In 8 short years.......

Well yesterday Sept. 4 was our 8 year anniversary. We lived the high life by teaching piano lessons, working on our entertainment center we are building in our media niche, and going to mutual. Exciting stuff. What do ya do when your anniversary is in the middle of the week on mutual night where your young women's pres. has just had a baby. I think baby trumps anniversary. Anyway, I thought since I love to look at other peoples wedding pictures I thought I would post a few. Warning: Jared does have hair in our wedding pictures so I promise it really is him. Our kids always ask who it is in the pictures since they have only known Jared with a shaved head.

Jared and I met in Utah. We were in the same singles ward. He invited himself and all his roommates over for dinner. Not too long after that he saw he at one of the hypnotist shows in Provo. I was the one being hypnotized. I am pretty sure after that is when he just totally fell in love with me. We never really "dated" in fact we told everyone we were just friends up until we got engaged. Then we had to change it to "friends with a few benefits". Jared proposed on the temple grounds of Mt. Timponogos with a song he wrote and sang to me. Cheesy but sweet. We got engaged in July and got married in Sept. I loved this engagement picture of us. I wanted to use it but my mom said that we needed to use one where you could see my face. I happen to like "in the moment pictures" I think they are more telling than the regular old posed pictures.

We got married Sept. 4 1999 in the Mt. Timpanogos temple. It was labor day week-end so there were not many people there getting married which made the whole thing really nice since no one was in any real hurry to get us married and out of there. We got married early in the morning and we had an afternoon reception at the Alpine Art Center. That was the best decision I made. The center was so nice, already decorated with tons of art and sculptures, the food was really good, and they cleaned up and set up. We just showed up and then we just left. We were all done by 3 in the afternoon.

There aren't too many things I would change about the wedding. If I had to do over again, I wouldn't have really had a wedding/reception. I would have just gotten married had a really nice lunch with all our close friends and family and taken the money we didn't use and run. Instead we had 1 reception in Utah, 1 open house in Texas, and 1 open house in Bakersfield. All fun at the time but hindsight is always 20/20. The money would have been a lot more fun. The other thing I would change is my bouquet. I hated it. I wanted just the flowers I am not sure what the florist was thinking when she added the tulle into the bouquet. Oh well it was only in a few pictures anyway.

I loved my dress. I bought one dress with the skirt I liked, took the the top of that dress off, bought some really nice lace and had someone make the top. Although I would have liked to keep the dress thinking someone somewhere might be able to use it since a lot of people we knew who got married after I did were looking for dresses to borrow, my mom decided to give my sister's dress and my dress away to goodwill. I am sure someone had a very lucky day one day at the Bakersfield goodwill.

So in 8 years we have been through 7 moves, 3 years of undergrad, 4 years of dental school, had 3 children, and finally bought a home of our own. Here is to many more wonderful years to come with my amazing husband and beautiful children.