Painting... oh the joys...

Trent & I have spent much time over the last couple months painting our house.When we first moved in, all the walls were white and boring. Now, after a short two months, we are basically wrapping up the painting party. People say hindsight is 20/20... and using it, I think it would be worth it to pay a professional to paint. It's a ton of work! We used three colors in our house. The majority of it is a taupe color and then a lighter taupe. Our loft upstairs is dark "brick red". The contrast looks good.

To assist in our painting project, we purchased a paint sprayer. Many people told us it would be impossible to spray our house since it is fully finished with carpet. For the bedrooms, we taped and covered everything with plastic. Our taping job proved sufficient and my preference would have been to spray as much as possible. Although the precise taping takes A LOT of time... the spraying is fast and the paint coats very evenly. We had to make sure not to stay in the rooms too long though for fear of passing out. I have no doubt I killed many brain cells sucking in the paint fumes. The final "major" piece in our painting pursuit was our garage. Trent put up some really nice shelves to help organize everything and then we sprayed the entire thing white. Had we not owned a paint sprayer, painting the garage would have been out of the question. With the sprayer it was easy to coat the ceiling as well as all the high and low places.

That's not to say we sprayed our entire house. We actually rolled quite a bit. Our downstairs was all painted by hand. My mom came over one Saturday and helped me paint the kitchen. Trent & I spent a lot of Saturdays laboring, with the noise from college football games sounding in the background. Any time a good play was developing in the game, I would stop my painting and hustle towards the couch to see the outcome. I'm finding that I don't really need to see a game in order to visualize exactly what's taking place in my mind. I guess that comes with extreme familiarity to sports. Some people might argue my familiarity is too extreme. One thing that is not very extreme is my painting talent. We still have a little touch-up work to do but overall, a lengthy job well done.

Trent - Spraying the garage

Amanda's Turn...

Rolling the downstairs

Wedding Reception

Although a wedding reception requires a lot of work and is often very stressful for those involved with planning it, the best part of a reception is not the food (surprisingly)... it's not the decorations... it's not the weather... or the colors... it's the people. The people.

There was a "stealing" theme at the reception... my cousin Tanner thought he would be funny and "steal" the bouquet

My niece was more interested in stealing the cup from Trent's nephew

Who knew that people in Utah danced??

Talking to Kaydee... what a cute family!

The flower girls... and part of the wedding party

The wedding party...

My brother's beautiful family

Mission Prez... and Sister Bryner

The cousins with the bride

Grandpa and Amanda

Laci & Mark

Alaris and the Peck with me

Stuart Summers... one of the coolest people I know

The Cottrell's... they have real dancing skills...

My sister conversing with her boyfriend's family

Long Time Overdue

I'm almost embarrassed that it has taken me SOO long to update my blog. Trent and I have been married for two months now. Hard to believe. I guess time flies when you are having fun... and when you are just plain busy. Most recently, we've been up to our elbows in paint (quite literally... I'm not a very good painter) working on giving our upstairs more personality. We've finished all the rooms, the hall way, and now we just need to do touch-ups on the red color we put in our loft. Trent is also working on putting the last of the canned lighting in our house. Eventually, we'll get working on our "dirt pad" and hope it will someday turn into a beautiful lawn. I'll try to do some different posts later to cover some of the last couple months. For starters...

We had a great wedding. It was an unforgettable day. Things went just as planned (I heard that is very rare). There isn't anything that I would change about it. Here are some pictures that Jamie took outside of the temple after the ceremony. If you can't really see the pictures well... click on them to see a jumbo version!

Nice Socks

I like this picture because I look taller!

There will be more to come (hopefully). I just need to dedicate more time to the truly important things in life, like blogging.

Merging Worlds

I have a countdown going (assisted by the little widget on the left side of our blog). Wow... only 16 days left until the wedding. Planning is in order and most things are complete. In the "planning process" I decided to gather pictures for a slideshow which will be shown at our luncheon and our Casper reception. Going through piles of old photographs facilitated floods of memories. I like to tell myself (or at least think) that I was a cute kid. Perhaps I'm biased, I don't know. I've decided to post some pictures on here so people who are less biased can provide an honest, accurate opinion. Is there really such thing as accuracy in an opinion?Only a couple days old... but I was blessed with lots of hair!

I often looked startled when getting my picture taken...


Trent's nephew McKay looks a lot like him :)


An athlete... at such a young age!

While some little girls had to wear dresses...


little boys got to play in the sand...


and little girls still wore dresses...


while little boys played with farm animals...


and still... more dresses.

Time's a Tickin'

It's exactly one month from the day Trent and I will get married. Crazy!! The last few months have really flown by. It's hard to believe that we've been dating over 14 months. When we get married, it will be exactly 15 months and one week since the day we had our first date. Wedding plans are coming along pretty well. Most things appear to be under control. I really haven't done too much as far as planning is concerned... that's because I have the best mom in the world!! I know she's taken a lot on herself to plan and organize. I really appreciate all she has done and continues to do to make everything perfect.
Jamie took our engagement pictures. We really liked how they turned out. We should be getting our invitations really soon to mail out. I liked this picture... Trent didn't like it as much so it's not on the announcement.
Even when we're taking pictures, there is time to have a little friendly competition. Trent didn't even move as I tried to heave him into the water. It's a good thing for me that he didn't retaliate to my attack by pulling back... or I would have been swimming.
We both liked this picture... the color effects make it great. It was too small to use on the announcement though so I thought I'd post it here. Good times...

Graduation - A couple weeks back

After many long years studying... I was finally able to graduate from BYU.

Trent got work off to come to the convocation Friday morning. Nice jacket Trent :)

My grandparents were both really proud of my graduation... probably since
I was their first grandchild to graduate from their alma mater.My brother even managed to get work off to be a support at the graduation.
He did a great job playing 'photographer' but was given a break a couple of times.

And that pretty much sums it up... Thanks for coming, Mom, Dad, Trent,
Justin, Grandma and Grandpa.

Tree Killer

This is from a year ago. Trent decided to push boulders down the mountain.
If you are a huge "green" person, you probably shouldn't watch. You might be offended.