The Utahn Family

We had a nice trip to Utah a couple of weeks ago. It was great spending time with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve. There was lots of visiting in the form of game-playing, ice cream eating (we made 2 batches of homemade ice cream, fresh peach and raspberry pineapple), bowling, and drives. My grandma and her sisters threw us a shower so we also got to see some extended family. Because Jason had never been to Utah we made sure we did at least a little bit of site-seeing and took a drive up to Snow Basin with my Grandpa. Grandpa was a great person to ride with he told us about the history of the places we were in and even a little bit of family history!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was going through a book of my family genealogy with my grandpa and learning more about his family. Grandma was right there with us while we looked at it and even she asked some questions! My dads cousin Bobbie gave it to me as a wedding gift because last year she got me very interested in her genealogy finds. She even added pictures to it it is seriously so cool. I love learning about my family history and love going through old pictures even more!

Family means an awful lot to both of us. Its one of the reasons we work well together - our families are super important to us. We're excited to join our families together we have such awesome relatives and we cant wait for them all to meet each other. It is so special that by marrying someone you are able to join many, many people together into a family. Were making our own new, huge family. That is so cool. Plus, I don't know where we'd be without our families - especially our parents - we owe everything to them!

Here's a little more from Jason (!!!):

It was wonderful getting out to see the mountains again, it's been quite a while since I was last out west. I've always been a beach baby but I'm also very at home in the mountains, torn between my favorite to be honest. The visit was awesome, Utah is a beautiful place. Kaitlyn and I took daily walks, at both morning and evening if possible just to soak up the area. All of the family I met were great people, Steve got me to feed lines to his Aunts and a cousin. I look forward to bringing our families together because we sure are lucky people to have both sides full of great people. So many people have been a huge help in this monumental event in our lives and it would take forever to thank everyone individually for everything for small ideas, listening to every little detail, coming along with us to see places and vendors, and even imparting wisdom morning, noon, or middle of the night. We're very grateful to have such wonderful families willing to help us in anything we possibly need. The big day is fast approaching and I look forward to it more and more each moment, to combine two families near and dear to both of us and to marry the woman who completes me.

Like father like son waiting at the airport & Jake at our favorite "Jake's Over the Top" milkshake place. Yum.


Some of the bowlers (Jason kicked all of our butts both games)


Jake and Allison bowling


Grandpa and Grandma


Jake and Uncle Steve - "When Land Sharks Attack" - Steve always makes up funny stories and this trip it was about "land sharks"... soon enough, a land shark actually got Jake - here's the video proof. I LOVE his giggle.


Snow Basin drive


Wild turkey family! Babies and a momma.


Utah, we love you.

Moved!

We’re out of the old apartment. Turned in our keys this afternoon. We worked our booties off cleaning it yesterday and even rented a steam cleaner to get the carpet looking beautiful only to learn that they have cleaners come in to clean the place and then check the apartment again. So that was all for naught. And then we learned that they somehow LOST our move-in inspection sheet which listed all of the things that were wrong with the apartment when we moved in. WHAT? The guy that did our move-out inspection said we shouldn’t be charged for anything but there were issues we moved in and if we get charged for them because they conveniently “lost” the move-in sheet I will go crazy. Absolutely crazy. I’m convinced that the woman that we signed the lease with purposely threw the sheet away. Before we signed the lease she talked about loving shelter puppies and the elderly. After we signed the lease for said apartment I realized she was lying. She was not a nice person. Not nice at all.

The good news is that we're done with that place. DONE! The negativity of the place is gone and we are in a happier place. On Saturday, we moved into the new place. Thanks to our good friends Jessica and Joel, we got moved in pretty quickly. We moved out within our 3 hour allotted period for the elevator and loading dock and got moved in even more quickly. It was an amazing experience compared to our move-in experience last year.

We’re happy with the new place. The courtyard is SO nice. It's HUGE. Like in college it generates a feeling of community because people hang out on it. The night we moved in, someone was having a BBQ in the courtyard. Jason saw someone reading underneath a tree. People garden and spend time outside their apartment. When we walk Rufus there are other dog owners walking their dogs too. We really lucked out.

It's beginning to feel real

The past week has been really productive – it's crack-down time now! We'll be pretty crazy-busy until Labor Day and then we'll have a little bit of breathing time again. I'll try to write again before then but if you don't hear from me it's because we're going crazy!

We got our rings! They're really pretty and engraved. I love them. I love them so much that I kept taking them out of their box enough that Jason informed me we would have to shine them again before the wedding. My bad! I'll try not to touch them again until October. Operative word: try.

We went tux hunting again and decided on one. Hopefully it looks good. They could dress the manikins to show us what the tuxes looked like but not the real man. What? Does that even make sense? The tie/vest colors still weren't matching the bridesmaids' dress color so we went tie shopping this weekend and came home with ties for the groomsmen and a few different options for Jason.

Speaking of apparel, tonight Allison is taking me to get my second wedding dress fitting. I'm excited because it should actually fit me now!

Our Aruba honeymoon is all booked. I can't wait! I’m very much looking forward to pina coladas on the beach and of course spending time with my new hubby.

We also got paint for our new bedroom which Eddie and I will be painting on Friday night after work. And then Jason and I are moving on the 15th!

All that and we still had time to see the musical Spring Awakening at the Kennedy Center thanks to my parents who gave us a gift certificate for Christmas last year (thank you!). It was really good… and was fun to get dressed up! I particularly enjoyed it because Duncan Sheik wrote all of the music for it. It was very much his style – I could tell without a doubt that he composed the pieces.

I can't believe how close the wedding is now… it makes me both nervous and excited. Nervous because I still have a lot of decisions to make and excited because I'm ready to marry my man!