OUR WEDDING ~ Getting Ready ~

On the morning of my WEDDING DAY! I had to get up really really early at 7 am to meet our makeup artist for 8 am. I quickly shot out of bed, was weird not having to get ready before I left at all, I don't even think that I had brushed my hair. I met my cousin Sarah (bridesmaid) at her hotel room and she began to curl my hair and pinned the curls to let them set. The longer they set the longer the curl will stay. After that Mom finally had come up to the hotel room as well as the makeup lady. Since I did not want to sweat my makeup off first before the wedding, we decided that mom would do her make up first. Maria was great with my mom and gave her tips on everyday make up that she can do herself. Maria made my mom look super hot. She could have found me a daddy the day of the wedding if I do say myself! It was funny though because as Maria was almost finished with my mom's makeup and then she started to tear up. She would almost be finished again and then start to tear up again! Haha It took awhile for her to be completely done with her wedding! After that she decided to do Sarah next, and even gave us the bonus option of getting Saphire's makeup done for the wedding! That whole morning though was just chaotic, from ordering Jeremiah (Sarah's man) to get stuff done for us that day, such as trying to get us food, getting us drinks before the wedding, etc. Basically he was our lifesaver that whole day! Couldn't have done the day without him! It was extremely hot in that room too, we had to open the window and prop the door open with a towel it was hot! It was so disorganized too! It looked like wedding stuff was vomited all over the suite!

The whole morning I was pretty quiet, everyone kept on asking how I was feeling because I was so quiet. I honestly was not nervous to get married. I was just excited. Finally when my make up and hair were ready it was time to get into the dress. We had already agreed that Sarah would get me into the dress because I knew she would be ruthless with the thing and make sure that it was tighter than anything. I had to hold onto my mother's hands to make sure that I wouldn't fall over, still almost did haha. But with the photographer he wanted to make it look like my mother still got me dress so after Sarah was finished he made it look like she was lacing up my dress and got photos of that haha. When that dress and all that were done...with only 15 minutes to spare...it was time to get married.
Getting into the elevator Sarah made sure that no one would see me in my dress before Jesse, so when we got out the elevator she would go out before me and give me the cue that the coast was clear. Then it was time to line up...to get married...

TO BE CONTINUED....

Brock and Angel's Wedding

Brock and angel had gotten married August 13 2016, she invited us to their wedding along with my mom and grandma. Mom wanted for us to come especially so we could drive them to their wedding to drive grandma there since no buses went to Grande Cache. We left earlier the night before to drive all the way down to Lethbridge. 

The next day we decided to visit with Holly in Brooks. My mom and grandma finally got to meet her and get to know her a little bit since she is Jesse's family. The visit with her was great, grandma and mom were really impressed with her. After the visit with her she had told us to take the scenic route up to Grande Cache going through Jasper. We thought it was great idea, but in the end it was great for Jesse and I, not so much for Grandma and Mom which are not the best road trippers. It took us about 8 hours to get to Grande Cache and once we got there we were really glad. 

The next day we met up with Uncle Ron and Aunt Diana and we went together to the camp grounds that Angel and Brock were to be married. We met up with Brock there and chilled out for awhile until their wedding. We left grandma and mom there and Jesse and I decided to go back and get ready for their wedding and explore Grande Cache. It wasn't that difficult to explore the town of only 3 blocks pretty much. Not much had changed from what I remembered when I was a little girl going there every summer. 

When we went back to the campground, I got to see my Aunt Diana's brother Uncle Andy, he would also spend the summer's with us sometimes and it was good to see him and catch up with him.

Angel was quite late for the ceremony, about half an hour and the weather was going to be coming to them. The clouds were quite dark and you could hear strikes of lightning and thunder in the distance. Once Angel was there. It was beautiful, it was hard not to cry from the song that she chose to walk down the aisle to "A thousand years" by Christina Perri. her bridesmaid dresses were different shades of purple and she had about 3-4 flower girls with little tutus and crowns. It was absolutely beautiful. And then she emerged...beautiful being walked down the aisle with her stepdad and brother. She looked stunning, her dress gorgeous with organza flowers on the bottom of the dress, bling around her waist and neck. Absolutely Gorgeous. Not only was everyone else crying but we took bets to see if Brock would cry when she walked down the aisle. Brock was crying as she walked down, completely bawling much like his dad. Tough on the exterior but a teddy bear inside. Their vows were beautiful too, she promised to love him and that she had met him at the right time after they had both been through hardship. For his vows they were a bit more frisky than hers haha. He had promised to always pinch her ass and protect her and the most important vow of all "to ride her as hard as he rides his harley" haha. After they were pronounced as husband and wife his group of biker brothers gave them a proper send off, roaring their motorcycle engines echoing into the moutains. It was beautiful, and glad I got to see my cousin get married. 

After the ceremony it had poured rain! Completely downpoured, since it did we decided to go back to the hotel and relax. When we came back it was about 7pm. Their reception had started so late due to the rain not ending faster. Their wedding was completely outdoors and they had originally had tents but couldn't find them on the actual day! Crazy! 

We had missed the dinner but we went but we came back for the speeches. It was great all the speeches and love that was in those mountains that day. Her step mom had photoshopped a photo of her getting ready with her on her wedding day since he had passed which was beautiful to see all that emotion.  We got to congratulate the Mr and Mrs and got to take a shot with my Uncle Ron and party with my bridesmaid Sarah. It was a great time! 

Wedding prep!

Two days before the wedding we had to drive to Edmonton to get Jesse to the airport to pick up his niece. Jesse had to fly all the way to winnipeg to pick up Saphire and then bring her back here on the airplane in order for her to attend our wedding. Since Jesse's side of the family was so scarce we of course had to have his niece! While I was in Edmonton already, I decided to meet up with my bridesmaid Sarah and my "cousin-in-law" for some wedding prep! 

We decided to meet up go to Sally's get some hair dye because I wanted to look like the little mermaid before the wedding. It was also the perfect chance for wedding nails! 

We decided to go to the nail salon with Angel and get my nails did! They did not have what I originally wanted for a design but they were great. They were sparkly silver tips and Sarah's nails were navy blue with the ring fingers silver as accent nails. Angel didn't get her nails did with us but instead decided to get a pedicure done! My nails were done before Angel's so I decided to sit in the pedicure chair and have a little massage. Angel was making fun of me for how short I was because I put it the chair on lower back massage when it was actually a whole back massage for me haha. We went to lunch and had a great time getting prepped for the wedding, and the best part was picking Jesse up from the airport with Saphire! She was so cute and so excited to be our flower girl! 

Wedding shower!

Nancy from work decided to throw us a wedding shower! She had a really cool idea about doing a pie bake off, which meant that she would have the pie crusts ready and she put all the ingredients that go into making an apple pie in the centre of the island. We split up into three teams. Barbie, Julie and I were on one team. Garth's wife Leighann, Amy, Connie and Nancy were on the other team. Lastly all the boys were on the last team...I know a co-ed wedding shower!?! It was great fun, Connie showed Julie and I how to properly roll out a pie crust onto a pie plate. We all had a bawl doing that, played around with the flour a bit. It was truly a great bonding experience and a great way to begin to celebrate Jesse and I getting married.

While we were waiting on the pies to bake we ate wieners, explored Nancy's house and property, which was gorgeous of course. Her house is beautiful, old country style with lots of antiques. It was cool to see what she had done with the place since we had been there last, she created a greenhouse and moved the firepit up the hill. Her husband created a pathway around their property and he made a scavenger hunt for the kids to go and explore. One of the greatest places in her house was her grandkids playrooms. She had antique toys, a foosball hockey table, air hockey, etc. It was fun. The boys had more fun in there with the toys there than with the actual adults. Mark and Jesse went against the kids and little did they know that Jesse don't let anyone win at all and that includes kids.

When the pies were done we all tried each others pie. Nancy's team had the most beautiful pie, my team's pie had the most gooeyist pie and Jesse's team won with the best pie! Out of all the people that could have won we couldn't have believed that it would be the boys! Everyone's pie had something unique about it! After that we opened presents and were showered with gifts in celebration of our love, which Jesse and I were not expecting.

We are truly grateful and appreciative out of everyone that came and for our hostess that put on this great fun time in celebration of our love! It was the best wedding shower I have ever attended! 

Levi's birthday party!

In August it was our friend Julie's son and husbands birthday! They both share the same birthday and Julie decided to throw levi a birthday party! She had rented a huge bouncy castle for him at her house and had a bbq. 

At the last minute a lot of kids cancelled but that didn't put a damper on his birthday! I think the adults had more fun in the bouncy castle than the kids! But man jumping on that castle took a lot of work! Even Jesse bounced in the bouncy castle! I couldn't believe it. Jesse and Mark their main goal for that bouncy castle was to deform it about as much as they could it drove Julie crazy but they didn't care they had too much fun! 

At one point in the day Mark and Jesse decided to deform the castle and give kids rides on the beam that held the top of the castle up. The kids completely loved that and had so much fun with that! Later on that evening they had put up Levi's big birthday present a pool! We had a massive water fight with that as well!

We really all had such a great time! 

Stag and doe!

Our friends Mark and Julie threw us a stag and doe in July, since our wedding is in september. They basically decided that they would throw a bbq for us and we would play some drinking games. The games that they decided on was Beersby - where you take three bottles on each side set them up on posts and you throw a frisby to get the bottles down - and heads up - a game on your phone. 

Julie had invited a few of her friends to come, whitney and josh a couple that had just recently gotten married and another couple Mitch and Michelle which were her friends for quite awhile. My boss Audrey also came and my coworker Nancy. At first the boys were outside already getting beersby set up and the girls were inside having a chat. The boys were playing beersby the proper way where if you knock a bottle down then you chug a whole beer so they were beginning to get drunk quite fast. When the girls started playing they changed the drinks of choice from beer to taking jello shots every time the other team knocked over a bottle. Which was fun but got you quite drunk fast. Nancy even got up later on during the evening and tried her shot at beersby! 

After other couples decided to leave and go home just Whitney and Josh were left and we decided to play heads up. It is a game on your phone where you place the phone facing your teammates while they act out the word that is displayed on the phone and the person holding the phone has to guess what the word is. This game was so hilarious it was boys against girls and the boys were so good at it. One of the words was a stripper and mark was the pole and Josh was the stripper it was so funny! 

But all in all it was a great night, a little bit fuzzy but a great way to spend our bachelor and bachlorette party! 

Another eventful weekend in Edmonton!

We have been trying to go up to Edmonton as much as possible because Jesse's mom is going to school there for 2 months. We decided to go up the weekend after I was on call to go see her again. This weekend was very eventful we did lots of things like mini golf, going to a movie and watching Jesse's mom weld.

The first night that we were there we decided to go do some mini golf to let Gord out so that Karen could study for her schooling. The golf place that we went to was Monster mini golf, it is attached to a bowling alley and an arcade. It was the coolest experience ever to go to this bowling alley, it is in the basement of the building, it is glow in a the dark, blaring music, it was basically like a night club but for all ages. There was so many teeny boppers there it was crazy! The arcade had a ton of games, some that were from when Gord was a kid. The few games that we did was they played old school pin ball, a shooting game and I decided to go into a tornado simulator! Jesse and I also had our first photobooth photos...awww.

After that we decided to go down to the mini golf, again it was glow in the dark. It was the coolest mini golf we ever saw too! It was all halloween/monster themed. They had these cool prosthetic monsters that did interactive things. The actual pars on the course had little themes for it, whether it was zombies, clowns or anything ghoulish! It was a great time! Gord was plastered as f*** Jesse and I were laughing there was really good loud music playing. It was so much fun! After we were finished playing a magician showed us a mini show. It was just a lot of fun altogether.

The next day Karen needed to practice her welds so we decided to go Gord's shop he was currently working at and watched her practice her welds. One thing I noticed right off the bat about welding is that you need a crap ton of patience, and a very steady hand. If you do not have either you get a very bad weld. They let me put on a mask and see what she was doing right up close, I never saw that before! Got some good photos of Jesse too *wink wink*

Later on that evening we decided to go to a movie, we went to go see Captain America. It was an ok movie. It was nice to go do something along with Karen instead of just hanging out with Gord or more babysitting Gord so that she could study and not have him distract her.

It was a great weekend and we haven''t had that much fun in a long time! Good drinks, good people and relaxation! What more could we have needed?

Future Mother in laws and Edmonton!

We went to go see Jesse's mom in Edmonton. She is currently going there for her last year of welding to become a Journeyman, just get her ticket and begin another trade. They decided to rent an apartment in Edmonton for the duration of her time there and Gord decided to work in town. We went up on the friday evening since we both missed him mom so much since she lives on the island and works in the oil field all the time. 

When we got there it was hard to find her apartment at first since it is located in something like a strip mall. There was a daycare, a dance studio and a convenient store that was attached to this apartment. We eventually did find it after Jesse's mom waved us down from the street! When we got there she was already gooned and wanted to party! She tried to get us going too, but we were so tired. She thinks we are 70 years old haha. 

The funny thing is that she had a good nest on the top of her apartment building and she kept on saying this kid would scream goose. I thought it was cute, but not really believing that there was a real goose nest on their roof. But there was a real goose nest there! Saturday morning we woke up to Geese just honking away like a rooster would, it was god awful! But again hilarious! Then we followed her around doing errands, she had to get slabs of metal to practice her welds for an midterm exam in her welding class. If she had failed those tests she would not have been able to continue her class. 

We ate out at Boston pizza and they decided to do VLTS between her and Gord they had won about 1000 dollars that day. I was feeling lucky too and tried my go at VLTS, but I didn't win anything. I just watched as Jesse's mom kept on winning 250 dollars at a time. It was nice though that they paid for our lunch for us. 

It was a great time bonding with my future mother in law and look forward to seeing her again! Maybe next time not so much eating out though..

Meeting Jesse's "Aunt"

We went down to Brook's one day to update our insurance and we decided to go visit Jesse's "aunt" at the same time. Holly is really good friends with his mom and Jesse has known her since he was about 5 years old, so basically she is his Aunt. It is really cool because she owns a tattoo/piercing/clothing/tanning salon.

 I was soooo excited about this because I love piercings. I have an obsession with them, after I got my nose pierced all I wanted was more piercings and it was my opportunity to get more piercings from a good piercer! She just asked me what I wanted done and she did it! I asked to get the top of my left ear done and my second hold piercings again. It was great because she let me choose where the piercing was supposed to be even though my second piercings were really close to the first ones, she still allowed me to do that. The first ear that was pierced hurt a little bit, then the second ear didn't hurt at all. When she went to pierce the top of my ear it hurt because of the earring I chose. The earring that I had chose was like a screw because it had a flat back and you could screw on a ball. She adviced this one because the flat back didn't hurt her ear. But to get that screw part on, hurt really bad. The actual piercing itself did not hurt but it stung more. 

After the piercings we talked about what we did especially about sterilization and the health board how indecisive they are about standards etc. It was great to talk to someone that knew what I was doing and what I knew about. I was super glad to meet her and cannot wait to see her again! 

New piercings love <3

GIRLS TRIP!

My cousin Sarah invited me up for a girls weekend in Edmonton sometime last month. It was nerve wrecking because it would be my first time driving to Edmonton by myself without Jesse driving. I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, because Jesse just might not always be around to drive me places etc. especially when we have children. The drive was great to Edmonton, I only missed 1 turn and in return it made my travel better. I was so proud that I was able to do the drive by myself. It was sweet because Jeremiah was worried about my driving, since he didn't know if I had driven by myself to Edmonton before, sarah was worried as well but I conquered it!

We decided to go over to my other cousin Brock's house and there I got to meet Angel his fiance. She is super nice and funny! We played a card game that was similar to cards against humanity and she gave us a little preview of what a Passion party would be like, the types of lotions, the toys, etc. (I even got to buy some stuff too) 

Sarah and I later went back to her house and we stayed up practically the whole night talking and watching girlie movies that our men would not want to watch with us. It was fun!

The next day we decided to go shopping, we went to South Common at forever 21, urban planet, etc. Sarah taught me this great trick at Sephora though, she told me to lie about my wedding being in a week and that my make up artist quit on me. They then will show you techniques for free! Sometimes I just love to work the system! It was great because I got to learn a new technique for my wedding and again it is for free. I used it back home in Red Deer too, it is a fantastic technique to learn new makeup skills! 

And that was our girls weekend! It was fabulous, it was fun and it was nice to get away for awhile and spend it with my cousins! 

My birthday

For my birthday we had celebrated it early March 19th this year with our friends. Since our friends are big on celebrating birthdays they made absolute sure that we had fun on my birthday. We had initially planned on going to the hideout and go to the locked room in Red Deer. The locked room is where they place you inside a room for 50 minutes and are given a situation that you must figure out how to leave the room. Sounds fun right? Only problem is that you have to prebook it and I did not want to pay upfront to pay for that. We then decided after that to go play lazer tag, then Julie sprained her write and it needed to be in a cast. So then we decided to just have a bbq at her house and enjoy our time together there.

Unfortunately her other friend that she had invited was not able to come from being hungover from st. patricks day on the thursday but that was ok. We really got to know Julie and her husband mark by just talking. We did not end up playing games but talking with them was great having food, a few drinks and some laughs was great to have in celebration of my birthday. I bought my own birthday cake and lit it as well. Although our plans did not go as we had thought it was a great 23rd birthday with my love and with our good friends.

Jesse's birthday!

On January 31 it was Jesse's birthday! What was exciting about this year though was we actually had plans! Exciting...I know! My friend from work Julie had invited us to go out with her and her best friend since it was her friend's birthday as well! We had made plans quite a while before his birthday and we decided that we would go to Montanas and go bowling at heritage lanes. I kept the secret of the restaurant we were going to because I knew he would not want to wear the antlers. I just kept on telling him that we were going somewhere fancy that was a surprise. The friend of Julie that was coming was named Carolyn and she brought her baby daddy Curtis (aka Jason...he wore a Jason tshirt, with the drinks for the night in my mind his name was Jason).  She came to Alberta all the way from Newfoundland to spend her birthday with Julie which I thought was sweet.

We had ordered dinner at it was fun getting to know her friend Carolyn. She was very nice she and her boyfriend just found out that she expecting a few weeks prior to their visit so that was very exciting. We had written all over the montanas table of course (who said it was only for kids?) Then we headed over to the bowling. They had unlimited games and we ended up only playing about 4 games or so of them. It was fun, at first it was carolyn, curtis and her friend chris on one team. Then Julie, Mark, Jesse and myself on the other team. Jesse eventually got better at bowling but I just continued to suck even with the buzz that I had going on. Everyone got really excited when I would just get one pin down because I am the queen of gutter balls. Jesse was doing gutter balls as well, if you can't tell bowling is not the best sport in our family. Julie was getting pins down, but throwing the ball down on the alley quite hard, I was scared that she was going to break the floor of the alley with how hard she was throwing them again the floor. Mark did pretty good as well, he hit the most pins out of all of us.

Halfway through the game we decided to do girls against guys. So we had switched bowling alleys, I was curtis, Julie was chris and carolyn was of course herself. On the other alley was Mark as himself, Chris as Julie and Curtis as myself. It was funny I would make fun of Jesse and say he has such a fine fiance now since it was Curtis. I honestly cannot remember who won, for the whole teams because I only cared about beating Jesse. I came really close to beating him but at the last part of the game he started bringing in the strikes and ended up winning over my score, which normally happens anyways. But that was Jesse's birthday, we both had a great time for his 26th birthday and were extremely honored and appreciative that our friend had invited us out for his birthday.

Anniversaries!

On January 23 Jesse and I had our 3 year anniversary of being together. On our anniversary this year we got the opportunity to do our food tasting for our venue at the Red Deer Lodge/Baymont inn & suites. It was super special and very nice. 

The lady that was the sales manager for banqueting personally catered to us and made our day really special. They specially made a table that was set properly as if it was our wedding day. We got to meet the chef that was going to serve the food for the day, and they just waited on our hand and food the whole time. 

They first brought out the starters which was a garden salad, potato salad, a thai noodle salad, veggies and dip and a meat and cheese platter. Everything was fabulous and yummy. Next they brought us what our entree would be..the prime rib. Since it was a tasting and we obviously have never been to one before, I thought that they just make one dish and then we share off of it. But to our surprise they brought us both out our own plates of prime rib with 2 stacks of potatoes and a veggie medley. All I have to say is...so good..and so much food. Along with the prime rib was this au jus that was the best. It was so good, the potatos were fabulous. All I can say is how amazing it was and how yummy it was. It was one of the best prime ribs I have ever had, they properly seasoned it and was just juicy it was fabulous. 

If that wasn't enough food after that they brought us out the desserts. They had an 2 servings of each dessert for each of us. The desserts that they had was brownies, nanimo bars, butter tarts, red velvet cake, and different kinds of cheesecakes. It was fabulous and everything tasted wonderful. Light but not too heavy and delicious. Our whole meal was delicious. 

But after we were literally waddling out of the hotel. It was fabulous definitely worth the amount that we are paying for the food. Having our tasting brought into effect how soon our wedding really is and it made me really excited for our wedding and to spend the rest of our lives together. 

Happy anniversary to us! 

New years!

Blog post came just a big late but I knew I had to still write it! Having the habit of trying to remember to write in my blog when these events happening is getting a bit tough for me even though my life is not that busy! 

On New years eve Jesse and I had plans...plans I know you heard me correctly? We had PLANS! Being the hermits that we were we knew we had to step out of our comfort zone and my coworker Sage had invited me to her New Years party. I thought perfect opportunity for me to socialize and extrovert with my introverted self and for Jesse to just interact with someone other than me. Perfect situation right?  Sage had said that normally her parties were crazy, drinking and dancing until 5 in the morning. Dog sledding with her two great danes, etc. Crazy antics at her parties and we wanted to participate with them. Also I was extremely honored that Sage had invited me and Jesse to come to her party that really warmed our hearts. 

When we went to their party there was lots of food! Tons and tons of people. We got overwhelmed with how many people were there, the loud music and the amount of alcohol (tbh). We started to talk to one of her friends that the husband did eavestrough work as well and had a nice conversation with them. We decided to play a game called cards against humanity. I had never played it before, it is basically like apples to apples but the more morbid version. It was hilarious to play and it was great to meet new people through that game.

Later on throughout the night they decided on dog sledding and fireworks in the backyard. Her husband Ron had made a dog sled by taking a folding chair and welding it to a pair of skis. The horsepower was her two great danes that were huge it was insane. All the kids took turns going down the ally way with the sled it was so fun to see. Afterwards we had fireworks in the backyward and although they were illegal they were so much fun. They had all different kinds, sparklers, star fireworks etc. It was gorgeous to watch and see them so up close. 

After the fireworks we decided to go back home but it was awesome to have that experience with my coworker. I really thank her for inviting us and having such a great time. She was truly a great host, Between the games, the drinks, the dancing, the fireworks and the dogsledding it was one of the best new years I ever had!