Monday, January 31, 2011

The Sunset Cruise

Puerto Penasco, Mexico: beautiful beaches, breath taking sunsets, warm air, and the kind of drinks you drink straight out of a pineapple. But underneath all the beauty and the romance is a dark mystery waiting to be solved...

Mark and I went on our honeymoon to Puerto Penasco. He had a great time watching the sunset by the beach every night and sea shell hunting in the morning. It was so fun. But there has always been one thing that bothered me. On every corner in Puerto Penasco there are men handing out pamphlets and soliciting people to come on a Sunset Cruise. The cruise apparently goes out around 7 pm, people get drunk, and then it comes back around 1am. We were approached many times by people asking if we wanted to go on the Sunset Cruise. Each time we respectfully declined and without fail the solicitor would yell out to us (in a Spanish accent) . . .

"Don believe everything de sheriff says! No one has died!"

What!? Who died? When? How? I feel like that is the greatest start to a mystery novel ever! A group of friends go out on vacation, but Jimmy never comes back. Why? Because Jenny got jealous, or maybe because Bobby had a score to settle, maybe it was an accident or a robbery gone wrong. MAYBE the captain is a serial killer who uses the cruise as a way to dump his victims in the ocean!!!

We never found a Sheriff, or anyone else that would tell us about who died on the Sunset Cruise and so I've just been left wondering. Regardless we had a really fun time in Mexico. 








Sunday, January 30, 2011

Turning Over a New Leaf (Our Wedding)

In the moments before you get married you would think that any conversation you had with your soon to be spouse would be profound. The topic would probably be "Something Like Love," the words would probably be similar to "I promise to love you forever..." That is not the conversation Mark and I had in our last minutes as single people.

We talked about turning over a new leaf . . . literally: the act of picking up and leaf and turning it over. How in the world did that come to mean changing your life? It doesn't make sense! (I think we might have mentioned something about snails too but that conversation was cut short by the beginning of the ceremony).

On May 29th 2010, Mark and I put our conversation about leaves and slimey snails on hold to get married. The whole day was beautiful: sweltering hot in that dress, but beautiful.



After the wedding we took the usual pics with family:










Of course the only way to make Calvin smile is to sing. 
As you can tell by the photo below there are only two little 
monkeys swinging on the tree.

                                      
Den I had argu'd wif my cuzin's
(no day iz complete wifout arguin' wif my cuzin's)


 Cardboard Justin was a  big hit

 As were my shoes

Then we took things to the strip:

At the reception we danced,

 Ate some cake


Then danced some more:



These little girls literally thought I was princess

They followed me around all night taking pictures with me


After it was all over we ran into a hail of birdseed:

Watch Carefully:

The girl with the arrow above her,
threw the handful of birdseed in the circle 

 Milliseconds later it is all in my mouth and she is laughing at me!

Despite a mouthful of birseeed Mark and I still managed to ride 
off into the sunset to finish our conversation of how the expression
"turning over a new leaf" came about.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Horse and Buggy Bridals

Taking bridals is an interesting tradition. Usually a girl dresses up in her wedding dress and a photographer comes to shoot pictures of just her. But in my opinion why waste pictures on just the Bride when you have a perfectly handsome Groom just lying around? So Mark and I decided to do the bridals together. Now I really can't take any credit for how awesome my bridals are. It all goes to my wonderful sister, Robin. She told me of a photographer she likes in St. George and thought up the whole photo shoot. She found a farm near her home with an antique horse-drawn buggy and she talked to the farmer who allowed us to use a horse. Then as if that weren't enough she stayed for the entire photo shoot giving the photographer ideas. She is amazing!
Here are the results of all her hard work:










The day before the shoot Robin and I went garage saling and we found these old timey looking suit cases. We bought them for $5 and used them in the shoot to create a running away theme









Robin and I made the bouquet with some loose flowers we bought from a market and a few we pulled out of a Walmart parking lot.

Robin also made this beautiful hair pin for me out of my grandmothers broach




The shoot was almost over when my mom suddenly pounced on something in the field. She caught a frog! and of course we had to use it for the shoot. Poor little thing's heart was beating so fast. But he made a great Prince Charming

I'm sure the frog is thinking
"this is it, I'm a gonner"