Dearest family and friends,
Hello from the official Falk household! I guess I can honestly say that a LOT has happened since my last blog... more so than I have ever been able to boast in the past. It's funny, because so much of life is the same. And yet, we've entered into a whole new stage of life. This year has been so growing and changing! We purchased our first home (and have no plans to leave before beginning to rear our family and hope to stay in this perfect neighborhood until they're grown), started our life together as husband and wife, and have begun to build stakes here in our friendships, hobbies and faith. I've had a lot of people commenting on how happy we looked in our pictures, and I can honestly say I have never truly been this happy before. I have never been more aware of how blessed I am with the people in my life and where life is heading right now. So, without further ado, I'd better get started enlightening you with a brief (unlikely) synopsis of the goings on! I'll try to cover our wedding and honeymoon with a few choice pictures so that your whistle is wet enough to want to come visit us and see the full albums :)
The school year ended much more quickly than the previous year and with big aspirations for the next year. Many of the programs I want to implement have gained interest and I've basically been given a blank check for mayhem for the year as long as I plan well and test drive them on my classes first. Many of you may not remember the Life Project my mentor teacher Dave Gamon began a while back that models the scientific method through application and community service... well, I'm planning to bring the same idea to White River! I hope to instill in my kiddos the idea of thinking outside of themselves into their community or another and to actually USE their problem solving and critical thinking skills learned in science towards issues that EVERYONE deals with. I know not all kiddos will go into the science field, but every kiddo will need to learn how to impact others in a positive way using cause and effect and trail and error. Anyway, I don't want to take away from the obviously more interesting blog topics, but I am excited to be starting my third year in about a month and to get back into school mode in the next few weeks (I didn't let myself think about it until after all this wedding madness and wrap-up was finished so that I didn't go crazy).
After the school year ended, there were just two short weeks to finalize some wedding things and get ready for the big day! Thankfully, it was very low stress; as long as I was married at the end of the day, the rest was just details. My mom moved in the last week to help finish up some wedding projects... thanks for the help, MOM! Couldn't have done it without you :) not to mention, she was practically homeless since they sold their home in Gig Harbor. I guess there's so many bloggers in the family (now that my mom has one), I won't bore you by repeating the details :)
And finally, the big day came! The day I married my best friend, the best man I've ever known, the man I'll spend the rest of my life with through thick and thin... my Richard! Since most all of my blog followers were there, I think you know the jist of the story... but here's a few pictures of our special day :)
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| I adored my dress... I knew it was right because it made me feel as beautiful as Richard tells me I am :) |
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| After our first sight! |
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| My wonderful bridal party (missing my sis, Jen... if my photo editing skills were better, I'd put her in there!) |
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| The Casebolt Crew missing a Hall |
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| Probably my favorite :) my boys! |
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| The new in-laws! |
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| Just before the ceremony started, my MOH pro tem Chelsea Jackson brought me a vase of carnations and roses that had a note inside from Richard. It was an incredibly sweet and special moment. So blessed! |
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| I missed Jen terribly but think it was the right decision for her to stay behind... and thanks to incredible technology, she didn't miss a thing! She was actually probably happier this way, sitting in her air conditioned home :) I'm so thankful for her and my new baby nephew! |
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| My handsome groom :) |
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| We were SO PROUD of your little bridal party members! We honestly didn't think Payton would make it down, but they were both perfect and good for the entire ceremony. Little kids for the win! |
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| Husband and Wife! |
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| Another favorite... I love how happy he looks :) |
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| Our first dance to "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)"... this particular moment was one of the "I just wanna STOP" parts of the song. Couldn't expect us to be serious for too long. |
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| My dad gave me three incredible things on my wedding day: the wedding of my dreams with the man of my dreams, a beautiful and tearful toast that didn't have a dry eye in the house, and wrote/performed for Richard and I a bagpipe tune called "Chelsea and Richard's Bonnie Wedding". It was amazing, we were floored! All Richard kept saying was, "this is the coolest gift EVER!" Love you Papa, with all my heart... I'll always be your little girl :) |
So those are a very short few of the two thousand or so I've collected from our fabulous photographer Matt and some family friends with cameras. If you'd like to see the more extensive collection, again, I would love to show you in person :)
The day after our nuptials, we had as many family and friends as we could cram in our cute little house over for a brunch of leftovers (that barely seemed touched... but thankfully a friend of mine stayed at our house and was able to feast a bit! Not enough to finish it off before it went bad, but still...) and gift opening. We are totally set! Then our wonderful neighbors Luke and Tiffany, who have actually become very close friends and huge blessings to us, drove us to the airport where we boarded our red-eye (NEVER doing that again with drugs, booze or a combination... neither slept at all) and arrived in Miami the next morning for our Caribbean cruise! Again, we have about 900 pictures from our honeymoon (about 300 of which aren't blurry... winning) so I'd love to show them ALL to you if you can stomach the motion sickness! Otherwise, if you'd just like a taste, here ya go:
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| The cruise terminal with our boat! |
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| The atrium of the boat... there's about three more levels above where you can see in this photo. We called the ship "Vegas on Water"! |
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| Okay, so story... the boat had kind of a Luxor Vegas feel to it and the casino floor on the boat had pillars with Sphinx-like women on top of them. These Egyptian statues were, well, bare breasted... and we laughed quite a bit because they were all gold minus the nipples of each one. The most inappropriate area had obviously been rubbed off of EACH statue because of people touching them, so each one was either bright orange or green plastic. SO naturally, we had to have a picture helping to cover the indecency. |
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| Key West |
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| Key West boasted a lot of fun things... we went on the Conch Train (after a failed attempt to snorkel... sadly the weather stunk most all of the trip), went to the Shipwreck Museum and Aquarium, etc. But one of our favorite things was the plethora of statues. I could fill an entire blog with us act-posing with them, but just chose this most strangest one... |
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| Puffer smile at the aquarium! |
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| One of the things we were most proud of on our cruise was our choice to eat the strangest food we could find. These are conch fritters... you know, the aquatic snail?! Twas... interesting... we also had alligator, strange fishes, avocado and strawberry soup, and every dessert they pretty much offered. These fritters were in Key West, but we got pretty much all our food on the boat's phenomenal seated dining room! |
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| Fancy dinner night that they almost wouldn't let us into... we didn't think to pack formal dress shoes and slacks on a Caribbean cruise so they almost didn't let Richard and I in. We had to plead our case to Guest Services and the maître d'hôtel to let us eat. But it was worth it for lobster night! |
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| Our favorite towel animal :) |
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| When we arrived in Cozumel, Mexico, we took a ferry to the mainland town of Playa Del Carmen and then a bus to Tulum, an area known for it's ancient Mayan ruins. So much culture and fun! Tada! I have tons of stories here, but again am short on blog space :) by far our favorite part of the trip! |
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| Newlyweds! Just before... |
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| The downpour that came from NOWHERE and dumped a few million bazillion gallons of water on us. |
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| Yay! On Miami Beach waiting to hop back on the bus for our flight home. |
We have so many stories we can't wait to share with you all, like how we became celebrities on the boat the last day of the cruise because of the Love and Marriage Comedy Show we competed in (were basically forced since we were the "newest newlyweds" on the boat by an hour...) and videotaped (yes we have a copy, and no you can't see it...), our Key West fiasco, etc. We realized we're not really cruise-type people, but still had the time of our lives! We were there for the opposite reason of most of the cruisers; it seemed like no one was really interested in the port excursions and we saw that as the point of the cruise. That and you only really have 5 hours at most anywhere. But it was an awesome experience and we want to send a HUGE thank you to my parents for helping make our honeymoon possible! We owe you BIG!
Once we got back, I ran around the greater Pacific Northwest area to see my new nephew (as shown below) and visit friends around us. Not to mention people visiting us, like my parents this past weekend who came for Falk time and the Highland Games (have an impressive burn to show for that one!) and some friends from Idaho coming up tomorrow for some camping. On the two to three days off that I had in between each trip up until this week, we started wrapping up wedding stuff. I'm thankful to say that my two-page to-do list of dress preservation, guestbook framing, house work and repairs, organization, filing, cleaning and sorting gifts, and much more is done as of the end of this post! Well, minus my last little project of painting our vows on canvas to hang above our bed :) and the big to-do list of house things like painting the inside and landscaping and such. I know I've been busier, but I'm starting to feel like a true homeowner. I can't imagine how people do it while they work, much less with children running around! So props to all you peeps out there makin' it work with the 9 to 5 and little 'uns :)
Well, we've felt like we've had a child the last few weeks... my friend who lives and teaches in Alaska was in a tight spot with a dog she rescued up there (literally rescued from being shot and thrown in the ocean... oh if I could tell her stories from Little Diomede!) so we offered to hold onto her in our nice, big, fenced backyard. She's awful cute, but awful destructive and, well, unintelligent. We're about at our wit's end! But it's perfect puppy birth control for Richard... he grew up on a farm where there were always animals and has wanted a dog for a while. He didn't want to tie himself down yet, but this might have clinched it for a longer period of time. So yay for me! :)
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| Baby Boy Carter Scott Hall, the most perfect little baby boy I've ever seen! So excited to have another nephew! Ya did good, Mama Jen :) |
Okay, I know this has been a beast of a post... but one last thing! Our WONDERFUL cousin Ryan is painting our house for us this summer, so we're going to be looking pretty different pretty soon! He's finished two sides of the house and will be wrapping up the rest in the next week or so and it looks fantastic! We also have started demolishing our messy flowerbeds in the front yard and by the door; they're just too overgrown from being unkempt and not being taken care of while the place was empty, so we have to rip it all out and start from scratch. We're hoping to have new bark and the beds cleared at least by the time the house is done, so here's some "before" pictures to compare to when I post the "after" pictures when it's all done! No more being the messy, trashy house on the block!
Well, I guess I'll let you all go for now. Again, let me know if you want to get together for more wedding and honeymoon pictures, I'm just itching to share :) hope to see you all soon, thank you for being my family and a part of my life! I don't know where I'd be without each and every one of you :)
Peace and love,
Mrs. Falk :)
