Edited Photo

Sarah's photographer for the Bridal Pictures and Engagements did me a huge favor today. He took one of my photos and adjusted it to make it have the same feel as the others. His photographs are still much, MUCH better than mine, but this way Sarah could have one photo from her wedding day that was in the style she liked so much. His name is Jimmy and this is his website:

http://www.gideonphoto.com/

I highly recommend him for any occasion.

Sarah's Wedding and Reception

Hello family and friends. Last week was crazy with all the wedding stuff going on, but I thought you might enjoy a few pictures. This first one is from when they came out of the temple. There were some issues with the back panel of the dress (as in it was forgotten at the apartment), but it all worked out in the end.
I thought this shot turned out pretty well. I tried to do a little of the crooked view that Jimmy does so well (their photographer for the engagement and bridal pictures).
This group is all of the bride's maids and groom's men from the wedding party. Alisha, Ashley Alyssa, Natalie and Hailey were the bride's maids. Dane, James, Mitch, Chandler, and I were the groom's men. The two kids are Hannah and Parker (belonging to Chandler and Hailey).
This one is my family. My parents (Jim and Daisy) with Austin, Sarah, Adrienne and I.

Here's everyone from Sarah's side together. I don't want to name everyone because there's just too many. But we have people there from places spanning from Washington to Pittsburg.I had to include at least one from the reception. It was a great party. Beautiful decorations, good food, and great people. Here's the cake cutting.

Sarah Wedding Updates

Sarah went through the temple yesterday so I thought I would share a couple pictures. The first one was outside beforehand and the second is Sarah and Austin when we came out.

Updates

Jason's parents arrived yesterday afternoon. After Jason and his dad watched the Jazz/Lakers game we headed up to Salt Lake county to have dinner with Sarah, Austin, and the future in-laws. The food was great and it was nice to get to meet the rest of Austin's family. Jason's parents are staying at a hotel in Salt Lake to make sure they are available for anything Sarah needs help for with the wedding.

After dinner, Sarah had all the bride's maids and groomsmen meet to go over instructions and responsibilities. We had to laugh a little because Sarah had a full page of instructions (front AND back) outlining everything that we each had to do. It included responsibilities, assignments, times, dress codes, etc. In the end it will probably be very useful to have that all written down, but every once in a while I still see her as my 11 year-old sister and it weirds me out that she is getting married.

This week will be swamped. Sarah is going through the temple for the first time on Tuesday, we have a family wedding dinner on Wednesday, and Thursday is the wedding itself and reception. I don't know when we'll get to sleep again (probably after it's all done).

We don't have any news to report on the adoption front. Still trying to speak on the phone with the girl out of state and nothing new from the one in state. We'll try to keep everyone updated as we get more information.

Arizona Trip

Well, we went down to Arizona for Heather and Nic's wedding. All the sisters from Adrienne's family are married now. Alex is the only one of the siblings that is still single. Here's a picture of Nic and Heather Harenberg as they first came out of the Temple.
And here's Nic with his jump for joy. We flew down Thursday night and came back Monday night. Before the wedding events started we headed over to Chandler to have lunch with my cousin (Kim) and her family. My Aunt Pam came down from Glendale as well. I realized I hadn't seen Kim and her husband since Ade and I got married. Here is a picture of Eduardo, Annalise (Spelling?), Kim, and Aunt Pam. Their son, Ian, had just been put down for a nap.
Friday night was the reception with the wedding and wedding luncheon on Saturday. I'll include a few more pictures below for everyone to see. The first is all of the bride's maids with Helen and Liberty. From left to right: Heidi (sister), little Liberty (niece), Stephanie (sister), Helen (mom), Adrienne, and Mandy (Heather's best friend).
Heidi's husband, Trevor, likes to take pictures too.Stephanie's husband, Will, leaning against the Mesa Temple with Liberty.

Draper Temple Open House and so much more

Talk about a packed week. We printed Heather's invitations and announcements, went to the Draper Temple Open House, played volleyball, cleaned, cooked, met with the bishop to renew his annual recommendation to LDS Family Services, shopped for shoes, played basketball, went snowmobiling, stuffed all the invitations, addressed all the invitations, exercised, and and and... Ok, so Adrienne didn't play basketball or go snowmobiling and I didn't clean as much as she did, but the rest of it was all packed into three or four days.

The Draper Temple is beautiful. It's on the side of the "Point of the Mountain" (people in Utah will know the location) and it overlooks the Salt Lake Valley. I'll try to take pictures sometime when the sun is out to share with everyone, although with the storm coming this week and weddings on the horizon...it might be a while.

My co-worker, James, took me up snowmobiling Saturday morning. I took a few pictures, but I'm afraid it won't do justice to the experience. I'll post them later tonight. It was gorgeous up in the Timberlake area just past Heber. White snow and the sky cleared up by the middle of the day. My legs were pretty tired by the time we headed back. It's amazing what some people can do on those machines.

Sunday I visited 3 wards to see how their young mens' programs were going, then went with our ward choir to sing at a care facility in our neighborhood. They had us sing in the Alzheimer's wing. The patients had bright smiling faces and even sang along to songs that they remembered.

Later Sunday afternoon, Adrienne and I met with the Bishop of our ward to renew his letter of recommendation for us to adopt. There are only 3 forms that have to be renewed annually and this was one of them.

Finally, Sunday night we had dinner with Heidi, Trevor, and Stephanie (and even little Liberty). Will was still up at Camp Williams with his Marine company. After we ate we spent the rest of the night stuffing invitations, printing labels and addressing them for Heather and Nic. They had less than two weeks until their wedding, so we needed to do it all here instead of shipping it to Arizona for them to do. I don't think any of us realized the size of the project we had undertaken. 4 hours later we deliriously said good night. All that's left is for Adrienne to buy stamps in order to mail them and I will ship the extras to Heather in Arizona.

MY SISTER IS ENGAGED!

Lost in all the shuffle of my last post is the fact that my sister got engaged last Wednesday!!! Here she is with Austin at Heidi's reception. They make a great couple. I'm so excited for her...even though he is a U of U fan.You can tell Sarah is engaged in the next photo. This was the bouquet toss. She doesn't even lift her arm to catch the flowers even though they were practically thrown right to her. Arms at her sides, she just watches.

Adoption Profile

We're still making steady progress on the new adoption profile site. It has a ton of new questions in addition to the ones we filled out before. For instance, both Adrienne and I have to answer a bunch of questions each about things like our favorite books, movies, games, etc. I actually think that part is pretty fun. I think it also gives prospective birth parents a greater ability to see different aspects of our personalities.

Will and I still need to find some time to put together "the project" for Heidi's wedding. Maybe we can get together this Saturday...I should probably check.

We put up our Christmas Village last night. It's up on a ledge in the living room. It has its own light switch. We want to add some mirror behind the village to make it seem to have more depth. Still need to put up the tree. Hopefully we'll get that done by the end of the week.

Updates, Thanksgiving, and Fun

Adrienne and I spent another few hours working on our adoption profile this last week. There's still a ton to do. It's a just a matter of taking the time to fill it all out again. It's really a shame that the data was not exported very well from the old system. It's ok though, we'll get it done and it will be fine.

We had dinner with my sister and her boyfriend (Austin) last night at PF Chang's. The food was great and it was really fun. They are headed to Missouri so they can meet up with my parents for Thanksgiving. Sounds like a fun trip.

Ade's littlest sister (Heidi) is having her invitations printed today at my work. It's weird that the little girl I met over 9 years ago is engaged to be married on the 20th of December. What's even weirder is that a girl that I baptized in 1997 has just moved to Utah and will be married the 19th of December. What happened to all the little kids I used to know? How did they get so big? I'm starting to feel old.

Speaking of 9 years, Thanksgiving Day marks our 9 year anniversary (and my parents 38th anniversary if I remember correctly). Ade's family is driving up from Arizona to stay with us for the Holiday and help out Heidi get ready for the wedding. We bought a 24 pound turkey to cook up for everyone. I'll be cooking that with 2 kinds of stuffing and a Pumpkin Pie Cake...but that's about all I can handle cooking. I've delegated the rest of the "fixings" to everyone else.

I guess I should mention that BYU Football lost on Saturday to our biggest rival, Utah. It was 24-27 in the third quarter before Utah's defense stepped up and BYU fell apart. Congratulations to the Utes and bring on the bowl game so that we can end the season on a high note. If we win the bowl game, that will make 3 seasons in a row with 11-2 records. Not bad!

While I'm making a post, I just want to wish all our friends and family a very Happy Thanksgiving. This is my favorite holiday. It seems to me to be the least commercialized, and is one that helps us focus on gratitude. I am very grateful for all of you. I am grateful for your love and your prayers. May God bless each of you in your lives.