hour and not be quite so tired.  I think it was nice doing it this way for a change, but lets just say I don't ever want to stay in a motel like that again haha... We slept on top of the blankets and brought our own pillows in, basically just needing a bed to sleep in.  My dads birthday was on sunday July 3rd so we went out to dinner to celebrate that Saturday night.  Then Sunday we headed to Redmond, right by Bend in Central Orgeon, to stay in a vacation home for a few nights!  It was a blast going golfing, watching the fireworks, going swimming, eating out and then going white water rafting on our way home.  Unfortunately my parents still have the pictures of the white water rafting so I don't have any copies to post on here.  But let's just say even though I thought we were going to die a few times, it was an absolute blast!  Mykel and I will definitely go white water rafting again when we get a chance.  The rest of the week was spent at my parents house.  Mykel and I were able to go to OHSU, the dental school in Portland, and get a tour and find out more about it.  He will be applying to dental schools next year and this is obviously my number one choice so it was cool to go and check it out.  But wherever he gets in is where we will be meant to go!  We also went shopping, of course, and my mom took me to get mani/pedis!  We also were able to go to the Portland Temple for the first time and do sealings with my parents.  The trip went by so fast and next thing we knew we were headed home the following sunday back to good old Provo, Utah.  Then we counted down the next three weeks until we would be driving down to California!!

The first week of August was our trip to Cailfornia to stay with Mykel's parents.  It was really cool because for the first time since we've been married his brother Tanner, his wife Amanda and their adorable one year old daughter Addie came down for the week as well.  It was a perfect little family reunion/vacation with lots of time to relax and enjoy the beautiful California sun!  We spent a lot of time swimming in their pool, which I loved, and on Monday we went to the beach.  Even though it was a windy day the sun was out, the skies were clear blue, and the scenery was beautiful.  Mykel and Tanner spent a lot of time body surfing/boogie boarding while Amanda and I layed out on the beach.  It definitely made Mykel and I miss living near the beach, and hopefully wherever we move to next we will be near one!  Another fun thing we did in California was go to a place called MB2 Raceway, which is really fast indoor kart racing.  I had been to a place like that before but not for a long time and it was so much fun.  On the final race it was just myself, Mykel, Tanner and Craig and I actually got the fastest best lap time out of all of us!  It was definitely a fun trip but was definitely not long enough.