catching up.

so it was brought to my attention that it had been over 2 months since i blogged. im totally bad at it, yet for some reason i still enjoy doing it. or maybe i just enjoy reading everyone else's blogs and wishing i could be as good as them. here are my catch up thoughts/activites of the last two months.

#1.
i love being married. its like a big secret and no one tells you how good it actually is. we recently celebrated our 6 month anniversary. C-A-R-A-Z-Y! i have no clue how we have been married that long. we are hardly considered newly weds anymore.. tear.



#2.
i am 21! birthday was a success. brian woke me up with breakfast and flowers. and later we had friends over for dessert and presents! i am still stashing away my birthday money until i find the perfect purchase. but i did do well with new yellow rain boots and some oxford shoes. and a photo book of all our wedding pictures.
here is a picture of brian and i at cheesecake for my birthday.



#3.
brian worked all of halloween weekend so we didn't dress up. so lame and sad. i guess ill just have to start planning for next year's costumes. only 351 days away. we carved pumpkins with dallin and sam and watched a corpse bride the week before halloween. and halloween weekend i made mummies which were fun and got me in the spirit.
(our's is the emoticon pumpkin on the far left, dallin's is the talented darkwing duck, and sam's is the fabulous bat.



#4.
i've been reading this blog that randi and aubrey showed me: http://seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com/ and i am so obsessed. its hilarious and everyone should read it. even though brian pretends to hate it i know he even likes it sometimes.

#5.
we leave to california in 7 days for american thanksgiving! i can't even wait to be with family and have a break from school. yay for holidays.

our home!

SO after a busy summer of working, and then a fabulous august playing in california, we are back to school. and... we have our first apartment! living at home was cost efficient but we are most definitely ready for our own place.

our apt looks like this:







brian was the most helpful best husband ever. he built me bathroom cabinets and tables and helped with every decision. i am the luckiest girl ever! yay for marriage!

yoga.

yoga is amazing.
i love it.
i want to be as good as tony horton.
better yet, adam.

to kill a gopher.

so this summer me and brian work completely opposite shifts. every day. he needed a serious hobby for the morning hours while i was working, so we bought him a pellet gun. after hours of shooting a metal target in the backyard he needed more.

it was time to go gopher hunting or as we call them in Waterton, columbian ground squirrels. i have to say that i actually enjoyed hitting a moving target. but when you hit a gopher they twitch for like 5 minutes and its completely disturbing. brian says thats why you can't take girls hunting.

sample wedding pics!

our photographer sent a few samples of our wedding day. i can hardly wait to get more. she said sometime in the next couple weeks. thats just too vague for me though.

new shoes

the only thing better than new shoes, is shoes for free!
i recently returned a pair of shoes since the button fell off. little did i know, this was the best news ever. the store told me, we will give you credit for them and you can buy more shoes. as sad as i was about the old shoes, i got more credit for the shoes than i payed for my original pair!!!!
so not only did i get a pair of new better shoes, i got a $20 check in the mail.
thank you coach!

we are MARRIED!

On May 1, 2010 I officially became Jennica Van Blerkom! CRAZY! im married. and so far. life is fantastic. Brian is absolutely the best husband possible and we are oh so happy. Here are all the little details of our fairytale wedding!

I woke up at about 5:30 that morning after only 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I was so excited how was I supposed to sleep?! After showering I ran over to wake up Brian who was sleeping on the couch cause he gave up his bed. Best boy ever. Aubrey Greenan got there about 6:10 and we headed up to Lisa’s bathroom for her to do my makeup. Aubrey did a flawless job on my makeup and at 7:00 Chayenne, my hair stylist, began my fancy hairdo. Brian of course with having tons to do himself still found time to make me breakfast along with 3 or 4 others who poked their head in asking if they could do anything for me. I felt fairly calm by this point and was just counting down the minutes until 11:00. After a family prayer given by my dad we packed up our bags and headed to the temple.

The temple ceremony was so beautiful and I was grateful we could be married there for eternity. Eternal Marriage is so exciting and everything in the temple is so beautiful and i wouldn't want to me married anywhere else. Then we got to do the grand exit out of the temple. It was pure ecstasy. I can’t believe how happy I felt and I couldn’t stop saying it. Everyone takes pictures and laughing and hugging. It’s the best ever. My family was there and all my friends, and all of Brian’s family and close friends. We posed and showed off our rings and moved to the front steps to take group pictures. The weather was … PERFECT. It was about 24C or 75F since I am practically duel now :D No wind. Completely clear out to the city. It was perfect. Soon everyone left and we walked around the temple taking pictures everywhere. Then we left to Oak Hill Park to take a few more pictures not at the temple. We took some cool ones in a woody area and I was paranoid for ticks. Eww yuck.








When we got back to The Van Blerkom's i was shock how well the decorating turned out. The reception was incredibly beautiful. I was impressed with everything. The tablecloths we picked and the white chairs with our garden floral centerpieces were everything that I wanted. Our cake was massive and delicious and the food looked scrumptious. We decorated the pool with floating lilies and Lisa had planted explosions of flowers everywhere so the backyard was the most ideal wedding setting and gorgeous. I kept thinking... wow we planned this, we put this whole wedding together (of course with loads of help from Dave and Lisa and EVERYONE) It was a very chill atmosphere, which is just what i wanted. Everyone kind of just ate and mingled for the first bit and then the toasts came. My mom, and brian's dad, lisa, and janeen all gave cute toasts that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :D

Brian stood up and of course said everything perfect and made me tingle with happiness. He manages to always say the perfect thing. We continued mingling and did the rest of the events, the slideshow, the first dance (lovely tonight by Joshua Radin), the cake cutting, the bouquet toss, and the garter fling.








To wrap things up, it was just perfect, the ppl, the weather, the marriage, the decorations, the outfits, my dress, brian :D I just couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. Everything was just so great and happy. I love being married!!!!!! I am so content being Jennica Van Blerkom. I never want to be without Brian and I can’t imagine life without him. I love him so much and I know for sure that we are meant to be together.

Now we are up in Canada for the summer working in beautiful Waterton Lakes National Park. Our Canadian reception was May 22, and again everything went perfect and was so beautiful. Brian's family were all able to make it up as well. It was so fun to show them Canada. I love weddings!

easter time = easter pranks

this easter was a fabulous one. it was full of chocolate eggs, egg decorating and big conference weekend breakfasts :D mmm my favorite. i love conference weekend and especially when it falls on easter. its tradition to have eggs benedict conference morning so i followed true to that while brian had his chocolate chip pancakes.
random fact: did you know easter is calculated by the first sunday, after first day of spring, after first full moon?

the thing unusual about this conference/easter weekend was that it was so close to april foools. friday morning brian woke up to come pick me up at an early 7:30 to take me snowboarding and low and behold, his car was filled with five or six hundred yellow vitamin waters!


dallin (brian's brother) has a major obsession with these drinks and somehow stole brian's room and car key and filled it to the brim!
but we had plans to retaliate.

saturday night brian booted all four wheels on both of their cars. we left signs and took pictures .. hehe




prior to this we made a copy of their house key that we fortunately had and when dallin called in the morning to be released they switched back their keys... but, brian wasn't satisfied. he wanted to go bigger.

next, sunday morning we break into their house and hide all 600 vitamin waters all over their house. when i say all over i am meaning.. literally any place you can think of. in pillows, in rain boots, in the oven, in purses, in all cupboards. it was fantastic.





while snapping some pictures brian's mind was in game mode and the plan became more elaborate. we printed off the pictures we had taken and then taped them up in the areas where the pictures had previously been taken. we even dressed up in their clothes and layed in their bed with vitamins waters coming out of the bazooka. the prank was very successful, but as sam sad "It's on like donkey kong."
So we are watching our backs!

green day.

i hardly remembered st. patrick's day was coming up, and then it turned out to be so celebrated this year. it was great! it started with our floral design lab where i did a green and yellow arrangement just to be festive. i have a really hard time not picking pinks and purples every time so this was quite an accomplishment.
here is a sample:





the next part of our st. patrick's day, was justin and katey's rad party. it consisted of green streamers, wonderful green treats, irish trivia, and katey's cute st. patrick's headband. me and brian contributed a huge oreo cookie cake, which we have been looking forward to making for quite some time now. brian loves chocolate and loves mint icecream so it was a perfect match and total success.


all of this irish cheer reminded me of when i went to dublin, ireland. the beautiful green hills, the dublin hardrock cafe, our four courts hostel, the temple bar, the irish dancing, the street performers, sneaking into the oliver st. john gogarty temple bar with the old man playing his fiddle, and killiney beach. i hope i can go back someday!

brian vb

tonight i just feel like bragging out my best friend. he is the biggest part of my life so it makes sense that a whole post can be dedicated to him right?

often it is easy to become stuck in the past with "remember when we did this... remember when you thought this?" its always fun to reminisce about old memories during first part of dating. We have been doing this a lot lately because on friday march 12th, it was our one year since we met anniversary! so exciting. and so crazy we have been dating for a year now. i used to think that the beginnings of relationships were more fun.. the whole guessing of whether they like you, breaking the touch barrier, first kiss, up until 5am everynight, then dtr... it's such an exciting time. but now i am here at my one year "met" anniversary, i would never choose to go back. being engaged is the best and i only want to be with brian more and more everyday. dating is more fun now because we both want to be with each other forever, and we can just make supper and watch a movie and be completely satisfied. i'm so lucky to have brian and that he chose me to marry and I get to be with him forever.

just a few of my most favorite things about brian are:

-he buys me the best gifts ever. im so spoiled
-he knows and remembers everything about me
-he has great fashion taste and i can trust with shopping advice
-he treats me like a princess
-he lets/makes me drive his car
-he always buys my groceries
-he will give me a hand rub every sunday and every other time i drop small hints :D
-he is soooooo handsome
-he has expanded his music taste to indie for me :D
-he's best friends with my little sister
-he picks me up from class everyday
-he helps with dishes
-he cooks 90% of the meals
-he loves me more than anyone and always wants to be with me
-he surprises me with flowers for no reason at all
-we watch grey's together every week
-if i can't sleep, we got out to ihop, no matter what time it is
-he makes me laugh
-he has the cutest "im so innocent" look
-he's good to his sisters
-he's a mama's boy
-he like's Canada too
-he always lets me choose the restaurant
-he always lets me choose the movie
-he loves to sing along to all the songs on the radio, especially country
-we always hold hands while walking
-he makes sure im comfortable on the couch before he is
-he's a worthy priesthood holder
-he draws me pictures




ok maybe this is more than just a couple. but i could go on all day. im the luckiest girl in the world to be marrying him.
shout out to brett and kylie for setting us up on the date one year and one day ago!




i mean who could just not be obsessed with this boy. im totally guilty.

headbands among other things

So today I made my first headband. This may seem like a small feat, but i have been meaning to start forever! My cute friend Sydney makes like thousands and is practically famous now she's on etsy. But she kindly let me come over and gave me a few lessons. And oh gosh. I think it may now be my passion. And i can be crafty/trendy without spending much money. Best alternative to shopping. Thank goodness for Sydney and showing me the ropes. You should check out her blog, http://lemignonbandeau.blogspot.com/



We are also well on our way to finishing invitations! Who knew it was such a process?
Pictures, than design, then print, then assemble, then address, and stuff, and lick. yuck. so much work. they may be the death of me. good thing i have the most helpful fiance ever. im way to lucky. i can't wait to be married. only 50 more days. and 500 more things to do. but im sure tomorrow i'll make a few more headbands. :D

ENGAGMENT pictures.

So after we got engaged. We started wedding planning immediately. brian is the planning type and i'm the type that is horrid at making decisions. so.. i put it off bit.. but we finally chose our fantastic photographer and booked the date. The girl who took our pics was nicole carman. check out her blog. http://nicolecarmanphotography.blogspot.com. she is incredible! we just loved her. so january 25th. at 2:00 we drove out to an old deserted warehouse by the provo cemetery and had our sesh. i had a few minor hair panic attacks since i forgot all my touch up makeup and combs at home, but brians mom lisa was there to help and everything ended up being wonderful!



isn't he such a stud! gosh i sure think so.