just married!

sorry for not posting for so long (i know that you were all just on the edge of your seat), but i've been kind of busy. 8 days ago, we FINALLY got married! it was the most fabulous, wonderful day... nothing went wrong. it was magical. the best thing is, we had a fabulous photographer who took some great photos of the event. you should go to her website to check them out and then go ooh and ahh at her other work. i can't really describe the day other than "perfect," so go see the pictures for far better details.

we spent our honeymoon in orange county and san diego. we stayed at the AMAZING hotel del coronado and had a great time: we went to the beach, rode bikes around the island, went to sea world, went to the san diego temple, went PARASAILING (very, very, VERY cool), and ate lots and lots of good food. i don't think anyone's ever had such a great honeymoon.






we are so happy! school is starting tomorrow, though. kind of a buzzkill... but we're having our utah reception this friay and then saturday heading to yellowstone with my family for labor day weekend. the fun never stops! we're each taking a pretty significant load of classes and working, but we're not going to let that stop us from hiking mount timp, taking significant bike rides, going to several wonderful concerts, and having just a wonderful adventure this semester.

so soon!

5 days!

and the weather on saturday should be totally perfect: high of 75 and low of 65 predicted in la jolla, california.

we're checking things off our lists of things to do every day.

we are so excited!

wedding status:

-wedding dress picked up and paid for: check
-utah open house finalized and settled: check
-percent of our things we have moved over to our new apartment: 75
-days till we leave to drive down to california: 5
-days till wedding: 14


-what we are doing today: tubing the provo river with our singles ward! woop woop i can't wait!

ni hao... xiexie

that's about all the chinese i picked up while i was there for two weeks... it is wayyy harder to understand than spanish. but i had a lot of fun! sorry, i would have posted some pictures while i was there, but china actually BLOCKS blogs and facebook and won't let anybody check them. at least, they've been blocked for a few months now. so i didn't have the chance. but now that i'm back i can post a few pictures for you all to enjoy! we had an awesome time hanging out with tommy's family and visiting the sites like the great wall, the forbidden city, and the various shopping markets around beijing.

this is us doing graffiti on the great wall (don't worry, it's just chalk):


working out on one of the exercise machines in their parks everywhere:


taking a ride on a rickshaw:


visiting the olympic stadium--the bird's nest:


it was an amazing life experience.

and now: 18 days until the wedding! get ready!

the "classics"

when i was in high school, i remember reading somewhere on some very official list that casablanca was the number one movie ever made. ever.
a few weeks ago, tommy and i wanted to watch grease. so we went and got a membership at hollywood video. and i stumbled across the "classics" corner... and found it!

so far we've watched these movies, and they were all excellent.





does anybody have any suggestions for other good, old movies that we could rent at hollywood video? this is like a whole new world opening up to me that i never even knew existed. i know that next on my list is the alfred hitchcock movie rear window, and charade, with audrey hepburn.
but of course, those come AFTER seeing HP6.

fun things coming up!

in one week, I will be taking the GRE.

in one week and one day, I will join approximately sixty-five other wonderful family members and have a rockin' family reunion in Mount Pleasant, Utah! (we love Iceland.)


in one week and four days, I will be hopping onto a plane with my beloved fiancee and traveling approximately eight billion hours to go across the world to get to China, where we will meet his awesome family and hopefully have an adventure-filled but totally safe time.


and once we get back on August 3rd, that will mean 19 days until wedding bells are ringing!

GRE

in the spirit of keeping my options open, i signed up today to take the GRE on july 16th. in case you didn't realize, that is only two and a half weeks away. it's the day before my family reunion starts and four days before i leave the country for two weeks.

i REALLY need to refresh my memory on all the algebra 1 and geometry that i learned six years ago.