Starting Our Life Together

-->Kelly and I are finally married! It was a beautiful day. And also a bit of a blur. We were married in the Logan, Utah LDS Temple and took lots of pictures afterward. It was SO windy. In every one of the pictures taken outside of the temple doors, my Uncle Kevin is crouched behind me holding my veil down.

We got to the luncheon at the Bluebird as most of our guests were finishing up. We got a round of applause when we walked into our banquet room. I have to say, even after being in all those recitals at SUU, it still is really weird when you walk into a room and everyone claps for you.

The reception was wonderful. Our cakes fell apart the night before, but I didn’t care. Someone (I’m assuming my mom or grandma or aunts) managed to put them on display at the reception and they looked really good. We cut the cake and tossed the bouquet and garter and I danced with my dad (one of my favorite parts of the day) and with my new husband. Mostly, though, we just talked and talked and talked with so many wonderful people who came to see us.

I was so excited to see so many friends, Lindsey & Steve, Becky, Kate, and Derek from SUU, Sarah and Tiffany, some childhood friends, and so many loving ward members from Bountiful and both wards in Pleasant View, as well as lots of family friends, and most especially family members. Every one of my aunts and uncles and cousins came from California, Tennessee, Springville, Colorado, and Japan. And my grandmas from Arizona and Springville. Of course it was also wonderful to see Kelly’s whole family, and meet many of his friends. And I was so glad Nariman, Kelly’s oldest and best friend, and one of my best friends too, was there as Kel’s best man. Nariman looks great in a tux. I LOVE Kelly!

We spent a couple nights in the Ogden Marriott and drove around in our highly decorated Mercedes, courtesy of Nariman and Kelly’s brothers. Then we opened gifts and packed up Darcy, our little Ford Escort, and hit I-80 on Monday morning. Our first stop was Cheyenne, Wyoming. On the way we stopped at Fort Bridger. We felt really lucky we didn’t have to cross the country this way!

Then we headed to Omaha, Nebraska. We stopped at a highly-advertised Pony Express station and felt severely let down, but we did happen upon a Military Vehicles Museum, and that was really cool.

Overall, Nebraska is unending. It’s pretty, but there’s only one scene. I felt the sign on this gas station summed up Nebraska nicely.

The next day was our drive to Chicago. That was a REALLY fun day! We stopped at a Danish windmill museum in Elkhorn, Iowa. It turns out that it’s a whole Danish community. I bought my friend Becky a postcard, because I was thinking of her the whole time because she’s Danish. We also went to a Danish Immigrant museum, which had a whole floor dedicated to Victor Borge. We ended up our stay in Elkhorn by eating at a Danish restaurant. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but it was TASTY!

(Victor Borge's first piano)

We spent longer than we meant to in Elkhorn, but I’m glad we did. I think it was my favorite stop. After that we stopped at the sight of the first train robbery (also had that pony-express-let-down feeling.) and Trainland USA. That was actually pretty sweet. It was a ginormous train exhibit. There were little people and buildings and a little working drive-in movie and lights and trains, trains, trains! Imagine taking an entire home, filling it with train tracks and miniature cities, and there you go: Trainland, USA. And we also crossed the Mississippi River.

(I told Kelly to get on the tracks and make his robber face. This is what I got.)

We got to Chicago that night. I hated driving there and finally made Kelly drive after we’d gone around the same block a couple of times because of the one-way streets. He was such a trooper and got us to the parking garage and drove all the next day. We stayed in a really nice hotel, but were a little uncomfortable, because we looked terrible after being in the car all day, and we couldn’t get our suitcases down off the roof of our car because of the parking garage, so we just had to use what we could out of Kelly’s backpack and what the hotel had. Kelly had a change of clothes for the next day. I didn’t :(.

We spent most of the next day at the Chicago Art Institute seeing priceless works of art all day. It was so cool to see actual paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Georgia O’Keefe, Toulousse Lautrec, and Salvador Dali. My family has this game called Masterpiece where you bid on paintings and hope you do get the million dollar painting and don’t get any forgeries, but anyway, it was really fun to go through and see a bunch of the paintings from the game. It was also the museum from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, so some of the paintings made me think of that, like Cameron looking at the little girl’s face in Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. We stayed for hours and had a really fun time. After that we went to Millennium Park and looked at all the weird stuff there and got soaked by the rain.

(This is our reflection in the following)

That day we drove to Cleveland and stayed in a cheap little motel with very nice employees (and soap that made my exhausted self giggle. That Sleepy Bear is so seductive!)

(Cleveland!)

The next day we headed to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, but when we found out admission was $22 apiece and we knew we didn’t have that much time to spend there, we decided to save our money and maybe go back someday when we had more time (and jobs.) We were also anxious to finish the last leg of our trip and get to Baltimore. We drove through the rest of Ohio, Pennsylvania, a corner of West Virginia, and all the way across Maryland. Maryland is a beautiful state. It is so green! There are huge trees everywhere and it’s very hilly. I am missing my mountains in Utah, and I’m REALLY missing the dry air and my well-behaved hair, but Maryland is home for now, and my hair will just have to be Medusa-like for a while.

We spent the first two nights in Maryland at my mom’s cousin’s house. She and her husband were so kind to give us a nice place to stay. Their house and neighborhood are lovely. We got there late Friday night and spent all day Saturday apartment hunting. We actually found a very nice place for a great price right where we need it. On Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting in the ward where we’d be if we got that apartment, and then went over and leased it and moved in! It’s so good to have a place of our own! Of course, we slept on the floor that night, but I couldn’t take it, so Kelly went the next day and bought us a bed! It was delivered the next day, so only two nights on the floor. I lived.

That week was my Baltimore Teach For America Induction. I spent all day meeting other corps members, who are all awesome people, and learning about Baltimore and teaching. On Thursday I was hired to teach Social Studies at a new high school that is opening this year. I am so excited!

So there we have it: life since marriage. Kelly and I are SO happy to be together and having such awesome adventures together. I’ll update later with pictures of my apartment!

I love my husband!

(P.S. I don't know what's up with my font in this post. I tried to fix it, but it just won't! So you'll just have to deal with it please.)