A Wedding in the Desert: Brooke + Casey

This past Friday night I jumped on an airplane and flew down to Arizona for a wedding!

My freshman roomie Brooke (I threw her a bachelorette party a couple months ago! Remember?) married her sweetheart Casey in the Gilbert Arizona Temple. 

They were adorable and it was the best day!

She looked beautiful, her dress was seriously stunning (these pictures don't do it justice! The details were amaze.), and even though it was 100+ degrees all day, the reception was in an orange patch where it was nice and cool. 

JP didn't join me on this trip (I guess future lawyers have to show up to their externships and stuff ;) 

but I got to meet and spend the weekend with some pretty awesome ladies and fellow bridesmaids which made up for his absence (a little bit). 

Although I really started missing him when the dancing started towards the end of the reception! He's the most fun to have at weddings!

All in all it was a fabulous weekend; full of new friends, a happy bride, and really really warm weather haha. 

And now, a whole lot of pics:

^^^ me and the newly-married bride!

^^^ They had these awesome communal tables all along the orange trees!

 ^^^ The bridesmaid bouquet, modeled by Mckelle. 

^^^ my bridesmaid outfit!

^^^ I LOVED their invites! They were custom designed and so cute!

^^^ Nedge was writing the welcome sign, something I am never asked to do, probably because of my pretty atrocious handwriting haha. 

^^^ The newlyweds and allllll the nieces and nephews haha. 

^^^ Some of the cakes! Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of their actual wedding cake ha #bloggingfail

^^^ me and mckelle! she is a gem. over the weekend we came to the conclusion that we're pretty much the same person. 

^^^ such a rad group of ladies. I had the best time with them!

^^^ bff's for five years and counting.

See ya later BYU!!

GRADUATED!

It happened. It's official.  I am done!

This was the most packed weekend of my life, and I loved every minute of it.

From commencement to graduation lunches to convocation to buying a new car (yikes!) to a family wedding dinner then onto the full wedding day, it was nonstop and last night when JP and I finally had a second to take it all in I was exhausted and so happy. Life is so good right now!

Also, I posted my graduation announcement here and I talked about my post-grad plan here in case you missed it :)

 ^^^ Shayla and I!

^^^ Had to.

 ^^^ My brother Kiefer, me, and my dad!

^^^ Me and Shayla again.

^^^ aaand again. We were a little excited. 

 ^^^ The most supportive husband! This will be him next year except he'll be graduating from law school! Woohoo!

^^^ aaand me. Again. Anyone still scrolling through? ;)

^^^ Had to post it. Such a hilarious fail. Jumping pics are my achilles heel.

Making It Official!

Even though I technically graduated in December... (and BYU already sent me my diploma in the mail haha) I'm going to be "walking" at the end of this month at the graduation ceremony!

Because I'm sort of all about celebrating milestones/traditions etc. 

I am going to walk with my sister-in-law's college, which is Visual Arts, instead of mine (the School of Education) so JP only has to go to one ceremony, and I get to walk with one of my best friends, it's sort of a win-win!

So just this week I sent out graduation announcements! 

I designed and made them myself and I have to say I am pretty happy with how they turned out!

It's kind of fun, this whole visual-arts business ;)

Guess What I Was Doing 1 Year Ago Today...

I was on a plane, flying to AUSTRALIA to meet JP's extended family and celebrate Christmas with them!

Want to know what I'm doing this year?

Studying for finals.

Well not right at this very moment, funny how blogging suddenly became very important to accomplish at 10 PM the night before finals week starts... But I guess maybe that's a side-effect of GRADUATING?!

Yep, that's right. I celebrated my last day of undergraduate classes last week!

There's a post coming about that, don't you worry haha. 

Speaking of, sorry for the two-week absence!

Real life started piling up, combined with a little medical non-emergency and trying to get the most out of my last few weeks as an undergraduate at BYU and somehow blogging got pushed to the back burner. 

But I'm back now! With a whole slew of posts ready for the next week and some very exciting news coming right this way (is your interest peaked yet? ha.... ha...)

But in honor of me wishing I was on an airplane instead of filling out a google doc, here are a few pictures from Australia last year:

If you feel like reminiscing with me, feel free to read my Australia posts here:

1   2   3   4   5

A Heartbreaker of a Game:

So I'm not the most hard-core football fan out there. 

In fact, if I go to a game I mostly go for the social aspect/the food. 

BUT this weekend BYU had a game that was an exception!

We played our rivals - the University of Utah! And you better believe I knew what was going on for more than 50% of that game! Baby steps.

Now, I'm not going to get into the details of the rivalry that's been around since the beginning of time, but basically BYU hates Utah, and vice versa. It's a big emotionally-charged game every year and it always blows up my twitter feed the week (month) before the game with all this talk of who's team is better, why Utah fans are the worst, why BYU fans are even MORE the worst, etc. 

You know, real important classy banter haha. 

But the game! oh the game! It was a heartbreaker. 

It was a low-scoring one where you had hope up until the last minute just to have it crushed. 

(BYU lost)

But it was still so much fun, and I still love my cougars. AND it was really great because it was a "throwback" game which meant everyone wore royal blue and the football team even had royal blue jerseys!

You know how I'm a sucker for themed events ;)

Rugby National Champs!

 This past Saturday was spent cheering on the BYU Rugby team as they played Cal for the Rugby National Championships!

My 2 cousins play on the team, as well as a few friends so it's always so fun to go watch them play but this time was even more exciting because you see, BYU normally beats the opposing team by like 70 points, but this game was tied down to the very end and BYU managed to kick a field goal at the last second for the win!

JP really loves rugby and grew up playing it (it's huge in South Africa in case you didn't know... and also everywhere else in the world...) so he is a good sport and is constantly is telling me what is going on and why that person has to sit out for 10 minutes and why the players are only throwing the ball behind them :) 

And I may or may not have consumed a hot dog, dippin' dots (I thought they had gone out of business! Nope. Still available at rugby games apparently. love it.), a diet coke, and a bag of popcorn throughout the duration of the game -- apparently rugby games make me really hungry?

 ^^^ CHAMPIONS! Everyone had to rush the field, naturally. 

 ^^^ aaaand then a BYU player got down on his knee and PROPOSED! It was AWESOME. 

 ^^^ Love this guy! Look at his cute rugby shirt.

^^^ Cousins! Love them.