5 Months In. Still Doing Pretty Good.

Here goes nothing. A brief run-down of the last 5 months since I got married. You know, since all of the people who used to faithfully read my blog are still obviously waiting for me to post something...some time...

This is not a great picture of me, but I want to point out a couple highlights of the wedding - Ralph was one happy camper that day and looked incredibly handsome in the suit I picked out for him, and MY BOUQUET WAS THE PRETTIEST IN THE HISTORY OF ALL THE WORLD.

Our families were there, of course, but I also want to point out that I have The. Greatest. Girlfriends. Ever. They came from all over the country - California, Washington, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida (and Utah) - even Brazil. You girls made me feel so loved and I was so super touched that you all came to our wedding! Thank you!!! Every time I look at this picture it makes my heart all warm. You girls are the greatest friends and I'll remember it forever.

We went to Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, for our honeymoon. It was the prettiest place I've ever been other than Lopez (sheerly because I'm loyal). We went on a helicopter ride,

and then spent the next couple days hiking from Lake Louise

up the mountain to quaint little teahouses perched on top next to a glacier where they serve you hot chocolate and blueberry crumble. PURE DELIGHT.

Please note the snow outside in the above picture. It poured rain during most of the drive to Lake Louise, was fairly chilly during the whole trip, and we were usually hiking through snow at the top. Which was EXACTLY why we decided to go there. We are not warm-weather people.

And we canoed a little. That's the real color of the lake.

The next stop was Victoria, B.C. Mostly because we decided that Canadians are the nicest people we'd ever met and were already missing them after leaving Lake Louise.

Victoria was good for eating awesome food, touring the Parliament building, going to the B.C. museum, and renting mopeds to cruise around Vancouver Island's coast and check out "castles" that are really just mansions.

There were a lot of really pretty pictures we took in Victoria, but mostly I just like the ones where the scooter was involved.

Then after the Seattle open house, I went to Lopez with the fam while Ralph went to work.

Ralph joined us up there later that week so that he could do what the rest of us kids refuse to - accept my dad's standing invitation to water ski in Shoal Bay. It's the Pacific Ocean. It's salty and freezing and when you fall, seaweed wraps around your legs (or potentially could). But Ralph threw on a wetsuit and a drysuit (because it's that cold), and jumped in.

Ralph waterskiied in the ocean and snow skis like a pro, and when we came back from Seattle he asked me if we could save up for a sailboat. Which makes him the son-in-law my dad always dreamed of.

Look at them. They're perfect for each other.

Funny Story:

I can fly standby for free on United and US Air, so I decided to go see Burke in Sacramento for a day for my inaugural "flight benefits" ride. Ralph proceeded to give me a series of Standby Horror Stories to prepare me for the worst. So I put on a backpack loaded with reading materials, geared up for hours of waiting for a flight that could squeeze me on, and headed to the airport for the first leg to Phoenix.

As luck would have it, I happened to get on the very first flight and was even offered my preference of a window or an aisle. As I'm walking through the doorway of the plane, I look across to the first row of first class and see this slender blonde guy with his head down reading the paper. I squint my eyes and think to myself,

"Is that my brother?? That's my brother."

"Scott??"

He looks up, sees me, and starts to laugh. So I sit in the empty seat next to him for a second and we laugh about how he had been in town for only a few hours for work, hadn't had time to see me so he hadn't bothered to call, and how I had planned a last minute trip to Sacramento and hadn't bothered to tell him. So I run back to coach on the promise that he'd do his best to get me up to first class. A few minutes later, the flight attendant comes up behind me and says,

"Ma'am, your brother would like you to join him in first class."

Excellent.

So we chatted it up in first class, and then afterwards I called Ralph and we laughed about how despite all his warnings, on my very first standby flight I got to sit next to my brother in first class. Standby rules.

So then Burke and I hung out in Sacramento for a day, drove up to Auburn and learned about the Gold Rush, ate good food, saw a movie, and bought ice cream twice.

Auburn has this great museum in the basement of the historic courthouse. Burke had moved on ahead, and I know you're not supposed to touch things, but in the section about the invention of the telephone I just had to, so I picked up the phone and put it by my ear...and then another one down the wall started ringing. It kind of freaked me out and took me a minute to realize that you're supposed to touch it. So I loudly whispered to Burke, "Buuurke...Answer the phone!"...and then we had a little conversation.

The rest of the summer was spent doing random things like driving to Kamas for a small-town Pioneer Day celebration, seeing Ballet Under the Stars at Murray City Park, hiking up the canyons, eating in small town diners, camping up Big Cottonwood Canyon, riding a hay wagon to pick out a pumpkin, looking at owls at the Tracy Aviary, making gingerbread houses, etc.

I married a pretty darn amazing guy. Aside from doing all the obvious things that make for a great husband, the other day I came home from work and there was spiced cider simmering on the stove. A week before that he picked me up from work with chocolate chip cookies that were still warm and milk in a water bottle. And you know who has never cleaned the burners in our stove? Me, that's who. You know why? Because Ralph always gets to it before I do. And once he called me into the kitchen real excitedly to have me look at the highly efficient way that he had loaded the dishwasher.

But, there was that time he turned the dryer pink because he forgot to take a crayon out of his pants pocket.

The other day, I jumped out of bed very excitedly and said, "IT'S GLOOMY OUTSIDE!!!" We went outside later and Ralph goes, "Look! Blue sky!" When I pretended to choke and gag, he laughed and said, "I LOVE you!! Where did you come from?"

"SEATTLE!!"

I really love crappy weather. And now I'm not the only one! He's perfect for me.