stupid starfish.

i'm sorry if this is a cynical horrible mean post.

                   i .  don't .   care .

i HATE the 'starfish story'

we've all heard it. (some of us have heard it, ohh.... 6 times in the last month.... church testimonies, youth talks, blogs, etc...)

the fake story about some old pessimistic person walking on a beach (australia, california, galveston, hawaii, random beaches) and seeing a young hopeful little one tossing starfish back into the sea to save their lives. and the old goon is gloriously transformed into a caring person who has seen the light.  seriously??? when in the excuse my french he...ok, i couldn't type it. come on. i was just married in the temple. i have a hard time swearing now.   when in the HECK do you EVER see live starfish or even DEAD starfish on the beach?  honestly?  when was the last time you saw a freaking starfish outside one of those trashy beach town souvenir shop bin?

give me a break!  i wish there was a way to yell on blogger. i'm getting really passionate about this ridiculous story.

it's time to find something new!  don't worry, i got one for you. if you tell the starfish story again, it will just be unfortunate...

Cherokee Right Of Passage

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of passage? His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man! Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.  He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone. Even when we don't know it, our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him. Just because you can't see God, doesn't mean He is not there. 'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' ~ 2 Corinthians 5:7 ~

by unknown

Damon.

that's my husband.

he inspires me.

i'm not sure how i got lucky, not that i think he was luck. i know it was planned by someone way bigger and smarter than i.

the instant he decided he wanted me, my life turned around, became something i never knew and never expected and seldom deserve.

and going from striving to feel ok or fine everyday to feeling what i feel now every day- words don't come easily to describe it.

i can't even try.

sometimes i think i probably drive him crazy. that today i might send him right over that edge. but then he turns it right back in my face, and we dip, or practice a jump (in case we get on dwts) or i just don't know how his arms get so long to wrap around my 8 times, but he manages it.

i'm immature and he isn't.

but hopefully one day i'll meet up with him and save him some sanity.

i have a soccer ball in between my stomach and my mouth.

i love him

Southbound 35...

that is the pat green song i will sing as i drive home from iowa to texas next year. i've decided to make a list of good things about living in des moines (in my head at least) to keep me distracted from thinking about how miserable winters will be there. in order (ok, at least #1 is in order)

1. it is only 930 miles from Austin. mapquest puts that at 14.3 hours. everybody knows what a screwball mapquest is though, so i'll put it at a more accurate 13. that is 10 hours less than it takes to drive from provo to austin. hallelujah.
2. there is a sonic drive-in there. so no worries.
3. iowa's state fair is the largest in the country. i love state fairs/rodeos. they are the best thing ever and they have every kind of food that i like. turkey legs, fried picklesmacaronisnickerstwinkies, bbq, and lemonade.
4. humidity. i love it. it makes my hair look horrible but i like drinking my air, thank you very much. and if it has a hint of farm smell to it, that's alright by me.
5. no more mountains. i'm excited to again live in a place where i can see faaarrr faaaaaaaaaaarrr away.
6. i like corn. scratch that, we LOVE sweet corn.

well, that's about it.

damon's at work today and i am not. so maybe this time i'll be productive and get our christmas shopping done. first i shall go to costco and eat samples for lunch though.

goodbye.

ps, who are you?  since i put my blog on facebook/got married, my visitor map one day went up to 47. 47 VIEWS!!! that has never happened, i've never gotten past, oh, 6 or so, considering i thought only my family (they don't comment) and best friends looked here. but now there are all these people, and i'm feeling a little strange about some of the locations...like, who is that in Buda? i love Buda, it's the last little city before i'm back in Austin, so that's cool. but who are you?  and all you california people? san marcos, ca?  and some other strange sounding cities that i never knew of?

thanksgiving, etc...

just now getting around to putting these up, i realized i put the pictures on facebook, but not here. and since some are here and some are there, putting them up in both places gets confusing and i forget... but here's a little update, from right after our honeymoon till a couple of weeks ago...

our first night living together after our honeymoon... this is what happens when 2 photographers live together.  light refracting 101:

my  mom drove to utah from texas with all the furniture and stuff that my parents have been holding for me, and all our texas reception gifts.  here's damon thanksgiving morning, fixing stuff and putting together furniture:

the most glorious turkey i've ever made/tasted. my first turkey. thanks to foodnetwork.com, i learned all about the wonders of brining. so our bird sat in a bucket of salt/sugar/spices/citruses water for 24 hours before it roasted stuffed with lemons and onion and apples and oranges. and it came out so amazing that a week ago damon and i bought another turkey which is brining in our fridge as i type.

my mom, making her apple pie, and damon, with his favorite gift, the ice cream maker...

driving to spokane. i guess he lost his sunglasses.  as i took this picture, he said something like, "oh my gosh!  for that size??? that's such a good deal!!"  (pretty sure he was talking to his sis sharee about black friday shopping)

our christmas tree!  we had a home depot gift card and it got us a 5 footer. so cute and real is so worth the money for the smell...

our black friday buy. i demanded a dyson. because i'm a demanding wife. i hate vacuuming. but i love dysons.  so we went to shopko at 5 a.m. where this little beaut was on clearance.  we love him. his name is tyson the dyson. we get to vacuum up our christmas tree needles and stuff and it is so fun. even tyler likes to come over and empty the canister onto the living room carpet just to vacuum it up.

with the furniture we got from my dad our little apartment has really come together...

and we have about 20 pictures of the 2 of us all over. now we just need to print out wedding photos to put up too. oh, and i need to get around to making that tree topper and those stockings i keep saying i'm going to make.

a lot less messy and more homey than the last time you saw this, huh?  we even have a few shelves of, i call it , world junk.  china, mexico, africa, jerusalem, south america, all represented in trinkets galore.

oh, and we upgraded from joe's old tv to our awesome new hdtv. another black friday steal. this picture's kinda goofy cause i just took it with my macbook on photobooth so it's backwards.

so there's a little update, though not quite up to date. i still don't have the pictures from the ranch and honeymoon on my computer, they are on damon's and i've had some issues with my hard disc being full so i can't upload much more till i move some stuff to my external hard drive. so hopefully next time i can put up some of our fun ranch pictures of jeeping and 4 wheeling and hummer-ing and the festivities and our cruise and mexico.

until then, i'm out.

gross.

just left work. radio told me its 3 degrees outside. apparently i'll be forced to start wearing a jacket now. I hate cold.
texas next week. bring on that 70 degree christmas weather...

wedding photographs

**Our photography was done by Michelle at mieshphotography.blogspot.com

She's amazing and so fun!!

We got our pictures from Michelle, some of these are on facebook but there are some others in here.  it's pretty looonnngg...

San Antonio temple, November 7th

It may have taken me an hour to get into this dress and ready...

we finally made it outside!

crazy friends and family...

maybe my favorite picture from the day:

some of the amazing fields on our drive back to the ranch after the temple- i'd had to unlace my dress cause i couldn't breath that great sitting in the car, so damon is holding my dress closed. haha. kristi and our photographer michelle probably saw me not so modest way to much that day.

out on the ranch...

damon writing his "non-vows"

driving down to our ring ceremony- the hummer was too dirty inside to take

my dad and me

loved that chandelier

the ring ceremony was down at a natural spring watering hole- one side was a big pond and the other was this waterfall/grotto

Bishop Mackay and his wife came all the way to texas to play at the ranch and go to the temple and do our ring ceremony, it meant so much to us.

my grandparents cake topper from forever- 56 years?- ago. i also wore my grandmother's wedding ring set (i wear it on my right hand) and my grandmother on my mom's side's pearl set

first dance

father-daughter

aaannnd, we're out!