This Great New Life: August 2011

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Freedom Park. It's great.

Seanie and I had a picnic in Freedom Park tonight. With Chinese take-out. And we played with the camera.

Thanks to Laurie and Helen who got us this sweet picnic basket and blanket for our wedding. We like it a lot.

Sean practicing nostalgic prints. In sepia no less.

I hope when we have kids, that we have boys who make this cat-who-ate-the-canary face

Portraiture via Seanie

"I'm having a Nick-looking day" -Lyndsey, do you concur? I thought he was always having some degree of a "Nick-looking" day.

More camera play...like my prop?

Yep. Sure did set up auto-timer. Continued egotism...

Ducks at the park

Seanie Bonnie

Anyone recognize this from Emily's season of The Bachelor? It's Freedom Park :)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

a Year of Wedded Bliss: II

Continuing on in reflection to our actual wedding itself...

Right before I walked down the aisle, I got really nervous. I looked up at Jensen, filling in for father-of-the-bride before taking his place as a groomsmen. He said "what? did you want me to wear a nametag?" and pulled out a pre-made tag that said "Big Daddy". And then we started down the aisle. I was told that when you look around, it's really neat to think that all of those people are there because they're happy and excited for you, so I thought about that on our way down and I will say that it is really cool. Once we got to the front, everything went really fast.

After tons of consideration, I finally settled on the readings and music for the ceremony, a few of which I'll share here.

1. The Gift of Love is what I walked down the aisle to. I loved the style of this song. In the context of a small chapel, trumpets seemed like maybe a little much, and although 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria' was suggested more than once, I wasn't sure that I wanted the word 'flighty' in a ceremony about commitment. I'd decided on 'Edelweiss' in keeping with the same Sound of Music theme at some point, but the church put the kabosh on that, and thus I ended up with this one, which I absolutely fell in love with.

2. 1 John 4:7-12: We had three readings, and this one is my favorite because it explains that we love one another, but that love comes from God.

3. I had a really hard time settling on a song for the congregation to sing, and finally settled on Praise to the Lord the Almighty. AND, I love it.

4. My very favorite part of our ceremony was the a solo performance by the talented Rob Jacobs of 'Behold the Lamb of God' during communion. It was important to me that the gospel was honored at our wedding since a wedding is supposed to be a demonstration of Christ's relationship with the church. And I found it to be very fitting for communion.

Our wedding party was amazing, consisting of four brothers, 1 sister-in-law, 3 friends, a little cousin, and a sweet little girl. One of my favorite parts of our wedding, cosmetically, was the bridesmaids dresses. They were the first thing that I picked out, and I'm still in love. After I picked those, I worked on the flower girl dress and went back and forth between a silver flower-girl dress and a junior bridesmaids dress that coordinated with the bridesmaids. Emily ended up making the decision after discussing the "shape" of the dress with me. As you can see here, we went with the mini bridesmaids dress. And I LOVED IT.

Another of my favorite cosmetic details of our wedding was the flower choice. I went with all white lillies after much debate over a million different types. I love simple elegance and I really strived to not overtake things that I loved (like the church), with other details. The florist was hesitant to just use ONE flower, but I'm really glad that we stuck with it.

This cake caused me a lot of grief. This is the photo post-wedding-coordinator-makeover. But when I originally saw it, 30 minutes before pictures, I had a royal meltdown and I'm actually just a little bit embarrassed about how I acted. I called the baker, who of course didn't answer the phone and never called me back, and all I saw was our whole reception falling apart. People told me before our wedding that there would be things that went wrong and that I couldn't let it get to me, and I would give the same advice to someone else, but I let the cake get to me. That's my one wedding regret. I spent the 45 minutes prior to our wedding trying to pull it back together after seeing the cake, even after the coordinator assured me that she would fix it. I think that my mom was also a little embarrassed because she got this really panicked look on her face and goes "SHE is REALLY tired. She hasn't slept..." Oh cake...

Another one of my favorite things about our wedding was the tiger's visit. As someone who can't keep a secret, especially my own, I was proud of myself for keeping this under wraps. Of course every wedding needs a little tiger rag.

And of course tons of dancing. This was, of course, one of the best days of my life. I wish we could do it again, but we can't, so I'm glad that we have all of this amazing photography from my favorite of all of our vendors, Kim DeLoach Photography :) Does everyone feel like you went to our wedding either for the first time or again now?

A Year of Wedded Bliss

ONE year (and now, 10 days) ago, I got unbelievably lucky and unimaginably blessed when undoubtably the smartest, most handsome, most Godly, most caring man on this green earth made the decision to marry me. Is that an exaggeration? I don't think so, but I'm biased. We are actually celebrating our anniversary over the first weekend in October, but we did go out for dinner and spend some time discussing what a great idea getting married was. So in honor of this momentous occasion, I'd just like to relive some of my favorite parts of our wedding.

Showers. We have amazing friends and family and had plenty of showers and parties celebrating our marriage. This is just a preview to what's really cool about a wedding (besides the marriage :)). It's just really humbling to think that ALL of these people got up, got excited, and got together all to celebrate you. And it's certainly no downside to get tons of presents.

Our rehearsal dinner was my favorite part of the whole weekend. What I love about these is that it's a smaller group of people, all of your family and people you care about the most. You have time to really talk to everyone. And everyone is SO excited, but the wedding isn't ending yet. Our rehearsal dinner in particular was my pride and joy of the weekend. I started planning it when I was finished with the reception and it could NOT have gone more perfectly. We had it on a horse farm in a barn and it was absolutely beautiful. Our families cooked the food (much to my mother's chagrin when she found out 3 days prior that I didn't actually hire a caterer) and it was AWESOME.

I love toasts. Sean's dad had a sweet 2-3 minute congratulatory toast.

My family is slightly more animated and decided to forego the standard 2-3 minutes in favor of a skit.

It was a source of some anxiety for me, the parts of my wedding that I knew would make it overwhelmingly obvious that my dad was not there. The father-of-the-bride toast at the rehearsal dinner was one of them, followed shortly by the walk down the aisle and the father-daughter dance. Unbeknownst to me, however, Jensen was not letting that anxiety overtake HIM. Instead, he told me later that he felt that "the elephant in the room should be addressed". The logic behind this, was, and I quote, "if you don't laugh, you'll cry". So as my stomach turned and my mom got up to talk, I wished that it would just pass as quickly as possible. Not that I didn't think that my mom would do a good job, but just that I wanted the highlighting of my dad's absence to end. And that's when Jensen "addressed". He came running into the barn dressed up like my dad and halted my mom. "WAIT! Christie! This is the father-of-the-bride speech! I made it. WHEW!". And in keeping with what his role would be for the remainder of the weekend, Jensen, in full on rare form, put on a 20 minute rendition of a father-of-the-bride rehearsal dinner toast. Everyone died laughing, and of course, my family took a bow.

Part 2 to follow...

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Our House is Simliar to Noah's Ark

...in that we take 'em 2 by 2. That's what Sean has been telling people regarding our family. Last August, he got Mogatu and me, and this week we got our newest additions (see below). We set out to find a friend for Mogatu sometime in the next several months and "went to the humane society just to look" (a phrase that was cited by a co-worker of mine to be an oxymoron). That's where two maine coon mix adult cats found us and wanted to come home with us :) At the risk of being labeled crazy cat people, after a couple of days of thinking, it was decided that both of these little ones could join the Crandall household.

We were very excited. Mogatu, not so much. I don't think that he could have been less welcoming. So we're hoping that he comes around...

When we met them. You see how much they wanted to stay with us..

We think we're naming them Oliver and Aurora

and of course our first little friend, Mogatu, who has been very bad at making Oliver and Aurora feel welcome

Out of curiousity, I looked up the definition of crazy cat people and most definitions require that you be middle aged/older, have at least a dozen cats, own cat paraphenalia like mugs and wall pictures, and have more cats that the municipal limits allow. And great news, Sean and I don't actually fit any of those descriptions so we're in the clear :)

Monday, August 1, 2011

Seanie, My Gnome

On Friday night, Elevation had a family event called "Gnoming the Streets". Over 500 people/children who participate in E-Kidz came out to find 25 garden gnomes hidden throughout the Blakeney Shopping Center and, if they were lucky, to find the "Golden Gnome" (aka my very own Seanie) who may or may not be convinced to give away a "golden ticket" (aka raffle ticket).

Afterwards, the movie "Gnomeo an Juliet" was played in the Elevation Blakeney auditorium, and children were treated to candy, drinks, and popcorn...just like a movie theater :) Except for free. E-Kidz staff did an AMAZING job decorating the atrium like a magic forest, and I was more than impressed.

My handsome husband in his gnome gear. I think the fame went to his head because it was like pulling teeth to get him to take off that outfit and go home :) "I think I'll just stay in it for the rest of the movie, ya know, so I can take pictures with the kids when they come out of the theater". I think he's going to be a stellar dad one day.

Tons and tons of candy. I'm going to say that I'm glad that none of these kids came home with me post-sugar hype.

Tons and tons of popcorn that poor Courtney Watson and company spent a solid 3 hours popping and packing.

The prize for the raffle winner

Donated cupcakes from Sas Cupcakes, which looked GREAT.

Seanie, prior to going to hide in the Blakeney Shopping Center

This Great New House: Master Bath

A couple of weeks ago, Sean went on a business trip, so I used my time alone to do some surprise improvement in our master bathroom. I originally had plans that I soon realized were more delusions of grandeur in that I was going to paint the bathroom (and be done EASILY by 11 am), and then move on to the master bedroom and the tray ceiling. 8 hours later, I was still putting the bathroom back together and figured that maybe the bedroom and the tray ceiling would have to wait for another day.