Preparing to be a bride

Aside from loving and supporting my fiance Ben as usual, especially as he is taking his Practicum exam for clinical lab sciences, I have been very busy with the help of Ben preparing for the wedding. We sanded and stained the entire deck (which is HUGE for those who haven't seen it in person). We also weeded the whole yard and created a beautiful arbor which will soon be the background for our wedding ceremony if all goes well, especially the weather. I've also been working on gathering together all the decorations and arranging for flowers, food, drinks, cake, pictures, and all of those other little wedding needs.
This was the first trial of my wedding hair. Ben's aunt Emily is doing my hair and she's so much fun! This day, at first it was just Emily and I playing with my hair until she put the veil in... then we both almost lost it. Then it became real that I was getting married to her nephew and that she was going to help me get ready for it. We've been discussing options as far as taking care of my grand growout line of brassy to ashy hair. We talked about extensions or coloring. Extensions would be expensive but I really didn't want to color my hair either. Chelsey gave me the option of using a toner and said her mom who is also a very talented stylist could probably do it. It's just a temporary color used to take the brassiness out of the ends of my hair and mellow out the color change. Thanks so much Karen and Emily for helping me with all of my crazy hair so far. You two are seriously awesome!
This is still a before, I'll get an after shot later, I just haven't received any yet:) The other biggie was the dress! The most important and memorable part of a wedding is the picture collection that remains. Therefore, hair and dress, as well as tux, ties, and good photographer are pretty important.
This is the back of my dress without the bustle that my mom so cleverly devised. It has a pretty long train and is actually a size 4 but we are able to cinch it down to fit me VERY snugly.
This is the front, it's so pretty and I absolutely love it! It really does make the whole wedding seem more real and I'm getting VERY excited!

Relay for Life

So last night, I participated in the Relay for Life at Weber State. It started at 7:00PM and went until 7:00AM. There was supposed to be someone walking around the duck pond at all times from each team. My ward had two teams: CNA's Rock Steady, and The "Perfect" 10.


The bishop came with his big camper and grill and made hamburgers and hot dogs and set out some great snacks to keep us all going.


Tony, Shelly and I went to the nearby football field and played softball for a bit and I learned that my hands are way too weak to hit a softball. Then Colby came by for a bit and let me keep his jacket because even though I thought enough to bring some blankets, I totally forgot to bring any kind of a jacket!


After Colby left there was a big ceremony to honor those whose lives have been altered by cancer and then we walked around a bit more. Back at the camper I started up some chinese wrestling with Tony, Bry, Ryan and Britney so of course today I'm terribly sore! Then Chelsey, Mo, Brent, Tony, and Jon Cannon went exploring around the campus taking funny pictures with me.


We seriously had a blast goofing off all around WSU (Jon was being crazy... he even rang the big bell in the Football Stadium at 2:00 AM. Just after 2, we had to run back down to the camper to retrieve our stuff because the big group was going home for the night but it was our stupid goal to make it until seven.


We were going to have breakfast on the roundabout but that didn't happen. We went to Brent's house to get some more blankets and we ended up staying there to watch The Office and play card games.


We all ended up falling asleep for a little bit so we eventually gave up by 6:00AM and I got home just before 7:00 and fell asleep until 2:00PM today (except for the moment that my mom called me at 8:00AM!)

My Awesome Easter!

Well, even though my family left me for Mesquite all weekend I still had a blast over Easter. It was great but I am incredibly deprived of sleep... On Friday I spent most of the day at school helping seniors and professors set up and navigate Second Life. I actually had a pretty funny experience, I was making fun of one of the male professors whose avatar was a fox wearing a hawaiian shirt and a skirt that he claimed was a lavalava. I gave him a hard time until he finally admitted that it looked like a skirt and decided to change it. I was giving him some clothing and when he was changing his outfit, it revealed that somehow he had been wearing a bikini underneath that already funny outfit. I was laughing histarically, it was so awesome! Afterwards, Professor Hansen informed me that the man I was teasing was the Vice President of Information Technology here at Weber State University. They are trying to convince to stay and help us with the project by showing him the relevance and usefulness of the program!!! Oops! That night, I hung out with Colby until 11 and at 1AM, Brit and her old roommate Mckell woke me up to watch Seven Pounds with me...well Brit watched the movie while McKell and I slept. The movie ended at 3:30 and Brit was still wide awake and somehow I had woken up as well so I stayed up past 4:30 to talk to her. Finally, I went to sleep only to wake up aroun 6:30 to get ready for the MS Walk in Salt Lake at 8:00 on Saturday.
The MS Walk was a lot of fun, the free breakfast wasn't so good since it was just a bunch of donuts, bad muffins, and poptarts. I did get a free waterbottle, a fan, and a few t-shirts and I finished the walk. I don't know how long the walk was but I know it had to be longer than a 5k because 5k usually takes me about 45 minutes and this took 1 hour and 15 minutes and today I'm pretty sore as lame as that is! Later that night, I went over to Colby's again and we played backgammon (I won!) and talked for a while before watching Bed Time Stories which was pretty cute, cheesy, but I liked it a lot.
Easter, I just went to church then came home and napped with my puppy before going to a big family dinner with the Crowns. It was pretty fun, I played Baci Ball with all of them (minus Colby because he's still healing), his cousin Heather was on my team and we were awful the first game but then we got six points the second game (we played to 8) We probably could have won but I got cold so I gave my spot to someone else and went inside. Then began the backgammon tournament... Colby's dad taught us how to really play and at first Colby was winning but I pulled through in the end (I was rolling all the luckiest rolls: double 4's, 5's, and 6's.) Then his dad wanted to take me on because he was so good at it and with my awesome luck, (definitely not skill) I beat him in five minutes! Before I left, Nicole and Jason gave me a card for Easter and it totally made my day. They are seriously so awesome and fun to be around, and Nicole has helped me through so much she's amazing! Thank you!!!