Jeff and I are sitting on our plane waiting to take off for Dallas. We’ll spend the night there and then leave early tomorrow morning for Miami, where we will be taking off on our CRUISE!!! I thought I would post a quick update blog about a few things that have been going on since the last time I posted.
First, a follow up on the story I told about the wasp a couple of posts back: Just 4 days after my first ever wasp sting, as I was running some errands on my bike, I received a second wasp sting … on the other boob!! What are the odds of THAT?!?!
In other news, I was very excited to find out that BYU has awarded me a half tuition scholarship for both fall and winter semesters! Yay! I’m finally contributing a little to Jeff’s seemingly constant flow of grant and scholarship money!
Jeff is working hard, as usual. It is never an easy task getting a hold of Dr. Blotter, the professor he works for. But he does his best to keep moving forward with his research and experimentation without much guidance or direction. And let me tell you, he does a fantastic job! He never fails to impress Dr. Blotter, Dr. Sommerfeldt, and Dr. Gee at their weekly meetings (this is about the only time Dr. Blotter makes an appearance and he sometimes even skips out on these)! Jeff has also been trying to get started on his thesis. This has also proved to be no easy task due to Dr. Blotter’s slippery nature. When he didn’t get any feedback, Jeff typed up a first draft of his prospectus without help and submitted to Dr. Blotter for review. This was three weeks ago and as you might have guessed, still no response. Dr. Blotter is a very nice man (it was his decision to use part of the grant from the National Science Foundation to pay Jeff’s grad school tuition), but experience tells us writing his thesis is going to be a very long and lonely road for Jeff. Fortunately, I’m sure that if anyone can excel in such a situation, my brilliant and hard-working husband can.
About a week and a half ago (Tuesday, the 11th), Jeff and I enjoyed a wonderful day at Raging Waters in Salt Lake. We arrived just after the park opened and spent hours going from slide to slide and swimming around the lazy river. Our favorites were Blue Thunder (a slide we went down on a double tube cracking up the entire way – and in the pool at the bottom, I got thrown off the front of the raft and Jeff ran me over with it every time), Acapulco Cliff Dive (a slide that we went down on a little foam raft on our stomachs. The drop was almost straight down!), and The Rampage (a very steep and short slide that we went down sitting up on very heavy plastic rafts, which skimmed across the water in the pool at the bottom). We may be trying out Seven Peaks water park memorial day weekend.
We threw Melissa a bachelorette party at Macaroni Grill August 7th. It was so much fun to get together with a bunch of girls and we had a great turn out. This is most of the group.
Melissa was embarrassed to open all of the risque gifts in the restaurant, but she was a good sport. Then we had the waiter bring out the cake Melissa and Emily decorated with all kinds of naughty things and it was just the icing on the cake. Her reactions were priceless and the cake confirmed for our waiter that our bachelorette party was better than the one a couple of tables away from us.
The cake. Apparently, when Melissa first realized how serious she was about Dan, she walked into Emily's room and said, "I want that."
The wedding day was a very busy and eventful day. Melissa and Dan were scheduled to be sealed at 9:00am in the Dallas temple, but when we arrived at the temple, we were all surprised to find out that the sealing would have to be rescheduled for some time after 3:00pm! Apparently, it had not yet been 72 hours since Melissa and Dan had gotten their marriage license and according to Texas state law, that is the minimum amount of time that must pass before a couple can be married. Melissa and Dan took the news well and managed to laugh it off. Everyone just stayed calm and ran with it. Dan put on his ring and we took fake coming-out-of-the-temple pictures and a few pictures in front of the temple before heading to Fairytale Manor for the reception at noon. It was a beautiful reception. We all enjoyed plenty of good food and Emily, Kelsey (one of Melissa’s best friends from high school), and I hung out around the chocolate fountain for a while. We barely got the bridal party pictures in before Emily and I made a total mess of ourselves! I somehow managed to get chocolate from the fountain on my dress despite the fact that I only had one pretzel before the pictures and I was as careful as could be – so I thought! Luckily, I had a Tide Pen in my purse. Not long after that incident, Emily spilled some of the bright red punch on the floor so it splashed on our white shoes! We told the photographer she had better hurry and get us out there! We couldn’t be trusted!
After the reception, we headed back to the temple, where we hoped Melissa and Dan would finally be sealed at 5:00pm. As it turns out, the mishaps weren’t quite over. Melissa has the worst sense of direction of anyone I’ve ever met and Dan isn’t familiar with Dallas. This wasn’t a good combination as the two of them drove alone from the reception to the temple. They got lost! And no one could get a hold of them! We all waited and worried in the temple until they finally got there. There was a bright side: I got to spend all of that time talking to Kelsey and getting to know her better. She is a great girl! Sadly, she and her husband of 5 months live in Idaho so Jeff and I can’t hang out with them. The happy couple finally got sealed at about 7:00! It was a wonderful ending to a VERY long day! The ceremony was beautiful. Kelsey and I both teared up almost immediately. I am so happy for Melissa and Dan! I loved getting a reminder of some of the things that were said during Jeff’s and my sealing and remembering that day. It made me miss him even more! We left the temple just in time to get me to my 9:35 flight back to Utah.
Melissa and Emily outside the temple taking the fake just married pictures
Laurel, Dan, Melissa, Emily, and I at the reception
This is Dan's adorable little brother, Nate. Emily and I fell in love with him immediately and even though we knew it would embarrass him, we couldn't resist asking him for a picture. Just look at him in his little tux with that little smirk!
Remember, they aren't married yet...scandalous!
The bridesmaids' bouquets were gorgeous!
This is Jamison, Melissa's sister-in-law, with her adorable baby girl, Avery. Avery was such a sweet happy baby and just seemed to love everybody! I just had to get a picture of her!
The eventfulness of the day didn’t end there. As soon as the plane took off, I started to feel light headed and a little nauseous like I might pass out. On my way to Virginia to visit Jeff last summer, I started to feel that way when the plane began to descend and passed out the moment the wheels hit the run way (I had felt fine for the entire flight up until that point). I hadn’t eaten breakfast and decided that was the reason. This time, I hadn’t eaten since the reception at about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but since I had eaten so much, I wasn’t hungry and figured I would be fine on the flight. Wrong. This time, I felt faint from the very beginning and I ended up fighting to stay conscious for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes of the flight. It was a VERY long flight! I managed to keep myself from passing out by concentrating on my breathing and keeping my knees up, but I will NEVER make the mistake of not eating right before a flight again!
1 comment:
Great pictures Kira. I love the one with the cute boy and his 'smirk' the best :) Melissa looks beautiful. I'm so glad she found her man!
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