White Christmas

About a month ago I found out that the Playmill Theatre company was playing Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the Colonial Theatre in Idaho Falls. I've seen the movie several times and has been a favorite but I'd never seen it on stage, so Eric and I decided to go see it. Monday night was the only night we could make it because of Thanksgiving in Nampa and Yellow Ribbon in Park City next weekend.

We made a date night out of it and went to dinner to Olive Garden with some gift cards and stuffed ourselves silly with broschetta, breadsticks, salad, beef gorgonzala, and white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Yum it was delicious, then we somehow managed to roll ourselves over to the Colonial Theatre.

I was quite impressed with Playmill's company, for being a small company from West Yellowstone they were quite good. And funnily enough the four main characters looked a lot like the actors from the movie, especially the girl who played Judy Haynes, it was almost uncanny.

The show was a little cheesy, more so than the movie, I think Eric had a hard time swallowing it, and truthfully even I did.

My favorite part of the whole show was at the very end when it starts to "snow", it actually started to snow foam bubbles that looked a lot like snowflakes from the ceiling. At that moment I wished I was sitting smack dab in the middle of the theatre and could be covered in foam bubbles from head to foot. With the "snowflakes" floating down it looked truly magical.

But the funniest part of the whole evening happened when we were walking out of the theatre. An older woman had walked out of the theatre ahead of her husband, while he stayed behind to hold the door open for us. Well, this woman didn't realize that her husband had stayed behind to hold the door open, and when Eric walked by her, so reached her hand out to him and almost grabbed his hand before she realized that Eric was already holding hands with me and was definitely not her husband. Eric then heard the woman tell the story to her husband and laugh, while all this time I was completely oblivious to what was going on. Once we were well past them, Eric recounted what happened and we chuckled pretty hard.

Though it was a late night, it was a great night.

Here's a little clip from the movie version:

Oh Christmas Tree

So, in the spirit of trying to create our own traditions as our own family unit, and doing things that we've always wanted to do, we decided to drive out into the mountains and chop down our first Christmas tree. Yes, we did this all the weekend before Thanksgiving, but in our defense between Thanksgiving and an army mandatory yellow ribbon weekend, this was our only chance before halfway through December, and we wanted to enjoy our Christmas tree for longer than 2 weeks.

So during the week we went to Cal Ranch and bought our Christmas tree permit and hand saw and Saturday morning we woke up and got ready for our trip up to the Mesa Falls area to find our "perfect" Christmas tree. We packed our coats, snow/hiking boots, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cameras and hit the road. The drive there was pretty and quite uneventful, though we had no idea that Ashton has seen so much snow already.

We parked because I said I thought I saw a few good trees, and hiking up the bank to check out the trees. The ones I saw actually turned out to be pretty thin and sparse, not great for decorating, so we wandered a bit farther and bam, there it was, our Christmas tree. At first we were afraid that it would be over the 12 feet limit (our permit only was good for up to 12 feet), but after comparing it to Eric's height, we decided that we were good.

Here are some pictures and a video of how it went down.

Shaking the extra snow off the tree so he wouldn't get doused when he cut it down.

Glad I didn't have to help with this part, I'm too short :)

Look Eric's capote and the wool blanket we used to cover the tree match!

Eric wrapping lights around our tree.

It was a great day so much fun cutting down our own tree and decorating it, and we only got the car stuck in the snow three times :) We were grateful that Eric decided to buy that shovel you see in the first picture, and for 4-wheel drive.

Our Perfect Day

Well, nearly a month after the fact, I figure it's probably about time to blog about the wedding, even though I don't have the professional photos yet. I'll post those as soon as I get them, these will just have to give a little taste of our perfect day.

The day started really for me since I had to get up at 5:15 to be ready for my hairdresser/makeup artist to show up at 5:30, never mind that she didn't show up until 6:15! I was a little frustrated because I knew it would be an amazing, yet long day and I had already lost unnecessary sleep. But she did eventually show up, and though it was a long process.

We walked to the temple, while the Marriott is only a block away from the temple, it ended being a rather long walk, or maybe that was just because we were so anxious :)

Once we got in the temple I felt a little more calm, I guess all those horror stories of arriving late to the temple were getting to me. We signed the marriage certificate and went our separate ways to get dressed. Then we found each other again and went to the celestial room to wait. We waited, and waited, and waited. All the other couples waiting with us had left, and more had come, and some of those had left. At that moment I made Eric go ask what was going on because I was freaking out and was convinced that they had forgotten all about us. Well, apparently the couple who was in our room before us was 15 minutes late! Though late, it was eventually our turn. The sealing was just beautiful and amazing. Something we'll never forget.

Then we took nearly 2 hours of pictures. It was fun, but I was tired of pictures after all that. We got some awesome shots, I can't wait to get them back. There was one moment during the picture taking that I thought was really funny. We were standing on the steps in between pictures and Savannah, my 4 year-old cousin asked her dad, who was standing right behind us, "When is Shelley going to have a baby?" Oh goodness, Eric and I laughed so hard we could barely contain ourselves.

After the pictures we changed and went to find the car so we could head down to Midway for the luncheon, which we were already way late for. My friend brought the car down for us, and parked it. She told us the car was parked at the Joseph Smith Memorial third floor parking lot. We searched and searched and searched, well Eric searched while I sat on a barrier and rested my poor feet, but the car wasn't anywhere.

I called my friend again and asked her if there was a mistake. And low and behold, it turns out that the car was parked at the Conference Center! The Conference Center happens to be on the other side of Temple Square. I couldn't walk very fast in my heels, so I stayed and sat on the edge of a flower planter and waited for Eric to come back with the car. Luckily he rolled up just as I was getting really cold.

We raced up the canyon to make it to our luncheon. When we walked in everyone clapped, cheered and laughed. It appeared that in our absence everyone decided to share their favorite stories about the two of us. A lot of them were embarrassing as you can imagine.

There was a ton of food at the luncheon, for which we were both grateful, we were starving. Eric's parents had the luncheon catered by Panda Express... yum, it was the perfect thing!

Then what did we do? We went and took MORE pictures! These were our "bridals and groomals". We took them at the Wasatch Mountain State Park. The leaves were at just the perfect stage. I can't wait to see the pictures, though after all that picture-taking we were quite spent.

We made it back to the reception just in time to enjoy a caramel apple together before we needed to get ready for the reception. I wish we had lingered at the buffet table and enjoyed more of the food before we were swept away, that caramel apple was the only bit of our reception food that we tasted, well besides the cake.

I was a little frustrated that my flowers were completely off, apparently the flower supplier froze my lilies, but I decided to not let it bother me--there had to be a few hiccups along the way. But besides that the reception was absolutely beautiful, we were just astounded with how many people made it, and how well everything went. There were some people who really went out of their way to come, and it really meant a lot to us.

One of my favorite pictures!

My niece Aleksa was a darling holding my skirt all evening.

Heather and Cam showing their true selves at the reception.

Annie and Ben standing around while we took TONS of pictures.

My friend Missy, had spent the whole day Friday making us the perfect chocolate cake! It was absolutely delicious, I ate several pieces

I really wanted to have a first dance, but there really wasn't much dancing room, my dress was so huge and cumbersome that our dance we had practiced wasn't possible, and I hate being the center of attention, so we almost didn't do it, but I decided what the heck, at least I won't regret not doing it. So we had our first dance, Eric knew how self conscious I felt about the whole thing and he really made it fun and not awkward. Luckily other people started dancing too, so it felt more natural. Then I danced with my dad, and Eric danced with his mom. I threw my bouquet, and I threw it too far, so no one caught it! Haha! I ran down the steps and we ran out the door!

But here was my favorite part of the whole reception. Eric and I had spent days making little packets of lavender for guests to throw in lieu of rice or bubbles (it is a French tradition that I feel in love with). We waited for everyone to line up outside the reception hall, and once they were all ready we ran in between the two lines of guests and were showered with sweet smelling bits of lavender. Honestly, both Eric and I commented about how it felt like something, not to be cliche or anything, out of a movie or fairy tale. It was magical!

I wish I had more pictures, I promise the professional ones are coming VERY soon. And Eric's aunt Becky just posted a ton on Facebook as well.