Viva la Mexico!

So this blog at the beginning will tie into the last one and then lead into something much more enjoyable! We had one more fun incident take place before we left for our cruise. Oh joy. Can you sense my enthusiasm? Haha.

Sunday night we were packing and getting ready to leave in the morning to the airport. It's about 9 o'clock and night when I suddenly notice a very minuscule amount of water seeping out from underneath our washing machine. I didn't think it to be too big of a deal because there is a floor drain underneath it. It wasn't until I saw the puddle begin to exponentiate that I was struck with a bit of concern. Next thing I realize, Nate and I are tearing towels out of our cupboards and we're trying to prevent our apartment from flooding like crazy! Of course we weren't too successful in our attempts and we got water in the carpets. We're at a total loss of what to do and have no idea why this is happening. We manage to find the after hours emergency maintenance number for the complex and call it thinking that we'll be able to get someone to come out and take care of this mess. We called multiple times and kept getting a stupid voicemail. PIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEDDDDD!!! What's the freakin point in having an "emergency maintenance" number if no one is going to respond? So we finally see the water is slowing down enough to the point that we can go to bed (it's well past midnight at this point). We dam the drain up with every possible dry towel we have left in the house and go to bed PRAYING we'll get some sleep before we have to get up early to get to the airport. That ended up being a whole 3 hours for the each of us because we couldn't sleep worrying about the water and everything that touched the floor in the apartment. UGH! So we had to resort to having our families follow up with the complex to make sure they took care of the problem while we were flying to San Diego. What a mess! When we arrived in San Diego, we were pleased to find out that the complex was taking care of the problem and that 2 other apartments had flooded too. Good they were doing something, only 14 hours too late! Meh.

Now on to the fun stuff! We got on our transfer and made it over to port where the ship was. Getting checked in was pretty quick and simple since I took care of most of the paperwork online before we left. Although one little snag was funny before we even got on the boat. We checked in and were waiting for them to start letting us on the boat. After about 15 minutes of waiting, I suddenly realize that we were NEVER told what our room number was on the boat! You know, might be a good thing to know so we're not sleeping in the lounge chairs by the pool for 5 days! Haha! We went back and got our room number without a hitch, but the lady who gave us our number was floored that we weren't told in the first place! I'd say!

We finally were on the boat and didn't do much but orient ourselves with the ship, so we'd have a bit of a clue of where we were going. We got lunch (haven't even left port and the smorgasbord has begun lol) and pretty much just basked in the fact that we were on vacation, our honeymoon at last! That evening we left port and took off out of San Diego. Before we'd even left the harbor, I got a text from Verizon saying "Welcome to Mexico!" Dude! I'm not even out of the harbor yet! Geesh! :)

I'll spare you most of the details of us being on the ship, since we had 2 full days at sea and a little bit extra time too where we did a whole lot of nothing! That's what a vacation should be about! You shouldn't come back from a trip more exhausted than when you left! There is something wrong with that when you do. So I managed to soak in a ton of rays (and my now tan lines will prove that) by the pool reading the Twilight series. Yeah, I managed to get the first 2 books read in the 5 days I was gone! Nate had to do a bit of studying, so he wasn't left out of the fun ;).

Wednesday is when we made our stop in Cabo. Absolutely beautiful! Our only plans for Cabo were to hit the beach and do some more of that relaxing thing. We took a taxi to get there. My first taxi experience and I just happen to do it in Mexico. WOW. That was SOME experience! The driving there (not just the taxis) is sheer chaos! Cars everywhere and it's a miracle that there aren't millions just piled up in the roads! Once we did get to the beach though, the weather was perfect, as well as the water! Oh how I've longed to swim in an ocean, and a warm one at that! After a few hours on the beach, we decided to head back so we could do some shopping downtown. I was hoping to make it to Cabo Wabo for a bite to eat too. After another exhilirating taxi ride, off we went to shop. Unfortunately with my awesome genetics, I'm very prone to dehydration in a hurry and I could feel it coming on as we began to walk downtown. It sucks because I had been downing water (bottled water off the ship, not Mexican water lol) like crazy. So unfortunately my sudden under the weather spell was too much for me to handle and we decided to head back to the ship before I managed to pass out. Bummer. Here are a few pics while we were in Cabo!

The happy couple

Whitest chick in Mexico! WOO! ;)

Downtown Cabo

Land's End

Friday is when we docked in Ensenada. Yeah, not so impressed with the appearance of Ensenada as I was with Cabo! There was smog/fog (depended on who you asked) shrouding the city, but I suppose there wasn't too much to look at anyway. We decided to book an excursion through the ship since there aren't any beaches in Ensenada, unless you count cliff diving as a beach experience. Nate wanted to go to do the Fox Studios tour in Rosarito, since he's a huge movie buff and what not, and I agreed to come along for the ride lol. We took a bus ride to Rosarito to go to the studios. We deemed the studios the "poor man's Universal". This place was pretty much constructed for the making of "Titanic", although other movies have been made here). It was alright to go to. Nothing spectacular. The guided tours were pretty meh, but once we got to go off on our own, that's when we began to have fun! We started taking a bunch of nerdy photos of each other at different things, but proved itself to be fun. We then took off to a hotel in Rosarito for lunch. If there was a reedeming quality to the excursion, it was lunch! We had your standard Mexican combination that you would find in a Mexican restaurant. The food was fantastic. I can never go back to eating cheapo tamales anymore. Freshmade is the way to go! LOL. We did some shopping Rosarito and found quite a few things, including bringing some drugs back into the states. Okay, not THOSE kinds of drugs, but we were able to pick up some antibiotics to have on hand, which I really like to have when those pesky sinus infections hit and you don't want to pay the money to go to the doc when you know exactly what you need! Anyway, I was glad we also did the trip, since it got us out of the mucky air in Ensenada. We took the bus back and got back shortly before we had to be back on the ship. Here's a few pics from that day...

Wait...are we in Mexico? I wasn't sure...could you make it a little bigger? LOL

On the bus to Rosarito

Cheezin' in front of the model of the Titanic

Climb!

Bang! I so got you...

Day of the Dead setup

Here's a few random pics from the ship!

The seagull and I were about to have a smackdown! He was thinking real hard about stealing Nate's food when he was away from the table, but I was triumphant. See? He's totally staring me down!

Chillin...

Nate proud of his 24-karat piece of "ship" that he won after playing the Gameshow Mania game. He kicked everyone's trash lol!

Our priceless expressions as they sang to us because it was our honeymoon. Sweet.

Smooches as we leave Cabo...

Our one of many towel animals...this is our pimpin' elephant!


Nate and I with our waiter from Romania, Florin. He was pretty kiss a$$ himself!

I've got a billion more pictures of course! I'll probably have to put together a slide show, so that everyone can see them!

I can say with satisfaction that it was a fan-freakin-tastic honeymoon! Great memories to last a lifetime!

Enough heart attacks for one week!

I've had my fair share this week, that is for sure! First it was the car accident with Nate and yesterday it was thinking I came within inches of not being able to even get on the plane to go on our honeymoon on Monday!

I went to go see Rachel yesterday to do a little scrapbooking. I had to pull my ID out of my wallet to get a pass to get on base and then to actually get on the base. Anyway, I thought I had slipped my ID into my pocket after I was done. Later on in the evening, Nate and I were running some errands before we were to head up to his parents house for Lisa's birthday dinner. Well, I go to look in my wallet for the debit card and notice that my ID isn't back in my wallet yet. I check all my pockets and.....nothing. So I proceed to pull everything out of my purse...nothing. I call everyone I know in an absolute panic. I had Rachel scour her house; I had my scrambling to see if there was some way I could get a new ID before the crack of dawn Monday morning. All during the middle of this I come to the realization that we are going NOWHERE Monday unless I have that stupid piece of plastic. No getting on the plane and no getting on the ship either! I'm thinking I've totally boctched our honeymoon AND put us out a LOT of money too. Oh boy. So I start to retrace my steps because there is nothing else I can do. I scour the car with no luck. I then go back to my purse, even though I'm having no hope because I had already dumped everything out. Nate helps me to start looking and he says "Wait! There it is!" It seriously was in there. There's NO way it could have been there! I picked that thing apart and it wasn't there. I'm completely chalking this one up to divine intervention, because there was no other way it could have played out that way otherwise! However it happened, I'm just glad I still get to use that honeymoon that we worked so hard to pay for! I think I'm going to super glue my ID into my wallet for safe keeping...for all time and eternity! LOL.

I've had enough heart attacks for the week. I'm over it! One more and I think I'll keel over. Good thing I've got a week in Mexico to take me away from everyday life. Hahahaha...this reminds me of that song "Some Beach". Yeah, I think that's the anthem for the week! Haha!

Being lovey dovey amongst crunched cars

So you always hear in church that your trials make you stronger and that you should express gratitute for them. Today was most definitely an attestment to that statement. Today was one of those days where the worst of the worst manages to happen, and then it gets even WORSE beyond that! Today's events were topped off by Nate's back bumper getting creamed by a neighbor of ours. Yeah, not a good day. Not to mention, all of these events managed to happen all before 9 AM this morning! Anyway, after dealing with the accident, Nate and I were talking about everything and how it was all going to be resolved. I fully expected lots of yelling and high tensions to occur. Well, there were lots of tears on my part, but nothing I thought would happen, did happen. We managed to work everything out and there was not a single raised voice. I found the exact opposite. I instead found unconditional love coming from my husband. Wow. Crazy how you could be in your second marriage and for the first time be experiencing that from your significant other!

So yes! I am very grateful for my trials! I got through today and had the amazing fact confirmed to me that I have a solid marriage, one that will be broken by NOTHING! If I can come out of a day as rough as this and the first feeling that comes to mind is loved, I'll take any trial, any day. Bring it on!

Freeway antics

Funny thing happened the other day. Nate doesn't have class on Fridays and we were Katelyn-less for the weekend, so we decided to go to breakfast that morning. Well, we got out the door a little late and once we were done, we decided I'd just take Nate to work so he wouldn't be too late. I dropped Nate off and I headed home, which was about 15 miles away. As I enter the freeway, I spotted a truck, specifically a Greens Concrete truck, which is the company that my brother works for. His job entails taking equipment and other things to job sites. So I smirked to myself and thought how funny it would be if Keegan was actually driving the truck. I pull up right beside him and lo and behold, it was! I start honking my horn like a crazy person. I'm sure the couple other vehicles on the freeway must have thought I was dying or something. So Keegan finally looks over and he gives me this funny look of "what the heck are you doing out here?" LOL. So we pull out our phones and proceed to drive down the freeway the next 5 miles chatting and driving parallel to each other. I'm sure if we weren't going 70 MPH, it would have been easier just to roll down the windows haha. It was easy to stay next to each other for the next few miles because, well, no one is on the interstate at 1 in the afternoon! I'm sure it must have been a sight to see from the standpoint of other drivers. Yeah, we're nuts. We're crazy. But we have fun ;)

No Mommy, they're bones!

So here's your "Kids Say The Darndest Things" moment for the day. Katelyn loves to help me cook anything in the kitchen and tonight I happened to be cooking spaghetti. Katelyn was messing around with the package of spaghetti sitting on the counter when I told her to stop messing around with it so it didn't spill. I said "Katelyn, please don't touch the spaghetti so it doesn't spill." She straight-face looks right at me and says "No Mommy, they're bones!" I just busted a gut because I have no idea where she came up with that! Maybe she just has a very creative imagination! :D

Kids are so stinkin funny!

Wedding Day Spectacular

Okay...so I know you've all been waiting to hear all the details of the great event! Well, I'll start at the VERY beginning!

So I went to bed at 11 PM, but didn't fall asleep until midnight. Not too shabby, right? I then proceeded to wake up at 3 AM and could not go back to sleep for the life of me! I tried for about an hour and it was just hopeless. Once I resigned to the fact that sleep was no longer happening, I decided to watch some TV so I wasn't sitting around watching the clock tick down to when I should be getting up. Fortunately a couple hours of TV shows off the DVR was enough to get me back to sleep for at least another 1-1/2 hours until I had no choice but to get up. Jessica came over and did my hair, and my mom brought me breakfast and took charge of Katelyn. My hair and makeup went really smoothly and I was thrilled to death that I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to get ready. Not that it would have mattered too much, I was up anyway haha!

So Melissa and I headed up to the temple. Of course we beat Nate and his dad there, which is rather funny because Nate's parents house is literally BLOCKS from the temple. Anyway, it was really relaxing at the temple. All the temple workers were coming up to us and chatting with us because my step-grandma, Rae, is the secretary to the temple president, so every temple worker knew we were getting married and told us how they've heard so much about us. Funny. Anyway, we got ready and did the quick little vail ceremony, then chilled in the celestial room for a bit, which is pretty standard. Then it was time to get married! While Nate and I sat on the couch in the sealing room listening to the sealer speak (who was a member of the temple presidency), we both were having the hardest time staying attentive! Not because the sealer was boring, he actually had very good advice, but we were both BUTT tired, we couldn't keep our eyes open! It was a lot easier once we knelt at the altar, because we weren't sunk into a comfy couch! LOL. So then with a kiss, we were then known as Mr. and Mrs. Soules! WOO!





So then we come out of the temple! Katelyn came running up to us as we came out! Awwwwwww, she was so stinking adorable in her orange dress and red ribbon pig tails in her hair! I was glad to get a few shots of our new family before she was over the whole "lets take a million pictures" thing. Also after walking out of the temple, it was the first time I got to see the flowers. Melissa's cousin, Wendy, did the flowers. She owns a floral business up in Idaho Falls. My only requirements with the flowers were that 1.) Red and orange gerber daisies be used and 2.) No white be incorporated into the flowers. Any place you would find white, I want to find black instead! Yeah, I decided to be a little twisted in my thinking haha! They turned out totally rockin! Here's a few shots...







I don't have a great shot of my boquet right now, but I had a black ribbon wrapped around the stems of the flowers. Also included with the flowers were red and orange fall leaves, and these curly black things that were actually from some kind of plant! It was wicked cool!

So we did the whole picture thing and it went VERY smoothly, considering the mayhem that usually goes into doing wedding pictures. I was smart this time around and made a list of shots to take for our awesome photographer, Jim. We followed the list and before you could blink, we were DONE! I seriously didn't expect to leave the temple until at least 2PM and we walked out the door at 1:15 PM. YEAH! I'll hopefully be getting the professional ones here soon. I can't wait to see them!





Once Nate and I left the temple, we had a few hours before we had to get ready for the reception. So you can totally guess what we did...........we went and got lunch! HAHAHAHAHAHA! I know, I totally led you to the gutter on that one! HAHAHA! We were both starving and knew we'd be totally grumpy if we didn't get something in our stomachs. After lunch and loading things in the car for the mini-moon weekend, it was time to go supervise the setting up of the reception. Really I didn't care how it happened, I was not picky and just wanted it done, which fortunately it did get set up rather quickly.

So onward to the reception we went! It flew by because we had a ton of people coming the whole time we were there. I saw some people I hadn't seen for quite a long time and those who I've been friends with forever. It was so good seeing everyone!!! I gave the kids my camera during the reception, so here are a few shots from them and also Jessica.














My choice food items were mini-eclairs, cheesecake with fresh fruit, and raspberry slush. MMMMMM! SUGAR! And yes, this time around I made damn sure that I got some of it to eat before it all dissapeared! Well, we did have leftovers anyway, but they only lasted a day or two :D.

I was so proud of my cake! Thanks so much to Rashell for making it for me! I worked hard on coming up with an idea that was different and I think I succeeded in that. Instead of putting a traditional cake topper, I decided to pile the top of my cake with strawberries...not just strawberries, but CHOCOLATE DIPPED strawberries! They were divine! The bottom two layers of the cake were rice krispie treats because we didn't necessarily plan on serving a whole wedding cake. The top layer that we cut into was red velvet, which just totally rocked with the red theme I had going on. Keegan saw the red and was like "Did someone bleed into that cake?" Laughed my butt off!





Of course we did the whole traditional boquet toss and garter toss. I've got a couple shots of that...






Then it was time to LEAVE!!! We headed off to the car and it was decorated a little bit. We had window paint and ribbobns galore attached to the outside of the car. Inside I think there must have been $50 in change covering the entire interior of the car! With the million layers I had on with the wedding dress, I couldn't feel a thing when I sat down. Nate on the other hand wasn't so lucky in that aspect! Good thing we were only going a couple blocks before we were able to clear all that change out!

All and all it was a FANTASTIC day! Everything went without a hitch, which was awesome. I'm sure I'll be posting pictures for the next while (maybe year LOL) as I keep getting them into me. Keep your eyes peeled... :)

Grand Central, This Is Jen Speaking

This is how I should be answering my phone today! I've done literally nothing but take a shower (at least I was lucky enough to get that done!) and spend ALL morning on the phone! Who knew that getting married would suck every free moment that you may possibly have in the proceeding days! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Anyway, I just maybe, just MIGHT be able to get some work done today...only if I can detach my ear from the phone! I shouldn't complain, it's no one's fault but my own of course. I'm the one who decided to get married! LOL.

Oh well, I'm pretty stoked because I get to go to Gygi's today to pick up stuff for the reception and then I get to see my Uncle Vance, Aunt Cheryl, and my cousing Ricky from Oregon before he heads off to the MTC tomorrow afternoon. There's nothing like decompressing with family when you feel your head is about 2.3 seconds away from erupting in an explosion of wedding gooeyness.....

Speaking of...it's on FRIDAY! It's nice to finally be counting down in the single digit range. Just 3 little ol days, but the 3 longest days of my life for sure! :D