Presidential Sweeeet!

So, for our wedding some friends (Tommy and Holly) gave us a free night's stay at the Anniversary Inn in SLC. http://www.anniversaryinn.com/fifth.php

The hotel is really unique because each room has its own theme. There is Romeo and Juliet, South Pacific, Bridal Veil Falls, Swiss Family Robinson, Santa Fe, Dodge City, Wild West - anything really! We were unsure of which room to pick until we noticed that a few of the rooms came with a "My Comfort" mattress. This doesn't seem like that big of a deal but our mattress in our apartment is really old and we wake up more tired than when we go to sleep. So we narrowed down our list, and picked the most expensive room available - The Presidential Suite!

We were kind of surprised when we called the hotel and our coupon was valid for the Presidential so we booked our room for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Our room was not handicap accessible because we had to climb about four flights of stairs to get to it. But it was worth the physical exercise, it was awesome! A neat side note about the hotel, was that it used to be the old Salt Lake Penitentiary. Luckily, our stay only lasted one night and we didn't even have to post bail since we had a coupon.

Here is Andrew with the keys

Check out the "My Comfort" bed

It came replete with a three-sided fireplace and a wrap-around porch that overlooked the Salt Lake Valley. It was the real deal.

Like all the other rooms in the hotel ours had a theme, Presidents. Lincoln and Washington were in the bathroom. There were stars and strips all over the walls. So, we did spend the night in the Presidential Suite.

But Andrew's favorite part of the room was the waterfall shower! It was sweet!

The room also came with a continental breakfast in the morning. The hot chocolate was super yummy.

Our little adventure in the Anniversary Inn was a lot of fun and our stay was absolutely Presidential.

From Guest Contributor: Andrew Whitman

Vegas, baby!

Last weekend we went down to Las Vegas to watch BYU play UNLV. Andrew's sister is a school teacher down in Las Vegas, and she was nice enough to let us stay with her. So we headed down on Friday right after work.

On our way down to Vegas, we stopped at a little Mexican Restaurant called Pancho & Lefty's in St. George. Andrew is a succor for Mexican food and claims he could eat it every day if he could. (Just a side note to demonstrate our love for Mexican food: I make a big Taco Soup in the crockpot about once a month and we usually eat it for about a week)

Here we are really sick of driving and ready to eat!

The game wasn't until Saturday evening so Saturday morning we went to the Las Vegas temple and did some sealings. That was my first time doing sealings since my own. It was really neat to be in the sealing room again with Andrew and to play a part in making it possible for other families to be together forever.

Also, it was such a contrast to drive on the freeway and see the strip and all the worldiness that goes along with it, then approach the beautiful temple up on a hill in Northeast Las Vegas. Just another reminder how lucky we are to have temples so close and that we can go to the house of the Lord so frequently.

The game didn't start until six, but Andrew's sister Jessica got us tickets to a BYU alumni tailgating party. So we went and got something to eat then headed into the stadium for the game. The weather was so nice, I didn't even need to put on a sweatshirt until basically the 4th quarter. BYU beat UNLV 24-14.

Here we are before the game started. The stands filled up with almost half and half BYU and UNLV fans, it was pretty cool.

Andrew with his sister Jessica.

We headed back to Provo on Sunday afternoon. It was so much fun to have a mini-vacation!

Look at us go!

I just had to make a quick post about our new-found baking abilities. It's so nice to have our very own kitchen, even if it is a little small and doesn't have a dishwasher. We've both found time and space to bake.

Here's a picture of me and some chocolate chip cookies made using the secret Whitman family recipe...they are really yummy!

**Notice the apron, that was a wedding gift from Emily. We also got a cookie jar from my cousin Christi that has been so fun to fill up and leave on our counter to make it look like we are domesticated.

Here's Andrew with some Brownie Trifle that he was really proud of!

The Ream's Bandits

So Tuesday as Andrew and I waited to take the bus home from campus, we noticed in the Daily Universe (BYU's Newspaper) that there were scratch and win coupons in every newspaper for Ream's, a local grocery store. Well, we had another ten minutes or so until the bus came so we decided to get to work and start scratching. It was about 5 o'clock so I feel like people had there fair chance to win already. So we tried to be inconspicuous about it and go through every paper and scratch the coupon to see what we could win. There were four things you could possibly win: an ice cream cone, a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, or a $100 gift card. We were mainly going for the gift card but we ended up with about 30 scratched coupons, none of which were gift cards.



It was kind of disappointing not to win the big prize, it felt like we were looking for a golden ticket, like in Willy Wonka. But we were really excited to go and get all of the things we did win. The only catch was that you can only use one coupon per person per visit.

So Tuesday night we went and got ice cream cones. Each day since then we've gone about twice each time. So we've frozen two loaves of bread and given some donuts and milk and extra coupons away to Jessica and Laura.


Well the coupons expired today so we're going to miss our little visits to Ream's. We really like Ream's, we'll probably start doing some of our regular grocery shopping there. I think they've gained two new loyal customers.

Speaking of making memories in my last post, I think we accomplished that again this week with our little scratch and win coupons!

Making Memories

Last week for Family Home Evening we talked about family traditions and memories we want to create. We discussed some of the things we want to do in Utah that we've never done. I would hate to look back and think that I had missed out on some of the activities and sites to see around here, especially considering I've been here six years!

Anyway, we both realized we'd never been to Homecoming at BYU. So we called up a friend of ours to see if he wanted to double with us and go out to dinner and then to the dance. We didn't really feel like doing one of the fancy ones, so we chose the 80's dance in the Wilk.

Before going to the dance we went to Olive Garden. I really like Olive Garden, but I soon remembered that I always overeat when I go there :)

Here we are before dinner...


Andrew's old roommate, Nate and his date, Karen. She looked straight out of Full House, it was pretty awesome.

After dinner we headed over to campus for the dance. Some people went all out to dress up, it was quite the site. We had a lot of fun dancing to some classic 80's music and wearing glow stick bracelets and necklaces! Most of all it was just fun to get out and do something we haven't done before!

Honeymoon!

A little while after we got engaged we were throwing around some honeymoon ideas and I mentioned that I had seen round trip tickets to San Diego for $105 on Travelocity. So we decided that was probably the best bang for our buck. So we headed down to San Diego on Saturday morning. We stayed at the San Diego Hilton, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting down there. It was beautiful. I should have taken more pictures around the resort, but I never really felt like tagging my camera along.

We kind of did one big thing every day....

On Saturday we didn't get to the hotel about 3:00 pm because of some rental car problems, so we were really exhausted so we just got massages at the resort's spa and went out to dinner.

On Sunday we went to church, where we actually ran into a girl who was in one of my past wards. It turned out she was on her honeymoon, too. Weird, huh? Then we went to the San Diego zoo. We justified it as seeing God's creatures...what better way to spend a Sunday? :) It was absolutely beautiful. I could have spent all day there. Well, I guess we kind of did. We were there from about noon until 5 PM. I took a ton of pictures, I will spare you all of the animal shots...just people shots.

Here I am with our souvenir cup we got. If you bought this nifty little cup for like $8 you could refill it at any of the little concession spots. I thought it was a great deal, because to just buy one drink was like 3 bucks. So we filled it up about 5 or 6 times, so I'd say we got our money's worth.



Here we are riding the little bus around the zoo.








Probably just filled up the cup...






We ended our day on Sunday by going downtown San Diego and eating at a little mexican restaurant.

On Monday we drove up to Orange and visited one of the law schools that we're interested in going to, Chapman. We went on a tour of the Law school and then, since Andrew wants to do a joint JD/MBA program, we went to an informational session for their business school.

Here's Andrew at their campus entrance.


It is in a cute, quaint little town. After we were done touring campus we went and walked around their downtown area and ate at a cute little diner called The Soda Fountain. Apparently the movie, That Thing You Do was filmed there.

We really like it there and I think it is probably now on the top of our list. And the best part of all, we got a fee waiver while we were there, so that will save us $60 bucks for the application fee.

On Tuesday we went and did a session at the San Diego temple. It was so beautiful!



Then we drove up Pacific Coast highway for some sight seeing. We stopped at Del Mar and got out and walked around. It was such a pretty area!


Then we went and ate at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion. It is a steak house and is SOOOO delicious! Every time I see this picture I want to go back there.


Wednesday we took it easy and just hung by the pool and on the beach. We also got another massage. Needless to say, I am definitely sold on massages. Everyone should get to treat themselves to one at least once in their life.

On Thursday we headed to North Carolina so I could see where Andrew was from. We basically just traveled all day Thursday. We flew into Raleigh, then we went on a tour of Andrew's old neighborhood and high school in Chapel Hill. Now his parents live out closer to the coast in Wilmington. (So yes, we went from coast to coast all in one week!)

On Friday we rented a boat and went out on Intracoastal Waterway. It was so much fun, I love being out on a boat. Also there were all of these pretty beach houses we got to look at along the way.

This was one of my favorites.








On Saturday we rode on a ferry and went to Ft. Fisher. North Carolina is such a pretty place!
Here we are with Andrew's parents.



Look at those cute houses behind us.

I really like this one.


We came back to Provo on Sunday, and it was back to work on Monday. I guess you could say the honeymoon was over so to speak. We had such a fun time and it was so nice to have a vacation!

Sorry this was like the longest blog ever. I'll write about our new apartment later.

I'm Married!

Andrew and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple on August 17th! It was such a beautiful day and one that I will always remember! I was kind of worried that I would be really stressed out and not be able to fully enjoy the day, but it turned out so well and I couldn't have been happier! We don't have pictures back from my photographer yet, but you can go to Emily's sister in law, Shannon's website and see some pictures. She is starting a photography business so I invited her to come along and snap some pictures. She did an awesome job! Also Jessica and Emily have some pictures posted as well. I'll be sure to post some pictures when I get them back.

My mom and I headed up to Salt Lake around noon where me met up with Andrew at the temple. It was so nice to have my mom by my side, she was such a support and calming influence on me the whole time they were in town. Our sealing was at 1:40, and apparently there were 60 other weddings that day! So when we came out of the temple there were people EVERYWHERE because of all the weddings. We were able to get some pictures on the temple steps and then walk around temple square a little bit. The crazy thing was that it rained for about 30 minutes while we were trying to take pictures. But it was kind of cute, because we were able to take some pictures with an umbrella, so we'll see how those turn out. The only downside to the rain was that it delayed us a little bit and we only had about an hour window to take pictures between the wedding and the reception. So by the time we got to the reception I didn't really have time to "freshen up" so I'm a little worried to see what I looked like after getting rained on!

The reception was at Market Street Grill in Cottonwood. It was really lovely! I would highly recommend it to others looking for a reception site. The food was so good and the cake was delicious! Here are some pictures taken by the Gruwell girls once the photographers had left and we were able to cut loose a little bit.

Jessica, me, Eliza, and Christy


There's a wine cellar down in the basement and Levi, our fake photographer, thought it would make a good picture...


Eliza, Laura, me, Jessica (Andrew's sister), Jessica G., and Amy






Our fake bouquet throw. Jessica Gruwell "caught" the bouquet, so you know what that means! :)



It was such a great day! I could relive that day over and over again! I'm so happy to be married to Andrew...he is so kind and so loving and so handsome! Even if the reception and pictures would have been a flop I would have still been so happy with our time spent together in the temple and the fact that I was able to be married to him there!

Happy 4th of July!

It's a few days after the 4th of July, but better late than never, right? For the fourth of July I decided to be a little bit festive (mainly to be like Emily) and make a flag cake! It was a jello cake (just a yellow cake then you poke holes in it and pour jello, then let it set for a few hours) then i topped it with cool whip and decorated it like a flag! It was really fun, and I think I started a new tradition. This time around it was a little sloppy...but next year I think I can do a little better.

Andrew's sister Jessica came in town from Las Vegas so we had a little bar-b-que then we went to Stadium of Fire. Corbin Bleu from High School Musical performed, which I secretly enjoyed, then Brooks and Dunn performed, then there were fireworks. It was a lot of fun, and probably the best fireworks show I've ever seen.

Here we are waiting for the show to start

Me and Andrew during the fireworks

Seattle!

On Wednesday Andrew and I flew to Seattle for his cousin's wedding. His uncle was kind enough to buy a plane ticket for me because they all really wanted me to be there. Our flight was completely full, and my seat was unassigned so I got "bumped" to first class. It was my first time, and hopefully not my last, it was awesome!

Andrew is an ice cream fanatic, so like Jess and Scott buying a book every time they fly, I think we may have started our first flying traditiong, buying ice cream at TCBY in the airport.

His cousin Heidi was married on Thursday afternoon in the Seattle Temple. Afterwards there was a luncheon at the Bellevue Country Club. It was absolutely beautiful! I got so caught up in the good food that I didn't take any pictures inside.

Here we are outside the temple with Andrew's parents

This is outside of the Bellevue Club

(we might even use this picture for our wedding announcements)

On Friday there were even more wedding festivities. Friday morning Heidi had a ring ceremony for her hubsand's family, who aren't LDS. Following the ring ceromony there was a little brunch. And by little, I mean extravagant. I helped cut up so much fruit the night before I thought my fingers were going to fall off. As it always goes, there was too much food. But, again, it was very beautiful.

Then Friday evening was the reception at the Olympia Country Club. It was very beautifully decorated with candles and flowers and bows and almost anything else you can think of. It is amazing how much work some people put into their receptions. There was not a single space in the whole place that had been neglected of some type of decoration. It was very very beautiful, but at the same time I'm glad my reception will be relatively simple.

Heidi even planned an intricate program for the reception. After everyone had been served (again the food was DELICIOUS) she had a "Princess Dance"... she is the Sunbeams teacher at church so she had all the little girls come out on the dance floor and dance to the Disney song, "Some Day My Prince Will Come."

After the Princess Dance, she read a poem to her dad about how he was her first love. It was really sweet. Then there was the daddy-daughter dance. Next on the program was the musical segment. Heidi is a really good singer, so she sang about 4 or 5 musical numbers and she had 2 other people sing as well. Then we cut the cake. Here is a picture of the cake.

In the background, out of the window you might be able to see that this place was on the Puget Sound. Andrew took this next picture and he is really proud of it.



After cutting the cake there was the bride and groom's first dance, then they had all the couples join in on the next dance. Then they had every one sit down depending on how long they had been married. Andrew and I were the shortest (negative two months) and his grandparents were the longest (54 years).

Heidi and her bridesmaids (sisters and cousin)

Here's a picture of me with Andrew's family

On Saturday we got to see some sightseeing in downtown Seattle. First we went to the space needle, but it was a rainy and overcast day so we couldn't really see much from the top.

After the space needle we went to Pier 54 and ate at Ivar's.

Here we are waiting for our food.

I got somewhat of an eye infection, so I got to "sightsee" without contacts in (that's why I look a little wasted in this picture). I can't wait until one day when I can have lasik surgery.

My fish and chips...yummy!

Saturday night we flew back to good old Provo. Now we're just waiting for our big day!