Home to the Commonwealth: Day 8, Wedding Photo Extravaganza!

ok. Here's what we're going to do. In the interest of time I'm just going to add some little captions to all of these fabulous photos (and not even put them in order) and hopefully somehow you can piece together the whole magnificent wedding day story.

Oh but first, one part of the story that isn't told in the pictures: the night before the wedding I was woken in the middle of the night with the worst headache of my entire life. Seriously. Severe pain behind my eye and in my head. I considered calling and waking up Zac just to have some consolation from his voice. And, after taking lots of pain meds and still rocking on the floor, crying and holding my head for a few hours, I almost woke up my mom at about 3 am to take me to the emergency room to get some stronger meds cuz I thought I might die. It really was that bad. But another hour later I finally fell back to sleep. But in the morning, I stayed in the hotel to try to get a few more hrs of sleep while everyone else went over to Melissa's for more wedding prep. (Oh and there was another night when apparently I woke up Heather with yelling out in my sleep. I was having a nightmare that I was being hunted down and killed. Yeah, fun times sharing a hotel room (sorry about that Heather).) ;)

ok. Those are just a couple sidenote journal-stories for ya.

Now for the wedding!
me, and all the visiting sibs: Chelsea, Heather, Liz, baby Miles and Devin

wedding ceremony in Melissa and Chris's beautiful backyard

professional wedding pics that I can't resist sharing

my gorgeous little sister Melissa

reception lingering into the night, talking, laughing and listening to great music:)

bride and groom cuteness

um, books from our childhood that Melissa has stashed on her bookcase. Some of them don't belong to her. ;)

my own pics of the reception evening

making a heart pic with sparklers:)

paper chains!

just married spoon!

my brother Devin and his baby, Miles

sisters Melissa and Heather

Melissa, beautiful bride

we made all those tissue paper flowers and strung them all over the car

we did good, if I do say so myself:)

Chelsea painted the directional signs:) And this is Melissa and Chris's cute retro house in Falls Church, VA.

Mr. and Mrs. Forks - no, that's not their name . . . it's just . . . they're forks. uhhh . . .

Melissa knitted the hearts on the cake topper. She also knitted a similar little heart for the ring pillow.

Groom and Best Men in Converse:)

me and Melissa

the happy Newlyweds

we got to pick up the wedding cake! Mom was very nervous about it . . .

Heather's instagram pic of our lovely tissue paper flowers

And a Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale book that was my favorite - somehow Melissa ended up with it. I'm determined to find one of my own someday.

It was really a wonderful day. There was rain partially predicted for the day - but it didn't rain. And everything turned out so beautiful! I'm so happy for Melissa and Chris and excited to welcome Chris into our crazy family. And we didn't even get stuck in traffic for the BIG Peruvian election across the street (was it Peruvian?!) I guess that's another story . . . ;)

(Visit Melissa's blog to read her own wedding recap here)

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 7, rehearsal

Saturday June 4th we spent the day at Melissa and Chris's helping to get things ready for the wedding and hanging out for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Since they were having the wedding in their own backyard, we got to help out with yardwork and decorating and all of that fun stuff. yay!
(Here are some paper chains that mom cut and assembled)

Melissa is very crafty and she and Chris had a lot of fun unique touches they added to their intimate little wedding. I was very impressed, as the last thing I am on this planet is crafty and the last thing I want to do when planning a big gathering is stressing about any additional personal "touches." haha. But Melissa seemed calm, cool and collected pretty much the whole time and pulled everything off beautifully. Impressive indeed.

Anyway - we also got a chance to snuggle and fuss over cute baby Miles (my nephew):


(mmm, mommy's skirt is so tasty):

(and my brother, the proud papa):


And then rehearsal time (in the beautiful trees of Falls Church, VA):

And some tripoly fun later on:

wohoo! The next day is the wedding! :)

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 6, The Bride

And now for the "real reason" of the trip: my darling little sister's wedding festivities. :)

There's Melissa in the middle, with her 2 friends that planned the bridal shower fun:

We played a game where she had to guess the answers to questions that Chris had answered previously and for each wrong answer, she had to stuff a marshmallow in her mouth. She ate a lot of marshmallows. ;)

We decorated cupcakes:

And hung out doing stretches (??) (hahaha, dont ask):


Mostly though it was just fun to celebrate this pretty girl who has always liked to sit like this:

More wedding goodies to come!

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 5, Kings Dominion!

Heather, Chelsea and I also couldn't resist a chance to visit Kings Dominion amusement park, while mom went over to Melissa's to help out with some wedding prep.

It is no exaggeration to say that some of earliest foggy childhood memories are from times at good 'ole KD. Sitting with my sister and brother under the Candy Apple in the dark while my parents rode a roller coaster? yep. Being scared to death of the guy with glowing eyes at the end of the Haunted River? yep. My very first roller coaster ride on the Scooby-Doo which was also the last roller coaster I ever rode until I was 12 or 13? yes. All of those memories before age 5. And watching my older preteen sister flirt with boys in Yogi Bear's Cave and wondering when I'd be old enough to also attract the attention of said boys? oh dear. unfortunately yes.

Anyway - I love that place. It's changed a bit through the years. Some rides are gone, some of the themes are different, a bunch of new rides have cropped up. But walking around and riding those rides I can still clearly remember so many things. Being an obnoxious teenager singing Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" at the top of our lungs in the back seat of the Rebel Yell with Shelly. Spur of the moment evening trips with Alyssa. Getting picked up and physically thrown into one of the fountain ponds (for fun?) by a boyfriend. Senior Skip Days with Carolyn and Anne. Lots and lots and lots of summer days spent there.

After my mission to Germany I even worked in this gift shop with my sister Melissa:


That summer was also the last time I'd been to Kings Dominion before now, incidentally. Crazy!

Anyway - here's me in the front there on the bobsled ride, in the Germany car of course:

And we got soaked to the skin in the white water raft ride. Soaked. to. the. skin:

and me in front of the best roller-coaster in the universe. yes, the universe:

(Although the new Intimidator 305 roller-coaster (with a 305 ft straight drop) was also a whole lot of fun, I must say.)

So anyway - we had a really fun day together with the 3 of us. The weather was tolerable. There were no lines (!!!). And a whole new set of Kings Dominion memories were added to the many others in my happy-place brain. :) yay.

(all photos courtesy of Heather's camera and iphone - since I didn't want to bring my bigger camera along. Thanks Heather!) :)

and speaking of the sea . . .

Here are some quotes I have since run across on Pinterest and they remind me of my beautiful day on the beach:

I meant to work them into some of my photos of the beach and include them in that post, but I forgot.

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 4, Assateague Island

We really wanted to visit a beach while we were out on the east coast (how could we not??) so we decided to check out Assateague Island. Half of the island is part of VA and half is part of MD, but you have to drive up into MD and then back down onto the island, so the VA part was actually further away (south of the MD part) so we went to the Maryland part. The island has wild horses, too, which you can see if you're lucky! Well worth the 3 hr drive from Northern VA where we were staying.

On the way we picked up Dunkin' Donuts (which we don't have in UT) and by the donut shop was this very cool, very old playground where of course we had to stop and play. :)


And the beach. was. gorgeous. The weather was in the 80's with a nice ocean breeze and the water was perfect and refreshing. There were only a few other small groups there within our sight. So in one direction, this was the view:

Amazing.

I read some of my book. Took a nice nap on the blanket to the sound of the waves. I even went for walk/run for 30 min. out in the direction where there weren't any other people and I didn't see another soul. I've decided there is hardly anything quite so refreshing in this world as running through the surf all alone, splashing and grinning into the breeze. It was a really wonderful day. Quiet, relaxing, rejuvenating.

And we saw the wild horses as we were leaving, too. Can't beat that! :)

Perfect.